Review of Jimi Hendrix (1973) by Doug M — 22 Mar 2011

A wonderful rockumentary about the king of all the guitar gods. It has a good selection of interviews with Jimi's friends and musical contemporaries, but the filmmakers knew what they were doing: they spend most of the time just letting the man play. And that's all you need for a great film.

We get to see all the iconic psychedelic performances, including Hey Joe the Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock (which is about ten times better than I remembered it), and we also get a very nice chronology of how his music evolved over time with his original Experience band and then the Band of Gypsies. But the true gem is something I never saw coming: Jimi playing traditional blues on an accoustic guitar. He starts off slowly and deliberately, and you get the sense that he's exploring something new or returning to something very old. Then he asks the cameraman to stop, and when he starts again he just relaxes into it. What he plays is 100% traditional blues, but he makes it totally his in a way that is utterly mindblowing. After that, the remaining performances are him taking the blues electric but to places that Led Zeppelin could only dream about. But I think the director knew that "Hear my Train A'coming" was the zenith of the film, because we get to hear it again over the closing credits. Five stars.