Jimi Hendrix - First Rays Of The New Rising Sun (1970)

It would be incredible if you could produce music so perfect that

it would filter through you like rays and ultimately cure.

- Jimi Hendrix, Starting At Zero, page 181

FIRST RAYS OF THE NEW RISING SUN

Part I

1. Ezy Ryder

2. Earth Blues (feat. The Ronnettes)

3. Room Full Of Mirrors

4. Drifting

5. Freedom

6. Dolly Dagger

7. Astro Man

8. Night Bird Flying

9. Dolly Brown

[aka "Pali Gap"]

10. Straight Ahead

11. Angel

12. In From The Storm

13. Belly Button Window

Part II

14. Stepping Stone

15. Power Of Soul

16. Come Down Hard On Me

17. Valleys Of Neptune

18. Message To Love

19. Izabella

20. Midnight Lightning Blues

[aka "Midnight Lightning"]

21. Bleeding Heart

22. Drifter's Escape

23. Lover Man

24. Beginnings

25. The New Rising Sun

[aka "Bolero/Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)"]

26. Star-Spangled Banner

 __________________________________________________________________________

Table Of Contents:

1. Introduction

2. History

3. The Musical Aftermath (Of His Death)

4. Knotting Up Loose Ends

5. The Track-By-Track Breakdown

6. Conclusion

 __________________________________________________________________________

Introduction

    Fueled by a rabid five-year obsession with the project, the crown jewel of my silly hobby (and the reason I made this blog in the first place) is at last here. It's called First Rays Of The New Rising Sun, and is the album that Jimi Hendrix was in the midst of recording when he suddenly kicked the bucket. In this fan's humble opinion, despite the excellent quality of the songs he was making, none of the various official assemblies of this unfinished album have been anywhere near as good as the excellent albums he released during his lifetime. I deem this to be the result of several lapses of judgement in in the case of each individual official assembly of it, so I have taken it upon myself to tie up Hendrix's loose ends properly and deliver the stunning career-closing album that he always deserved but never received. First Rays Of The New Rising Sun is meant to complement and sit alongside the three albums he released in 1967 and 1968 (Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold As Love, and Electric Ladyland) which really built his leagcy, so as a result there are no overlapping songs between them and any of my Hendrix projects, this one included. In order to make sure that it stands toe to toe with those releases, I've spent one fifth of my short life obsessively labouring over every detail of this album, especially the song flow. In other words, I've done my absolute best to elevate this from a simple collection of songs into a well-rounded artistic statement (despite its' unfinished nature), a fitting final project, and a musical obituary all simultaniously. At risk of getting too high up onto my horse, I truly believe that this edition of First Rays is essential listening for any fan of Jimi Hendrix.

History (aka What Is And What Will Never Be)

    Before getting into the lengtlhy track-by-track breakdown, I have to start with the background info; I'm a history student, so prepare yourself for a deep dive. After many months of recording, the guitarist and his band the Jimi Hendrix Experience completed their final album Electric Ladyland in the summer of 1968, which soon topped the American album charts. This was a first for the power trio, and one of its' songs became a Top 40 hit as well. As they often do, these newfound levels of success took a toll on the band, and before the end of the year the Experience announced that their months were numbered; they would split up in 1969. Despite this impending dissolution though, the three men continued recording new songs together all the way up until mid-April of that year. But something had changed. The band's frontman was burnt out, and admitted in interviews that he wasn't writing songs, but was instead developping new material differently, primarily through jamming in the studio, on-stage, and in his free time. With this the band's gigs got significantly more streched out, improvisational, and heavier, as was standard for rock shows at the time.

Hendrix's intended album cover for Electric Ladyland, with the band posed at

Central Park's Alice In Wonderland statue. The photo was taken by Linda

Eastman, the soon-to-be-wife of Beatle Paul McCartney.

