Page 55 - Classic Rock (February 2020)

Billy Cox with Jimi Hendrix
Studio portrait of and Mitch Mitchell at the
Buddy Miles. 1970 Isle of Wight Festival.

philosophical advice. What fascinated Jimi was the This promising start aside, Jimi’s new direction theft, continued to gig, and found commercial
way Davis approached his sessions and live gigs. was actively discouraged by manager Mike Jeffrey, success as the voice behind the California Raisins.
From Davis’s groundbreaking album Kind Of Blue who loathed Buddy Miles, and was angling to get He died in 2008 of heart failure. Billy Cox, now 80,
onward, he adopted the approach of providing his the Experience back together. It was also lives in Nashville and still tours with the Experience
musicians with bare-bones sketches of tunes, then complicated by Jimi’s drug use and his coterie of Hendrix Tribute, and will be promoting the
let them evolve organically with each player’s enablers. On January 28 the Band of Gypsys played anniversary of Band Of Gypsys in 2020.
personality on display. The live Band Of Gypsys their final gig, at the Winter Festival For Peace at Jimi’s story, of course, ended tragically. It’s worth
would be released the same week as Davis’s electric Madison Square Garden. Jimi was foggy and restating that he was 27, if only to put him in
fusion album Bitches Brew. obviously drugged as opener Who Knows collapsed perspective with similar musical innovators. When
An intriguing aside: in October 1969, Jimi and in a mess. Mid-solo on the next song, his guitar jazz great Louis Armstrong was 28, his Hot Five
Miles sent a telegram to Paul McCartney, inviting howling with feedback, Jimi stopped, and said: recordings redefined the nature of pop singing.
him to New York to play bass for a collaborative “That’s what happens when When Miles Davis was 30,
album session. Macca was on holiday and missed Earth fucks with space.” he changed jazz with his
the invitation. The session never happened, leaving Buddy and Billy asked for the album The Birth Of The Cool.
us with one of rock’s most tantalising ‘what if’s. audience’s patience while “I want a big band, Jimi was on the brink of
they “try to get things full of competent new horizons, and Band Of
he Band of Gypsys’ Fillmore shows together”. But by then Jimi Gypsys was, as he might have
supplied material for Band Of Gypsys. The was off stage and doubled musicians I can said, “a first step” at not only
Talbum was part of a court agreement to over with stomach cramps. reshaping his direction but
fulfil the final obligation in a contract Hendrix Buddy accused Jeffrey of conduct and that of rock performances.
signed, foolishly, in 1965. Over the four sets they slipping Hendrix tabs of acid write for.” The spontaneous improvised
played, all completely different, the trio displayed to sabotage the group. Jeffrey spirit was definitely picked
a kind of funk telepathy, jamming without much fired him, saying: “Your trip Hendrix in September 1970 up in the 70s by the Allman
visual interaction, locking into that elusive groove is over.” Brothers Band, Led Zeppelin
that musicians forever chase – a loose tightness. If The Band Of Gypsys album was released on and the Grateful Dead, among others.
there was one hitch, it was Buddy’s tendency to March 25, 1970 to good reviews and sales. But Jimi A comment Jimi made in September 1970
overdo the James Brown-style vocalising. At times, said: “If it had been up to me I would never have makes his absence in that evolution more
Jimi looked visibly perturbed by his showboating. put it out. From a musician’s point of view, it was bittersweet: “Thinking that this era of music,
At the heart of each set was Machine Gun, which not a good recording. Not enough preparation sparked off by The Beatles, has come to an end,
Jimi had introduced six months earlier. Dedicated went into it and it came out a bit grizzly.” something new has got to come. And I will be
to soldiers ‘in Chicago and Milwaukee and New York… Late last year, a 50th-anniversary box set, Songs there. I want a big band, full of competent
and Vietnam,’ it remains, as promoter Bill Graham For Groovy Children, was released, which included musicians I can conduct and write for. And with
GETTY x2 called it, “the most brilliant, emotional display of the complete Fillmore performances. the music we will paint pictures of earth and space,
so that the listener can be taken somewhere.”
virtuoso electric guitar playing ever”.
Buddy Miles, who did jail time in the 80s for
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