At the start of the new century the title of this album is terrible non politically correct and that's not even to begin to mention the cover. The artist's idea was to collect a number of ladies of various shapes and sizes, take all their clothes off and photograph them. The world probably wasn't quite ready for pornographic album covers - perhaps uncovers is a better description in this case - and the press covered acres of newsprint drawing everybody's attention to it. The record company were delighted. Now they needn't spend a single penny on promotion. In the USA the uncover was banned and told to cover up, so the artist got to do some proper work after all, as opposed to an excuse to see lots of naked women all at once.
The name was given to Jimi's studio in New York where the album was recorded…which reminds me, I haven't introduced the artist yet, a certain Mr. James Marshall Hendrix deceased. Was he any good when he wasn't deceased? Yeah, not bad for a poor boy from Washington state. He was a guitar player who just didn't get the message that playing left-handed is considered very bad form indeed in the world of music. So he played the things upside down which was very psychedelic - an important ingredient for stardom in his heyday which was the late 1960's. Jimi used Marshall amplifiers which he turned up so loud that the guitar tone distorted and so Heavy Metal was given its Raison d'Etre. Perhaps he was deaf, who knows. Anyhow, he could outplay anyone and was a truly outrageous showman. Later on in his career he regretted this latter aspect of his stage work for it overshadowed the music.
Ah yes, the music. Electric Ladyland filled two LP's when it came out and so cost a lot of money for poor students and kids. Always a bad move for the popularity stakes, so the record company eventually recut it in two single LP versions. The styles covered were everything from out and out piledriving rock to soul to funk to pop and blues. This is a n album that knows no bounds. Following closely on the groundbreaking heels of Sgt. Peppers, Jimi used the studio in all kinds of weird ways panning sounds left to right and right to left, mixing in echo and multi-layering guitars until you didn't know where you were. I once knew a guy who used to drink a lot on Friday nights, come home and play Voodoo Chile over his headphones. If he wasn't drunk already, then his head was certainly swimming at the end of this momentous track. For those who can't afford to get drunk, just listen to it with the lights out and lying flat on your back. Just, don't try and stand up too soon afterwards.
Hit singles from the album include Burning of the Midnight Lamp, Crosstown Traffic, All Along The Watchtower and Voodoo Chile (Slight Return). The blues is covered in Come On and Voodoo Chile (the other version) whilst the weird is magnificently realised in 1983, A Merman I Shall Turn To Be. Throughout the record Jimi's guitar playing is outstanding, and the number of sounds he wrings out of his Fender Stratocaster is just amazing. On Still Raining Still Dreaming he proves a master of the wah-wah pedal as the guitar all but talks and cascades like a mountain brook through the music. Strangely, it's reprise Rainy Day Dream Away is placed later in the record and fades out where the former songs starts! On Bob Dylan's All along the Watchtower Jimi manages to evoke an expansive darkness that offsets the lyric beautifully.
Hendrix is the one real genius electric guitar player - yours truly excepted of course. This album is just incredible in what it achieves in terms of inspiring other musicians and guitarists to reach ever higher, outward and further in developing the genre. So many players have started out wanting to be the next Jimi Hendrix and discover they're just mortal after all, having minds and fingers that just don't do it. He was certainly the Paganini of the guitar and is still as inspiring as he was when alive.