‘Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child’ Tells Guitarist’s Story In His Own Words

I have a good friend who likes to ask me questions like “Who’s the greatest American rock band OF ALL TIME?!!!” or “What’s the best rock n’ roll riff EVER?!!!!” Now, I’ve certainly never been accused of not having an opinion on such things, and, being a musician and guitarist myself, I have pretty particular thoughts on what makes for great music. One of his favorite questions is “Who’s the greatest guitarist IN THE HISTORY OF ROCK N’ ROLL?!!!” My answer is always the same: James Marshall Hendrix.

Adjectives like “best” and “greatest” can be hard to quantify when we’re talking about art, but Jimi’s qualifiers are hard to beat. He was a great rhythm guitar player, a master of Curtis Mayfield style ‘60s R&B chops, and a great lead guitarist, able to play lightning fast runs or soulfully slow blues. He could play electric or acoustic, and wasn’t a bad bassist either. He could write, arrange, produce and sing. Perhaps most importantly, though, he was a sonic visionary, imagining new guitar sounds and techniques out of thin air, enabled by the rapid technological advances in electric guitar amplification and effects pedals. Nearly every electric guitarist that came in his wake carries his musical DNA, whether his influence was direct or merely inherited.

Amazingly, he did it all in just shy of four years. His first single, “Hey Joe,” came out in December 1966. He died on September 18, 1970 at 27-years-old. Like other musicians and celebrities who died too young, the legend of Hendrix looms large, and the guitarist has been the subject of several documentaries since his death. 2010’s Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child, was produced by the Hendrix estate and is a unique if ultimately unsatisfying profile of the guitarist, and is currently available for streaming on Netflix.

The film opens with a dizzyingly fast Hendrix montage before displaying the message; “This is the story of Jimi Hendrix told in his own words compiled from his personal artifacts and interviews he gave during the period September 1966 – September 1970.” Like the Janis Joplin documentary Janis: Little Girl Blue, the film features a voiceover of writings and quotes, in this case read by Bootsy Collins, the groundbreaking Parliament-Funkadelic bassist, who, like Hendrix, changed the way the instrument sounded and was played. Unlike Little Girl Blue, the movie doesn’t feature interviews with anyone else. It’s a cool idea in theory, and guarantees the film doesn’t cover the same ground as previous Hendrix docs, however, it ultimately makes the film seem monochromatic, a one-note riff which is the very opposite of Jimi’s Technicolor life and music.

From the start, Jimi Hendrix was one of a kind. He was actually born Johnny Allen Hendrix in 1942, but his parents changed his name to James Marshall when he was 4. His parents drank and fought, and he was mostly raised by his strict father Al. “I’ve always been very quiet but I saw a lot of things,” he says gravely about his childhood. He grew up in ethnically mixed communities in Seattle, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia, and had an expansive view of racial matters, never feeling that being an African-American should preclude him from getting everything he wanted out of life. “I always say ‘Let the best man win, whether you’re black, white or purple.” A science-fiction fan from an early age, you almost get the sense when he says “purple,” he’s talking about himself.

He began playing guitar at the age of 14, equally enamored of bluesmen like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, and rock n’ rollers like Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry. At 18, he joined the 101st Airborne Division “Screaming Eagles,” and bragged about it in letters home. The movie echoes his claim that he was given a medical discharge after breaking his ankle. In fact, he received an honorable discharge from the army, who deemed him unsuited for military duty.

Hendrix made his bones as a guitarist backing up a cavalcade of different soul and R&B artists on the “Chitlin’ Circuit”; the network of African-American clubs and concert venues stretching to from the Deep South up to Harlem’s Apollo Theater. He developed his stage act, old blues tricks like playing with his teeth or behind his head, to impress these “hard to please” audiences. He eventually tired of being a backing musician and wanted to step out on his own. He ended up in New York City, where he fell under the spell of Bob Dylan and was discovered by Animals bassist Chas Chandler, who brought him to England in 1966 to be groomed into a star.

Hendrix hit England like an atom bomb, blowing away the reigning rock aristocracy with his authentic blues chops and over the top theatrics. It was there that he first played through a Marshall stack. The sounds the 100-watt British-made amplifiers made when turned to 10, and Jimi turned everything up to 10, unleashed the guitarist’s imagination. He could make his Stratocaster sound like raindrops or rhinoceros, with a turn of the knobs on his guitar, or by stomping on one of the new guitar effects pedals, which had just come on the market, adding more colors to his aural palette.

Having conquered the U.K. with his band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, he returned to America for his historic debut at 1967’s Monterey Pop Festival. Pissed off he had to follow The Who’s guitar smashing finale, Jimi pulled out all the stops, ultimately lighting his guitar on fire as a “sacrifice” to the musical gods. The gods must have been listening as he soon became one of the era’s biggest acts.

Fame and fortune, of course, brought with it pleasure (groupies, drugs) and pain (touring, drugs). The band were touring and recording at a furious rate, their three albums were released within the space of 17 months, and burn out was inevitable. Hendrix spoke of wanting to take time off, “I don’t want to be a clown anymore,” he says, “I don’t want to be a rock n’ roll star.” But the only break that came was the actual break-up of The Experience in early 1969. Always the musical searcher, Hendrix would spend the rest of his life chasing a new sound that explored his widening interests in jazz and funk, but tragically his tenure on planet Earth was coming to an end.

The guitar hero’s death in 1970 is explained away with vague, flippant quotes like “I’m not sure I will live to be 28 years old,” and “When I die, just keep on playing the records,” without discussing in more detail the ill effects heavy drug use had on the guitarist, including the barbiturate overdose that would claim his life. Nor does the film go into Hendrix’s bad management and label deals that required the constant touring to pay off equipment bills and appease record companies.

While Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child was presumably made with the best intentions, produced by Experience Hendrix LLC under the guidance of Jimi’s adopted sister Janie, it falls short of telling the full story of the late musician. Though much of the unseen live performance footage is often great, it too often gets cut off mid-song with a quote or segues into a different subject. Its attempt to put a new spin on a story we all know is admirable, but like the half-baked posthumous albums that followed Hendrix’s death, it has the whiff of exploitation, and ultimately fails at capturing the greatness of the man and his music.

[Where to stream Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child]

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician who was given Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Are You Experienced’ when he was 9 and told to listen to it for 2 hours every day in place of remedial reading. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.