I recently watched a video in which he tuned one of his strings while he was playing an ascending bend during a solo so it would be undetectable. It probably would've been undetectable anyway, it goes to show how much he cared.
Great skill indeed...

I really enjoy a lot of his deeper catalog of sounds. I'll probably never have to hear Purple Haze (etc.) again, nor All Along The Watchtower, or other prime time offerings, but there is magic all through his recordings and I would never turn an album off.

Live film transfixes me.

Band of Gypsies is a top fave soundtrack for the highway, and the only one that I've played in recent years.

Not Crap, although I think a punch in the neck is the better offer when asked to chose between a punch in the neck and having to listen to "Wild Thing" Hendrixified.

here are two hendrix stories

one is told much better than i am going to tell it, in the book _crosstown traffic_ by charles schaar murray. that fact hasn't stopped me from repeating it before, or now.

it's a story about hendrix being at a club one night and being asked to join the band on stage. forget where or who the band was. but another gtr player was there...larry coryell i think. someone very much like him if not, so i don't feel too bad about libeling him if i'm wrong. anyway, 'coryell' gets up there first and starts firing off all this stuff, pulling out every trick in the book. flurries upon flurries of notes. plays for a while. deedledeedlerawhntrawhnt. lets it all hang out, play play play. so he's done, and he hands the borrowed guitar off to hendrix. hendrix walks over to the amp, turns everything up all the way, and whacks the whammy bar violently with his palm. WHAOOOOOWHOOM, and he blows away everything the other guy played in about two seconds.

one of my other favorite stories is about the time at the monterey pop festival when, from the stage, he introduced noel redding as "bob dylan's grandma." in the video, this comment is followed by a grand shot of noel redding, looking very much like bob dylan's grandmother.

also, pete townshend tells a great story about becoming best friends with eric clapton for a short period of time, solely b/c of their shared feelings of inadequacy in the face of hendrix's appearance on the scene. i can't remember where this appeared, but i just read it recently. might've been in mojo--it was part of some poll.

every one of his peers--townshend, clapton, page, neil young, jeff beck, santana (...), whomever--fucking _worshipped_ the guy

A few comments:

-I haven't seen this pointed out in other comments, but it needs to be said: he in many ways was the first electric gtr player. By this I mean he was the first to really explore and understand electric-gtr-as-sonic-device. Nobody before, or really since, has used feedback as well as he did, just for one example.

-He shouldn't be compared to Coltrane; Coltrane was at a much higher plane of virtuosity (putting aside for a second that all jazz sucks). But his musical relationship w/the amazing Mitch Mitchell was very similar to Coltrane's w/Elvin Jones (not that I listen to jazz; it sucks; all that freedom and no one knows what to do with it; just like Amsterdam; there's free love in Amsterdam).

-The "Wind Cries Mary" solo, totally effects/bombast free, is my favorite gtr playing of his. It shows his roots on the 'chit'lin circuit' (he played in Little Richard's band for a while).

-Roger Miller (Burma) worships him.

-I listen to the Experience albums mainly for the drumming now.

-He got smart and switched to Gibson (Flying V) before the end.

Can I just also add that Mitch Mitchell is hands down one of my favorite drummers of all time?

I've already been on the planet for 3 decades, am not a drummer by class ( I successfully "attempt" the drums) and if in the next twenty years I can get my drum playing with one quarter of the feel, snap, chops, groove and stomp as Mr. Mitchell, I will die a happy man.

I already know that I'm as close to Hendrix on guitar as I'll ever get.

-I haven't seen this pointed out in other comments, but it needs to be said: he in many ways was the first electric gtr player. By this I mean he was the first to really explore and understand electric-gtr-as-sonic-device. Nobody before, or really since, has used feedback as well as he did, just for one example.

i would agree that he is singular

i don't think he necess. deserves all the innovation props--elmore james and hubert sumlin and guys like that were crankin it up a long time before he was. but he took it all the way there.

-He shouldn't be compared to Coltrane; Coltrane was at a much higher plane of virtuosity (putting aside for a second that all jazz sucks). But his musical relationship w/the amazing Mitch Mitchell was very similar to Coltrane's w/Elvin Jones (not that I listen to jazz; it sucks; all that freedom and no one knows what to do with it; just like Amsterdam; there's free love in Amsterdam).

i love coltrane, as much as hendrix, and i don't think it's a bad comparison

if hendrix gives up 'virtuosity' to trane, then it would follow that there have to be some electric guitar players somewhere who match trane's virtuosity and therefore trump hendrix. but this is not the case. mastery of the electric guitar is distinct from mastery of a wind instrument, in that so many aspects of it exist apart from music theory. most of what made coltrane great existed apart from music theory, for that matter. facility, that's what they have in common. they soaked up their instruments completely and had a lot to say.

it might be a hard comparison to justify just b/c one guy is playing a tenor sax and the other is playing electric guitar through two marshall stacks

i meant it to be like comparing john bonham to elvin jones, sorta. neither of those guys could do what the other could do, but they were unique in their fields, and they were total headhunters. no one else touched them.

-Roger Miller (Burma) worships him.

this was marvelously transparent at the burma shows i saw this year

i'd never clicked to exactly how good and inventive and original roger miller's guitar playing is--it gave off the same spirit as hendrix's, even as it had little concretely to do w/it, maybe.

hendrix never fails to remind me why i love music.

tmidgett wrote: if hendrix gives up 'virtuosity' to trane, then it would follow that there have to be some electric guitar players somewhere who match trane's virtuosity and therefore trump hendrix.

No, it wouldn't, that's a syllogism. And anyway, there are lots of much better gtrists than Hendrix. I can't say I've heard a gtrist as good on his/her instrument than Coltrane was on his.

tmidgett wrote:mastery of the electric guitar is distinct from mastery of a wind instrument, in that so many aspects of it exist apart from music theory.

?????

tmidgett wrote:most of what made coltrane great existed apart from music theory, for that matter.

Right!

tmidgett wrote: facility, that's what they have in common. they soaked up their instruments completely and had a lot to say.

Coltrane soaked up his instrument completely. Hendrix soaked up electric blues/rock gtr completely- a small part of the universe of his instrument. Unless there are tapes I haven't heard of him doing Segovia stuff.

tmidgett wrote: i meant it to be like comparing john bonham to elvin jones, sorta. neither of those guys could do what the other could do, but they were unique in their fields, and they were total headhunters. no one else touched them.

I bet Bonham himself would tell you, were he able to do so, that Jones is the far superior musician.

SchnappM wrote:

Andrew Weatherhead wrote:One time Hendrix broke a string at one of his really early gigs, so he asked one of the guitar players of the opening bands if he could borrow their guitar. The guy says yes, but its a left handed guitar. Jimi proceeds to flip the guitar over, put a strap on and play a fabulous set. Not Crap.

Isn't Hendrix famous for playing right-handed guitars upside down, because he was left-handed?

Sorry, I got my story confused a bit...Jimi was left handed, and he grabed a rightie guitar, stringed for a right player. He was playing the guitar upside down, essentially.

Wait a second, I still don't understand.

Hendrix was leftie, right?

I always thought that he played rightie strung guitars strung rightie, so that he would have been playing it upside down. I've never seen video though, so I could be wrong. You're saying that this was a one time occurrence, and Dylan is saying that he played guitar rightie.