Jimi Hendrix - Straight Ahead (1970)

Jimi Hendrix released the Band of Gypsys live album on March 25, 1970, through Capitol Records. Recorded during four New Year's performances at the Fillmore East, it existed to fulfill a contractual obligation due to a contract Hendrix signed to PPX Enterprises in 1966. He had agreed that Ed Chalpin, head of PPX, be his manager only to leave the country and form the Experience in London shortly thereafter. So, PPX sued, and to settle the dispute, it was agreed that Jimi would give them an album, as distributed through Capitol, and that would be the end of it. His latest studio album, Electric Ladyland, was released in October 1968, which means that his label Reprise Records had by then been waiting for two years for any new product by him. He had been on and off the studio for the same length of time, without ever coming close to making anything that he considered finished, mounting up massive studio bills at the Record Plant that he had to tour to pay off. To remedy that, Hendrix and his manager Mike Jeffries decided to build a studio of their own, christened Electric Lady Studios, so that he could record as much as he wanted and for as long as he wanted without paying exorbitant studio fees, and maybe finally finish recording his fourth studio album. Indeed, this period of mid-1970 saw Jimi recording many brand new songs, showing he was in a very creatively fruitful phase of his career, aided by a band consisting of Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell and BOG bassist Billy Cox, a versatile band that could give him the best of both groups. And by putting those together with the great material the now-defunct Band of Gypsys had recorded at the Record Plant, you were looking at 30+ songs available to him for a new record. All he had left to do now was to assemble an album out of all of those songs.

And that he tried, with varying degrees of success. To make the best use of the material he had, Hendrix was interested in making his fourth studio album into a double LP, with names like First Rays of the New Rising Sun, People, Hell & Angels, and Straight Ahead being considered. He even created a couple of very interesting preliminary running orders, which have since become the main pieces of this puzzle. The first was a double album sequence neatly divided into sides, but with the fourth side missing and some slight overlap between sides one and three. That list has been the source of some controversy as many people don't think the handwriting on it resembles Jimi's, but there still hasn't been enough evidence to discredit this three-sided tracklist. And the second was simply a huge list of (presumably) every song Hendrix considered worthy of the album, with twenty-five songs being listed without side breaks or even any apparent sequencing under the name "Songs for L.P. Strate Ahead". That one is clearly Jimi's, but there are a few problems with it too. As I mentioned, it doesn't seem as if it was a preliminary tracklist per se, and it even features songs we are not sure exist, or that don't circulate at all. To make matters worse, there's a very real possibility that Jimi couldn't use everything he recorded on his next album, as his manager Mike Jeffries had intended him to make a Rainbow Bridge soundtrack album even before his death. Jimi clearly wasn't interested, but had to play along, and might've seen himself obligated to stockpile material for that as well. Because of all of those factors, what Jimi's final album would look like remains a mystery, and a niche community of Hendrix fans obsessed with this material has cropped up, trying their best to solve that mystery. So what if we play along too?

This reconstruction is an update to my Straight Ahead album by Jimi Hendrix from December 2020. Here, I will try to create a more faithful rendition of the original "Strate Ahead" tracklist where I don't add songs to the middle of the sequence and don't stray so far from the original. This list of songs has long intrigued me, and the fact that it has largely been ignored by most attempts at reconstructing Jimi's final album is puzzling. So, instead of using the unfinished three-sided sequence as soniclovenoize has brilliantly done in the past, we will take this 25-song behemoth and make it the basis of our new album.  A relatively fresh take on a saturated topic, I hope that will provide us with an interesting alternative. Once that's done, whatever's left of our reconstruction will be turned into a contractual obligation Rainbow Bridge soundtrack album, to appease manager Michael Jeffries and make sure not a single track recorded between November 1969 and August 1970 is left on the cutting room floor. This is essentially the Kitchen Sink version of Jimi's fourth studio album, and should not at all be taken as what Jimi would do had he lived, as we sadly cannot predict that, but as an exercise in including every single possible song. However, songs such as "My Friend" and else anything recorded before November 1969 will be excluded, as that's when the fourth album sessions began in earnest and those deserve their own reconstruction.We will be using the most finished possible versions of the songs, no matter if they were Hendrix mixes or posthumous mixes. Jimi's mixes are great, to be sure, but many date further back and don't feature some of the last few overdubs and tweaks he performed, which we would certainly want to include. With that out of the way, here's what our brand new revamped Straight Ahead looks like:

Discs 1-3: Straight Ahead

Ezy Ryder (The Cry of Love)

Room Full of Mirrors (Rainbow Bridge)

Earth Blues (Rainbow Bridge)

Valleys of Neptune (Valleys of Neptune)

Straight Ahead (The Cry of Love)

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Cherokee Mist (Purple Box)

Freedom (The Cry of Love)

Stepping Stone (War Heroes)

Izabella (War Heroes)

Astro Man (The Cry of Love)

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Drifter's Escape (Loose Ends)

Angel (The Cry of Love)

Bleeding Heart (War Heroes)

Burning Desire (Loose Ends)

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Night Bird Flying (The Cry of Love)

Pali Gap (Rainbow Bridge)

Hear My Train a-Comin' (Rainbow Bridge)

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Lover Man (Purple Box)

Midnight Lightning (South Saturn Delta)

Heaven Has No Sorrow (Electric Lady Studios)

Send My Love to Linda (Both Sides of the Sky)

Drifting (The Cry of Love)

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Come Down Hard on Me (Loose Ends)

Dolly Dagger (Rainbow Bridge)

The New Rising Sun (West Coast Seattle Boy)

Disc 4: Rainbow Bridge

Power of Soul (Both Sides of the Sky)

Beginnings (War Heroes)

Message to Love (West Coast Seattle Boy)

Belly Button Window (The Cry of Love)

In from the Storm (The Cry of Love)

-

Lonely Avenue (West Coast Seattle Boy)

All God's Children (West Coast Seattle Boy)

Machine Gun (Live in Berkeley)

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Jimi Hendrix - Straight Ahead (1970)

Hendrix performing at the Isle of Wight Festival, September 1970.