    Hendrix was gradually finding a new musical direction, and he was the first to admit that this was part of what pulled the trio apart. Discussing the departure of bassist Noel Redding upon the conclusion of their final American tour that June, Hendrix said that he "probably has reasons in the back of his mind, so I'm not going to down that. Noel and I are still friends, but he has his own ideas, and musically I want to go somewhere else. Plus I want to get into more of an earthier bass player" (Starting At Zero [Hendrix's posthumously-assembled autobiography], p.147). He found this with his old bandmate and friend from his army days Billy Cox, who began playing bass in sessions with Hendrix just one week after Redding stopped showing up for them. Some months later, the guitarist also added that "the Experience got into a cul-de-sac. We played for three years and had reached the stage where we were just repeating ourselves. Mitch will be playing with me. He's never been better than he is now. Noel is definitely and confidently out. It was my plan to change the bass player even back in the days after the Experience when there was no band. It's nothing personal against Noel. Billy Cox has a more solid style, which suits the new group better. I'm not saying that anyone is better than the other, just that today I want a more solid style. There's no telling how I'll feel tomorrow" (Starting At Zero, p. 173). 

    Hendrix and Cox hit it off, and, not being set on Mitch Mitchell yet, soon began looking around for other musicians to complete the new band. The guitarist had been wanting to expand the lineup from a simple trio for some time, and had experiemented with this at the Experience's Royal Albert Hall show in February 1969 (their final performance in Britain), where, for one song only, several extra musicians joined the stage. He and Cox did sessions with a number of different musicians, including Mitch Mitchell, Buddy Miles (a friend of Jimi's who had performed on Electric Ladyland), several members of the band the Cherry People, and others as well. Things were in flux, and as Hendrix said above, there was no set band for a while. For those who are interested, this web forum discussion, across several pages, contains an interview with Al Marks (who did precussion on those Cherry People tracks); it offers an inside look into where Hendrix was at this pivotal point in his career. Anyways, after taking a well-deserved summer holiday in upstate New York were he began writing new songs again, a six-piece band with Mitchell on drums was assembled to headline Woodstock that August (as well as play a few other gigs afterwards); but although Jimi's playing at the show was as inspired as ever, the group as a unit were in near-shambles, and due to the incredible volume of his guitar amps, the extra musicians remained inaudible for much of the performance. This expanded group didn't last long, and an all-black trio with Billy Cox and Buddy Miles was eventually decided upon as the way to move forward.

The cover of Live At Woodstock (1999), showing Hendrix tuning up. It's the

complete show except for two songs sung by one of the members of the expaned lineup,

which have never been released. I've never heard them, but have seen one listener

call them "amateur hour" somewhere online, so maybe their excesion is for the best.

    At this point now, it was coming to be a full year (and would eventually become over two) since Hendrix, now at the height of his fame, had released any new studio material; by the standards of the 1960s, this was a huge gap. When asked about why, he explained that he'd "been going through a lot of changes in the last two years. That's why I haven't released anything for a while. I'm very inconsistent, you know. It all depends on how I feel; there are no certain patterns I go by. Sometimes I write in a rush, but the things I'm writing now take a little longer to say" (Zero, p. 155). Hendrix ended up hunkering down in New York City's Record Plant Studios with this new trio for three full months to rehearse for a few upcoming gigs, as well as to jam, experiment, explore, and, most importantly, develop new songs. Things progressed, and despite having recorded enourmous amounts of music since his last album (indeed, new things are still being released over 50 years later), this was just about the first time this incredible perfectionist had brought songs to the mixing stage in over a year. Two numbers in particular, "Stepping Stone" and "Izabella," were prepared and released as the respectve A and B-sides of a brand new single in April 1970. It turned out, though, that the vinyl was pressed with the wrong mix; never charting, the single was quickly recalled and is now incredibly rare.

    When I wrote that they were rehearsing for a few shows, I meant it; the trio only ever performed five concerts together, four of them taking place on New Years' Eve and Day 1969/1970 at the Fillmore East (now called Irving Plaza). These four gigs were recorded to fulfill a contractual obligation Hendrix had to a different record label, and they resulted in the fourth and final Jimi Hendrix-approved Jimi Hendrix album ever released: the full-on funk-rock live Band Of G****s LP, which actually includes two songs featured on this edition of First Rays: "Power Of Soul" and "Message To Love." By mid-September 1970 it had become the rock star's second biggest album in terms of American sales, behind only his trendsetting debut album. Unfortunately though, the trio's fifth and final gig at Madison Square Gardens on January 28th turned out to be a complete disaster; a possibly-spiked Hendrix walked off-stage after a only few songs and drummer Buddy Miles was fired on the spot backstage. With that, this all-black band died almost as quickly as it started.

