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Producer and engineer Eddie Kramer has worked with the likes of Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, the Kinks and Kiss, but his name will be forever closely associated with Jimi Hendrix. Kramer worked on all three Jimi Hendrix Experience albums, as well as the live Band of Gypsys, and has curated much of the Hendrix music released since the guitarist’s death in 1970.
We asked him: What does Jimi Hendrix. mean to you?
Discovering Jimi Hendrix
“We all know the story: Chas brings him to London, they search for musicians, and it’s Mitch and Noel. Then they go to Paris and do their first gigs there, and it’s brilliant, of course. And we’d look at Melody Maker or NME, and we’d hear about this new guy. You’d hear the rumours through the industry: ‘You gotta hear him.’ The stories were legion. This guy turned the whole guitar playing world on its ear.”
Personal memories
“Olympic Studios had moved to Hammersmith, and in late-January of 1967, I got the call from front desk. Anna Menzies, who ran the studio, said: ‘Eddie, there’s this American chappy with the big hair. You do all that weird shit anyway, so why don’t you do him?’ So that’s how I got to do Hendrix.
“I remember seeing him walk into the studio, sit in the corner, huddled up in a raincoat. Didn’t say a bloody word. I’m running around like a blue-arsed fly trying to set up the amps. Jimi gets up and takes his coat off, puts on the guitar, plugs in. I must be standing maybe six feet away. He hits a chord, and it’s a sound that I’ll never forget. Imprinted on my brain cells. It hit you like an asteroid.
“The first memory I go to with James Marshall Hendrix is his sense of humour. He was one of the funniest human beings on earth. If things were going downhill in the studio, he’d flip to playing the Batman theme or a showtune. And the band would jump on it right away. He would hit a chord and he would be serious, and then he’d give that sly [wink]. He knew he was winding you up. One of these days I’d like to put together all the out-takes. We were serious about the music, but we were laughing all the time.
“Watching Hendrix work, you could almost sense the neurons moving at a million miles an hour, from the brain all the way through his body, through his hands and fingers, right up to the guitar at the end. We would set up three big screens in the studio because nobody could see him sing. He couldn’t stand the sound of his voice. He hated it. So we’d turn all the lights down and he’d poke his head around the screens and ask: ‘Was that alright?’ I’d say: ‘Yeah, it’s great, Jimi.’ And he’d say: ‘I’m going to do it again.’ Same thing with guitar solos. They would just pour out of him and they were bloody marvellous… And then he would do them again!
“I was there when Jimi played the Saville Theatre in June 1967. He knew The Beatles were going to be in the audience, and he’d got an advance copy of Sgt. Pepper’s. I remember going up the back stairs to see Jimi and the boys. He was sitting in the corner and he’s got this tiny little Philips record player. He’s playing the opening song of Sgt Pepper’s, he’s got the guitar in his hand and he’s looking at the guys saying: ‘It goes like this.’ They rehearsed it for about five minutes. Then they run downstairs, jump on stage and open with that song. Everybody in the audience is flabbergasted.”
My favourite Hendrix deep cut
“I liked some of the later stuff, like Dolly Dagger. I remember how much his girlfriend [Devon Wilson] was part of that song, and I’d never seen her in the control room so many times. And she was very sweet. A troubled human, unfortunately. And Jimi wrote this about her drug addiction. So there was the fun side and the dark side.”
As an inspiration
“Jimi absolutely left his mark on me. I think one of the most important things I learnt through working with Jimi was to capture a live performance in the studio and help the musicians feel like they’re creating something live, not computerised. There was this whole concept of going into a room, figuring out a song – and maybe they had rehearsed it up to a point – then they’d nail it within a couple of hours. I mean, we would get a couple of songs a night. Today, this whole idea of perfection drives me nuts. I think Jimi would have hated most aspects of modern recording technology.”
Jimi’s legacy
“You had no idea that you were recording history in the moment. You knew the guy was a genius, and you just happened to be there and part of the creative process. [That he died so young], that’s the unfortunate part of the history. But the fact that he was with us for those four years and created all that wonderful music… and it still lives. It’s a living, breathing thing.
“Jimi could have become an elder statesman, with maybe his own film company, his own publishing company, still making music, working with young artists. He would have embraced rap and hip-hop – all that would have become a little part of what he created, because he absorbed music like a sponge. If you listen to the albums, from Are You Experienced, to Axis, to Electric Ladyland, they’re on a steep curve, and you can hear the music shift and change. And what about Band Of Gypsys? That was a radical departure – but what a great one. I can imagine him as an eighty-year-old.”
Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision is scheduled for release in September.