Our main album is going to be simply a reproduction of the original "Songs for L.P. Strate Ahead" 25-song list in full, with substitutions made when songs aren't available or wherever else needed. To do so, we will need to expand this from a double album to a triple, as this material is much too long to fit into two pieces of vinyl. Thankfully, Jimi himself considered releasing a triple album at some point during the making of this fourth record, which means we're only following his wishes. When it comes to take selection, we will be once more using the fantastic Loose Ends version of "Burning Desire", a live-in-the-studio performance for the ages, while "Hear My Train a-Comin'" is the superb live version found on Rainbow Bridge due to the lack of an adequate studio take of the song. The often bootlegged demo of "Heaven Has No Sorrow" is the only thing on our album not sourced from an official release, suffering from a mediocre sound quality but fitting right in with the more unfinished material of side five. "The New Rising Sun" meanwhile features the "Bolero" intro, ballooning its length to 11 minutes and providing us with our second epic of the album after the monumental live "Train". Slightly more controversially, we will make the assumption that what is listed as "Electric Lady - Slow" is actually "Pali Gap", since it was originally recorded under the name "Slow Part" at Electric Lady studios, which sure, is conjecture, but is way too close to be a coincidence. Finally, side breaks were added whenever the sides hit 20+ minutes long or wherever I felt there was a strong side opener/closer to be seen, in order to make this flow better. And considering this is just a list off the top of Jimi's head, the sequence we ended up with in this reconstruction is actually pretty decent!

With that out of the way, we only have to worry about replacing the unavailable songs and working out what's going to feature on the bonus disc. "Local Commotion", which was part of the Black Gold demo tape but sadly has yet to surface, is replaced by "Come Down Hard on Me", a song that was recorded before this list was made, made it to the three-sided sequence, but was inexplicably absent here. On the other hand, "This Little Boy" we know virtually nothing about, since unlike "Local Commotion" we don't have knowledge of any recordings or lyrics existing anywhere in the vaults. We don't even know if it's a real song! Either way, we will be replacing it with "Drifting", one of the only other songs present on the three-sided sequence that was recorded as of August 14, 1970. "Belly Button Window", another highlight of the three-sided sequence, was recorded eight days after the list we are basing ourselves on was made, meaning it gets to be part of our bonus disc. Alongside it are studio versions of the Band of Gypsys' "Power of Soul" and "Message to Love", as well as the great live take on "Machine Gun" from the live June 1970 Berkeley performance, giving us one of the few good versions of the song with Mitch Mitchell on drums. Added to those are other strong tracks that failed to make our triple album, such as the instrumental ditty "Beginnings" and the fantastic "In From the Storm", making for one of the highlights of this pseudo-soundtrack. Finally, we pad out this contract-fulfilling compilation with the meandering instrumental of "All God's Children", one of the final backing tracks Hendrix ever recorded, and with the uninspired cover of Doc Pomus' "Lonely Avenue", to give Jimi's management 40 minutes' worth of semi-releasable material, to get them off his back and let him realize his vision in peace.

Of course, it needs to be said that this is insane and would've never been released in 1970. Reprise Records, who had been waiting for new product from Jimi since late 1968's Electric Ladyland, would never release something this sprawling and experimental. They would have interfered and demanded that the very least a whole disc be cut down, and maybe even postpone the Rainbow Bridge soundtrack indefinitely. However, this is an interesting thought exercise in combining everything Jimi recorded in the last year of his life and seeing what the whole of his efforts sound like together, and I'm more than pleased with the results. Almost three hours' worth of music and over eight sides of vinyl goes to show what an absurdly creative period this was for Hendrix, and that we needn't worry for him when it came to topping his first three albums. Hendrix was well on his way to creating a masterpiece that rivaled his recorded output with the Experience. Commenting on the material itself, the very unfinished studio material and assorted live tracks we've used to complement this album fit in remarkably well with the more finished, release-ready songs, which really surprised me at first as I was expecting a much rougher listen. But the varying degrees of completion help give the album variety, as many of the finished songs share the same full, funky mid-tempo sound that tends to sound similar on repeated listens. Our album has sprawling epics, small solo demos, and everything in between, helping create the maximalists' version of his fourth album, as well as the soundtrack to a misguided movie. This collection helps us put in perspective how many ideas Jimi had going on in his mind at the time of his death, and it's a shame that he couldn't live to see the world's reaction to his new earthier, straight-ahead sound.

Sources:

- Jimi Hendrix's Unfinished Fourth Studio Album

- Jimi Hendrix - EH Released Recordings October 1968 - August 1970