Three of the full New Years' sets (along with the fourth in abridged form) were

released in the excellent Songs For Groovy Children box set (2019). 

    After a short-lived plan to regroup the Experience (which will be delved into later), Hendrix continued recording the odd session here and there—including doing some rare features on songs by Love and Stephen Stills—while in the meantime writing even more new songs and assembling his third band, which ended up including the drummer of the first, Mitch Mitchell, and the bassist of the second, Billy Cox. Long-time audio engineer Eddie Kramer discussed the direction he could see Jimi moving towards with this new trio in a later interview, saying that "he was headed was a more broad-based R&B, funky kind of thing with the rock overtones, and then definitely on horns, strings, big orchestral stuff..." He added that "Mitch became funkier as a result" of Buddy Miles' [very funky] playing. This third trio soon set off for the American leg of the Cry Of Love tour, with shows being professionally recorded (as well as filmed) at Berkely University, the Atlanta and New York Pop Festivals, and even up on Maui's windy crater. Resultingly, this 1970 tour is one of the most well-documented periods of the guitarist's live performance in terms of professional recordings. Throughout the late-spring and summer months, the trio toured on the weekends while spending the week inside the finished room of Hendrix's then-under-construction Electric Lady Studios, at long last seriously hashing out the follow-up to Electric Ladyland (1968). With Kramer's help, Hendrix began these sessions by trawling through a cupboard stuffed full with years of his accumulated sessions tapes, searching for good material to work on.

    Perhaps unsurprisingly, the guitarist had lots to say about his new studio (which was actually built out of a former nighclub he used to play at): "I have done great things with this place. It has the best equipement in the world [and is] capable of recording 32 tracks [a then-recent invention], which takes care of most things. There is one thing that I hate about studios usually, and that is the impersonality of them. They're cold and blank, and within a few minutes I lose all drive and inspiration. Electric Lady is different. It's been built with great atmosphere, there are lots of cushions and pillows and thick carpets and soft lights. It's a very relaxed studio with every comfort, so it makes people feel they are recording at home. And you can have any kind of light combination you feel like; I think this is very important. I want it to be an oasis for all the rock and roll musicians in New York. Chuck Berry and Sly [of the Family Stone] have been down there doing a few things, and I am working on a symphony production to be done there in the near future" (Zero, p. 179). 

The American cover of Electric Ladyland, whose photo was taken at a gig in

the summer of '67; the only one of Jimi's gigs which Lithofayne Pridgon,

the girlfriend that he was most dedicated to, ever attended.

    Expanding on his orchestral plans (specifically, a collabirative effort with famous jazz bandleader and arranger Gil Evans, for which the cover art was already prepared [I used it here]), Hendrix said that he'd "like to get into more symphonic things, so the kids can respect the old musical traditions, the classics. I'd like to mix that in with so-called rock. But I want to get involved in my own kind of way, because I always want to respect my own judgments. I don't plan to go out there with a ninety-piece orchestra and play two and a half hours of classical music. I plan for both those things to be used without even knowing that it's rock and classical, with it being a whole other thing. It would be just like every step is, a mixture of the past and the future. When I finally get into it the whole world's going to know about it" (Zero, 181). And it's doubtless they would have.

    Anyways, huge amounts were recorded at Electric Lady Studios, and Hendrix spent an entire week near the end of August giving rough mixes to the songs, even finishing four of them entirely. The man was a perfectionist trying to achieve the sound in his head, and as a result he left his personal touch on each of the many mixes, both finished and unfinished. Discussing his vision for the album as a whole, he told an interviewer that "The First Ray Of The New Rising Sun is my new life. It will be about what we have seen, and will simplify it all to bridge the gap between teenagers and parents. It's going to be a double set again and have about twenty tracks on it. Some tracks are getting very long, but you see, our music doesn't pertain to one thing. You don't have to be singing about love all the time in order to give love . . . [We] have "Valleys Of Neptune Arising," and we have one called "Astro Man." Talk about living in peace of mind, well Astro Man will leave you in pieces [that's one of its' lyrics]. We have the theme from "The New Rising Sun," this little bolero type of thing. It's kind of nice, but then it breaks down into a very simple pattern, asking this one question, "where are you coming from and where are you going to?" I think we're going to have this thing called "Between Here And Horizon," and that goes into certain things like "A Letter To A Room Full Of Mirrors." That's more of a mental disarrangement; it's a song about when you get real high and all you can see is you, reflections of you here and there. Some of you have undoubtedly been through this at one time or another" (Zero, p. 179-180).

