Artist: Jimi Hendrix
Album: Both Sides of the Sky
Label: Legacy Recordings
Release Date: March 9, 2018
Double Vision
Written by Silas Valentino
He’s hot, he’s sexy, he’s dead and his estate continues to dredge up gems from his dusty archives. Nearly 50 years after Jimi Hendrix’s premature death, Both Sides of the Sky arrives to clear out what’s left of his benevolent vaults. The LP is the finale in a trilogy of posthumously released compilation albums that would have been the follow-up to 1968’s Electric Ladyland and this one seems to be the brightest of the three due to amount of previously unreleased songs–10 total of this 13 song package. Not many artists receive a red carpet treatment long after their death but not many artists could ever hold a pick next to Jimi Hendrix.
What’s heard across this 56-minute aural sprawl is the sound of a man entering the soul of the Blues to disrupt it from the inside. Like a righteous virus, he creeps into the hollow-bodied casket of Muddy Water’s standard tune “Mannish Boy” to summon an electric ghost out of its slumber. Water’s original is marked by a 4-note lick that’s been replicated ad nauseam (looking at you “Bad to the Bone”) but on this hawkish cover Hendrix manages to pay tribute to the structure while adding a jubilant flare only he had the dexterity for creating. One part Sly & The Family Stone “I Want to Take You Higher” and one part Bo Diddly guitar waves, Hendrix’s reworking of this number not only introduces us to the album but also how he devised his tributes: tearing into them a clinched-fist force to pound away at the thing until a diamond appears.
The next notable moment arrives in the guitar-heavy “$20 Fine” featuring pal Stephen Stills on the organ and vocals. The two had met at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival and Hendrix invited Stills to session at the Record Plant in New York two years later. Hendrix layered multiple guitars on the track which reflect off each other while Stills wails away with his respectable white boy cry. Hearing multiple Hendrix guitar lines layered on top of one another invites listeners into the virtuoso’s mind where a delightful cacophony of screeches and squawks may have played repeatedly even when his amps were turned off.
Stills will appear again on Both Sides of the Sky during a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” written about the infamous festival which occurred only weeks before the recording of this rendition. Hendrix hopped on the bass for this one, adding rhythmic pummels that cover every square fret of the neck.
Unsung saxophonist Lonnie Youngblood appears on the sultry “Georgia Blues” that sounds like a predecessor to future Stevie Ray Vaughn and John Mayer influence. Youngblood sings with pain as Hendrix accompanies his sorrow with a sharp Fender lashings and the song hoists itself onto a high pillar during the intoxicating sax solo that carries the song to a whiplashing close. Youngblood and Hendrix would collaborate on several occasions, most notably “She’s a Fox,” but on “Georgia Blues” they sound timeless and unstoppable.
One number that’s pretty but all-too-similar to his previous work is the languid “Sweet Angel” that has Hendrix doing a five-finger dance on his guitar to squeeze out melodies like Gushers–but the chimes he uses on this track make this beauty seem like the neglected twin to “Little Wing” and their resemblance is uncanny and confusing.
10 of these 13 tracks have never been released before cementing Both Sides of the Sky as a more enticing and interesting record than Justin Timberlake’s latest disappointment–and Jimi has been in the grave for 48 years.