We started from the premise that music was a mission, not a competition, says Mayer, who describes himself as a sonic consultant to Hendrix. That the basis was the blues, but that the framework of the blues was too tight. Wed talk first about what he wanted the emotion of the song to be. Whats the vision? He would talk in colours and my job was to give him the electronic palette which would engineer those colours so he could paint the canvas. Let me try to explain why it sounds like it does: when you listen to Hendrix, you are listening to music in its pure form, he adds. The electronics we used were feed forward, which means that the input from the player projects forward – the equivalent of electronic shadow dancing – so that what happens derives from the original sound and modifies what is being played. But nothing can be predictive – it is speed-forward analogue, a non-repetitive wave form, and that is the definition of pure music and therefore the diametric opposite of digital. Look, if you throw a pebble into a lake, you have no way of predicting the ripples – it depends on how you throw the stone, or the wind. Digital makes the false presumption that you can predict those ripples, but Jimi and I were always looking for the warning signs. The brain knows when it hears repetition that this is no longer music and what you hear when you listen to Hendrix is pure music. It took discussion and experiment, and some frustrations, but then that moment would come, wed put the headphones down and say, Got it. Thats the one. But I take none of the credit, insists Mayer. You can build a racing car just like the one that won the 1955 grand prix. But if you cant drive like Juan Manuel Fangio, youre not going to win the grand prix. Jimi Hendrix only sounds like he does because he was Jimi Hendrix. Everyone knows that Hendrix had hundreds of women, often concurrently – but that is not as interesting as the fact that, says Altham, Kathy Etchingham was the love of his life. Mayer recalls them oozing affection, even when there was a row – he needed her very badly indeed. Hendrix called the flat into which he moved with her in 1968 the only home I ever had. We knew we wanted Mayfair, says Etchingham, so we could walk to the gigs, but the prices were high, even though it was a little seedy – £30 a week. The couple furnished the split-level, top-floor apartment together with prints and wall hangings from Portobello Road. When Hendrix found out that Handel had lived downstairs, he went round to HMV or One Stop Records to get Messiah, says Sarah Bardwell. What is so interesting is that they were both musicians from abroad, who came to London to make their name in this building. It feels extraordinary now to walk over the venerable floorboards past a replica of Handels harpsichord, portraits of the composer and the score of Messiah in the room in which it was composed, then up a wooden staircase to Hendrixs whitewashed sitting room and bedroom above. Sarah Bardwells aim is for a joint Handel-Hendrix house museum of some kind. Blue English Heritage plaques accompany each other on the wall outside; Hendrix was added in 1997, a labour of devotion by Kathy Etchingham, who recalls English Heritage balking at the fact that the shop front below was a lingerie shop, all mannequins wearing suspenders and knickers, which needed covering up while the plaque was unveiled.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 07:30:18 +0000
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