A poster from the 1970 tour, featuring a less-cropped photo that was

later used on the cover for Nine To The Universe (1980). This is a cropped

screenshot from the promo video for the new Jimi Hendrix Vision box set.

    The four finished songs ("Ezy Ryder," "Straight Ahead," "Dolly Dagger," and "Night Bird Flying") were played on loop to great acclaim at the studio's opening party on August 26, 1970 (where, on the stairs outside, Jimi chatted with a young Patti Smith) before the trio flew off for a reluctant European tour that was needed to pay off the studio's construction debts. Since his record payments were all frozen and tied up in legal disputes, he was strapped for the cash that only gigging could bring in (after all, he was one of the highest-paid performers of his day). With a test pressing of his next single "Dolly Dagger" (backed with "Night Bird Flying") in hand, he left the States for Europe; but this leg of the Cry Of Love tour turned out not to be one of his best. Its' first show at the Isle Of White festival on August 31 had the biggest audience of Hendrix's career, and was also his first U.K. gig in over a year. He performed sick and jetlagged in the dark early hours of the morning with unreheared musicians, and this resultingly mediocre show proved to be the only professionally-recorded performance from that entire leg of the tour. 

    He showed his reluctant attitude towards these financially-obligated performances in interviews, stating at one point that the gig at "Isle Of White might be the last or second to the last [show] before I form my big new band. If the kids really enjoy it, then I might carry on a little longer. But I will only carry on that way if I'm useful. You've got to have a purpose in life. But I'm not here to talk, I'm here to play. I want to show them all over again what it's all about." (Zero, p. 186). In some ways he was right; the rest of the tour went just swimmingly. At one show, he collapsed onstage from exhaustion, and then the whole leg ended abruptly when bassist Billy Cox flew home to his parents following an awful bout of spiked-acid-induced paranoia. At least the Copenhagen gig was great, and one can find a decent audience recording of it on YouTube.

The official release of Hendrix's full Isle Of White concert closes with a

great version of "In From The Storm." This show was far from his strongest

performance, though it had a few very rare songs and some good moments.

Might be his longest recorded show as well.

    With that brief leg halted in its' tracks, a burnt-out Hendrix took a much-needed rest in London away from both the gigging and the stressful New York atmosphere which he said was driving him crazy, before what seemed like a very busy time ahead. His financial situation depended on him delivering the new album as soon as possible, so after releasing that first single (which he'd played that test pressing of to European reporters) he would have been back at work for the rest of September and October at his newly-opened Electric Lady Studios recording new songs and finishing others. A number of tracks required only a couple more overdubs and a final mix, so if the album was to have been only a single vinyl disk then it could probably have been finished before November, if not sooner. And judging by the massive reception of his live album from earlier that year (which had reached #5 and #6 in the US and UK, respectively), his new record would undoubtedly have been one of the biggest and most anticipated albums of either 1970 or '71, and its' follow-ups would surely have fared really well too. 

    While in London, he requested the tape of his 1967 B-side "Highway Chile" to be brought to his studio; while the intention behind this is uncertain, it would seem that a reissue of his numerous older non-album tracks may have been on the menu, as lots of those songs were rarities in his home market. He also asked for his recent tapes to be flown over to England so he could work on them there, but engineer Eddie Kramer rebuked him; after all, he had just opened his own studio (and one must not forget that it was one of the very first artist-owned studios in the world, and would almost certainly be the guitarist's musical home base throughout the early '70s, if not the rest of his career). Instead, flights were booked for a return to New York a few days later. 

The Band Of G****s (1970) LP. It's a great album, one of my favourites of

Hendrix's, and was the final full LP that he put out while he was alive. Being a

massive seller, it gave a hint at the reception Hendrix's next project would have gotten.

    But he had lots to do even after submitting his album for release. A tour of Japan, Australia, and then the U.K. were set to begin in November, December, or January of '71, after which he was obligated to supply the soundtrack for the hippy-dippy Rainbow Bridge movie premiering that fall which his manager, who had a stake in it, had roped him into taking part in. There's also the fabled Miles Davis collaboration which many fans sincerely wish could have taken place, but I'm not really sure where the hype ends and the facts begin on that one, although the two defintely chatted backstage about it at the Isle Of White festival. As well as that, lots of live 'festival flashback' albums were heading to market that Hendrix had no control over whatsoever, including the Woodstock and Monterey Pop LPs from 1970, as well as Woodstock 2 and Atlanta Pop/Isle Of White Festival ones from '71. In fact, there were also several concert films in prodution, including Live At Berkeley and the excellent Royal Albert Hall one from '69, which to this very day is still sitting around waiting for theatrical release.

    On top of all that coming up, Hendrix had made clear in interviews his intention to enter the world of film (among all sorts of other creative ventures) under the the banner of Heaven Research, Unlimited—the name he had produced his recent live album under. In early 1970, there were briefly plans to reform the Experience with Noel Redding (which went as far as one group interview), and for that Hendrix wrote a whole semi-autobiographical song cycle called Black Gold, recording two versions of it onto Ampex tapes at his Greenwich Village home, one with overdubs and one without. Unfortunately the former (at least by the '80s) was lost, but he handed the other to drummer Mitch Mitchell backstage at Isle Of White Festival, wrapped in a headband, for suggestions and arrangement ideas. This music was going to soundtrack an animated feature about a rock star of colour called Black Gold. As of writing, only one of the songs, "Suddenly November Morning" has ever been released, but the tapes are known to contain many songs that exist nowhere else. This soundtrack album was most likely to begin production sometime in '71, but the film would surely have taken several years to finish. What should be clear from all of these paragraphs is that, creatively-speaking, Jimi Hendrix was only just getting started—and he admitted as much in interviews. In Septemer of 1970, he was on the verge of blossoming from a simple rock star to a well-rounded world-class creative, one of the true greats of the time.

The official release of the filmed Maui show from July 30, 1970, performed for

the Rainbow Bridge movie. The sound quality of Jimi's vocals isn't perfect

('twas a windy day) but the band are relaxed and blast through some old hits

along with many of the songs from First Rays. This gig was filmed, of course.

    During that short British holiday he did a few interviews, went to parties, and even phoned his former manger and producer Chas Chandler to ask his opinion on his new material. As a complete unknown back in September '66, he had arrived in London and kicked off his solo career in an on-stage jam with Cream. In September 1970, he played an on-stage jam with his friend Eric Burdon and his group War (Burdon and Chandler were both ex-members of The Animals). Less that 48 hours later in the early hours of September 18th, after having some loud arguments with Monika Dannemann (one of his girlfriends) at a party, the couple returned home to relax, chat, bathe, and share some wine. It seems that Hendrix was taking stock of First Rays during that time (possibly in preparation for his return stateside) because that night he wrote a poem which may have been intended to become song lyrics, and Dannemann also sketched out a cover art idea for the album. As they crawled into bed, he swallowed a large handful of her prescription-strength sleeping pills, which mutilated his brain as he slept. At some point later that morning while the girlfriend was out getting cigarettes, he also vomited up all that wine while lying flat on his back. There was an empty seat when the plane took off for New York a few days later.

The Musical Aftermath (Of His Death)

        Patti Smith was in France when she heard. Eric Burden ended up interpreting that poem (which is featured at the bottom of this post) as a suicide note. It's hard to say for certain, but he could very well have been right; Jimi's clothing designer, Michael Braun, remembers three seperate cries for help Jimi gave him during his final months which he, like others, just brushed under the rug. Nobody though Jimi Hendrix would ever commit suicide. But maybe it was just a poem. Anyways, the task of assembling the unfinished album (and the guitarist's wealth of other unreleased recordings) fell to Eddie Kramer and Mitch Mitchell. They got to work surprisingly quickly, adding a few overdubs, polishing up some of the rough mixes from August, mixing lots of songs anew, and also trawling through that huge tape cupboard for older material to fill out the record. Soon enough, the first posthumous album had been assembled, named The Cry Of Love after that final tour.

Cover artist Nancy Reiner sat next to him at his Canadian drug trial, where they

wrote poetry together. She was his manager's wife. Check out her writings about

her time with him at https://cryoflove.net/topics/all-posts-home/jimi-hendrix/

    With such a huge amount of excellent material to pull from, this could have been a really strong eulogy to Hendrix. But in order to keep solid material for future albums, his financially-focused manager removed two would-be highlights from the final master, saving them for the next release. As a result of its' missing songs, the album really sags in the middle and doesn't pick up until near the end of the record. As well, being only ten tracks long (one of which is an unrelated Electric Ladyland outtake), the album is missing a whole lot of the songs put down at Hendrix's studio. Some of these made it onto the follow-up, the soundtrack to Rainbow Bridge (1971), which is a solid record if very guitar-centric. Because it's a hodgepodge of songs from various points in his career, however, it doesn't feel all that stylistically unified. War Heroes (1972) came after that, but while there are still highlights (most of which were pulled from Rainbow Bridge by that same manager, of course), the subpar material really starts rearing its' head at this point, making for a highly uneven collection. War Heroes' follow-up, the correctly titled Loose Ends (1974), was released only to certain markets because, besides a few album-cut-quality tracks, it was full of music largely not fit for standard release. Even trusty Eddie Kramer had jumped ship by that point.

    Hendrix's original manager then died in a plane crash, leading to a big change in terms of who ran these posthumous-release projects. The Hendrix estate ended up falling into the hands of acclaimed jazz producer Alan Douglas, who had worked with Hendrix from the fall of '69 onward [and later spearheaded the assembly of Starting At Zero]. He soon decided to fill out some of Hendrix's rough, unreleased recordings with a tight band of session musicians (including Gil Evans' guitarist), replacing most of the original rythm sections and saving those unfinished songs from obscurity in the process. A narrative of irrational hatred, though, has developped with fans surrounding Alan Douglas' place in the Jimi Hendrix canon. I must say that as an experienced producer, he, moreso than engineer Eddie Kramer (who assembled all the non-Douglas releases apart from Loose Ends), knew how to put together truely cohesive and listenable albums. That said, I don't believe that he should have edited the songs' raw session tapes in the way that he did (newer mixes of certain songs have revealed their permanently-altered structures resulting from this), but should instead have made the edits from copy tapes as was standard practice in the analogue era (luckily, though, Hendrix's rough mixes preserve the original versions of the songs). Anyways, all this overdubbing resulted in two 1975 albums featuring new musicians, Crash Landing (which reached #5 in the US and Canada, which is at least in part a testament to its' quality) and Midnight Lightning. The music is great but the albums as wholes aren't incredible, so I took all the songs that don't overlap with First Rays and sequenced them into a nicely cohesive album, for which I nabbed the artwork and title from that 1972 War Heroes album. This reconstruction served as my first post on this blog, and is another part of what I deem the essential Hendrix catalogue which I am in the process here of filling out here. Stay tuned for many more "releases" in this vein.

One of the very best Jimi Hendrix live albums would be Alan Douglas'

Jimi Hendrix Concerts. Despite being long out of print, I've heard that the

French Castle CD mastering is the best one digitally. The cover painting

is by Jean Messagier, who studied under Picasso.

    There are also some other interesting projects Douglas did later on during his tenure. An improvisational album made up of edited jam sessions, Nine To The Universe (1980), came out a few years after, and in essence shows Jimi Hendrix getting improvisationally jazzy. This has not been reissued in decades and is unavailable digitally, but four of the five songs have been rereleased since in largely-unedited form. His live album The Jimi Hendrix Concerts (1982) is, I would say, Hendrix's best ever to be released posthumously. Blues (1994), an album of Hendrix playing that genre, is also a fan favourite. The following year Douglas released his own version of Hendrix's 1970 album, this time titled Voodoo Soup (1995). Its' cover is a picture drawn by famed BD artist Moebius, based on a photograph (Moebius is said to have loved Hendrix's music, and indeed made lots of images of him in science fiction settings). His picture was originally used, in uncut form, on a 1975 twofer of Hendrix's first two LPs. Despite missing a some key tracks and including three unrelated Experience-era instrumentals, it doesn't have the weaknesses in song flow of either Cry Of Love or the later official version of First Rays. Every track was remixed anew, and while some fans may dislike this, the end result does not feel at all unfinished (as some of the '70s mixes do). Some fans also lambast the fact that the drums were redone on two songs by the drummer from the Knack (of "My Sharona" fame), but the reality is that Hendrix not content with either of the two sets of drums originally recorded, and by the '90s (after years of substance abuse) Mitch Mitchell was incapable of bettering his earlier attempt himself, which is actually what Douglas first intended. The newer drums do the job excellently, especially on "Stepping Stone." They change the entire feel of "Room Full Of Mirrors," though not necessarily for the worse; the version here sounds like a party! Douglas assembled the album with a producer's eye, and put something really good and interesting together. If you ask me, Voodoo Soup is the best official attempt at compiling this album by a long shot, although it's still missing a number of important tracks.

    Soon after that, following many years of legal shennanigans, certain members of Hendrix's somewhat estranged family (possibly at the expense of others) obtained the rights to his material. They deleted all of the Douglas albums except for Blues, and began replacing these with hodgepodge albums which have little to say on the matter of artistic cohesion. They've maintained a more purist attitude than Douglas toward these posthumous projects, but in my opinion have not compiled any good studio albums at all, and make strange artistic choices with most of their releases. While doing so, however, they took Eddie Kramer and Jimi's former bandmates back into the fold, which is ceetainly a good thing (Douglas admitted to trying to work with Kramer on Voodoo Soup, without success), and have also released much more music that Douglas ever did. 

Moebius' great cover for the 1995 CD and cassette-only album Voodoo Soup.

I see the brown pannels as the doors opening into the room.

    Experience Hendrix (E.H.) quickly assembled and put out First Rays Of The New Rising Sun (1997), which remains the latest official attempt at compiling this group of songs. It could well have been the definitive version of this project, but alas 'twas not to be. In terms of song selection it's the best of the bunch (although still doesn't quite take the cake in my opinion—a number of related songs are still missing). The real issue, even moreso than on The Cry Of Love, is the sequencing. Hendrix's Electric Lady Studios sessions yeilded many somewhat similar-sounding songs; with good sequencing, this can be a net positive and lead to higher sonic cohesion across the album, but without it, the flow can get repetetive and dull. E.H. achieved the latter, and don't just take it from me; many reviews mention its' lackluster sequencing. Similar-sounding songs are placed back to back to back, and looking over the tracklist it seems they just inserted a bunch of songs into The Cry Of Love without rebuilding it from the ground up—as I believe must be done when significantly altering any tracklist. Add onto all this the mediocre (and incredibly anachronistic) C.G.I. cover art and horrid mastering, and you have youself a Jimi Hendrix album that doesn't stand up anywhere close to his others despite having so many excellent songs on it. A recent reissue of it even contains three bonus tracks (all of which also feature in my version) tacked onto the end, only making the dismal flow of the thing even worse by drawing out the finish line. There were many much better songs from the same sessions that they could have picked to close it (such as "Message To Love," for example), but I digress.

Knotting Up Loose Ends

    Now I'll delve into the specifics of how I put First Rays Of The New Rising Sun together, beginning with the title. It was one that Hendrix had mentioned in interviews for some years, enough-so that it was used for that official 1997 release. That's one good decision I think they made, at least. Some keen-eyed Hendrix fans may have noticed that the cover to my version of First Rays is one which has not yet appeared on any official release; that's because it's one of several pieces of artwork which Hendrix himself comissioned for his upcoming projects. The one that I chose was painted by New York artist Henri Martinez expressly for this album, but went unused when the musician switched astral planes. The Heritage Auctions site from which I obtained the excellent scan of it wrote in its' description that "Jimi was part Cherokee Indian, and this painting would present him as a proud Cherokee warrior, holding his "weapon" of peace -- an electric guitar." I wish to add that that my own somewhat more morbid interpretation; he's standing with his eyes closed in the same position as a corpse in a coffin, and is surrounded, like in many ancient burial traditions, by his weapons and other objects important to him. I added the dark red border myself to hold it all together, and all-in-all I think it's a wonderful image. It's unfortunate that his song "Cherokee Mist" wasn't in a suitable state for inclusion here, because his Indigenous ancesty is therefore clearly showcased pretty much only on this cover instead of on the music inside. 

That sketch of a possible album cover drawn by Hendrix's girlfriend hours before his death.

    But the cover I used wasn't even the only painting he comissioned! Along with the afformentioned one intended for the unrecorded orchestral Gil Evans collaboration album, there's a third piece of art that was made by the famous duo Mouse And Kelley which eventually got used on Ted Lucas' wonderful-but-rare self-titled album from '75. Here's what Stanley Mouse had to say about it on his website: for the "upcoming record album by Jimi Hendrix, Kelley and I got the job to do the cover. We were working in Cambridge at the time right after Woodstock, where Kelley did the signage. I came from London to help him. We airbrushed this amazing art nouveau scarab, but upon finishing it got news that Jimi overdosed. The project never saw light of day. Back in Marin [California], we morphed the concept into Journey covers." My guess is that this painting would have served as the back cover while Martinez's would have been the front, pretty much just because this one has no background, and all that empty space would be perfect for the track sequence and album credits. I must also mention that I never had Monica Dannemann's drawing under consideration because it's no more than a sketch (and is also deterrently racializing).

    With that out of the way, the question remains about how I put together the sequence for this thing. It's that decision, as well as the one about which songs to include, which were the most complex aspects to this assembly and the reason it took me over four years to perfect. It would seem that the musician's ideas for the project were changing as often as the clouds change shape; he often told interviewers contradictory plans. As well, First Rays simply wasn't finished by the time he took those sleeping pills, so exactly how the project would have developed once he got back to New York will forever be uncertain: what new songs he would have added, what order he would have put them all in, precisely which artwork and title and name he would have used, and so on were all still up in the air. Nonetheless, had it been finished, I firmly believe that it would have been a very tight, polished, and highly cohesive collection of songs which would have cemented his place even further as one of the top artists going into the '70s. What I've done over the last several years is make the most of what he left behind, rebuilding the project bit by bit until it became about as grand a piece of art as is possible considering the scattered state in which all its' pieces lay on September 19th, 1970

The three-sided tape box tracklist.

    Had he taken fewer pills and slept on his side, I believe that all of these songs would have been finished to the same standard as "Dolly Dagger," which upon its' completion apparently set the standard for everything else recorded during the sessions. As well, Hendrix was writing songs until the day he died, so there may have been a number of tracks which don't appear on the version that I am presenting to you today. In fact, Billy Cox once stated that the album's final format really just depended on the record company; if they wanted something out as fast as possible, it would surely have been a single album released for the ever-profitable Christmas market in 1970. If Hendrix was permitted more time because they knew the public would buy anything with his name on it, they might have let him build it into a double album (or even a triple if they were really feeling generous) which could have been released for either Christmas or early '71. Also, judging by the promotion for The Cry Of Love tour, I believe that Hendrix's album from this point forward would have been under his own name instead of that of a band like his previous releases were, but there's no saying for certain as this Hendrix/Cox/Mitchell trio was never given an official name.

    Hendrix himself left behind three early tracklists for the album, none of which were finished; the first was as a memo from June 24, 1970 which had 11 songs: "Ezy Ryder"/"Room Full Of Mirrors"/"Earth Blues"/"Straight Ahead"/"Freedom"/"Stepping Stone"/"Izabella"/"Astro Man"/"Night Bird Flying"/"Drifter's Escape"/"Burning Desire." Having been made midway through the summer's recording sessions, a number of songs hadn't been taped yet, making this one relatively preliminary (it's also worth noting that while a backing track was hashed out for it, "Burning Desire" was never given vocals in the studio). In mid-August, a second and much more extensive tracklist was written out by Hendrix, under the title Songs For L.P. Strate Ahead. It seems to be an expansion on the June sequence, with some songs having markings next to them like Xs, dashes, notes, and checkmarks: "Ezy Ryder"/"Room Full Of Mirrors"/"Earth Blues"/"Valleys Of Neptune"/"Straight Ahead"/"Cherokee Mist"/"Freedom"/"Stepping Stone"/"Izabella"/"Astro Man"/"The Drifter's Escape"/"Angel"/"Bleeding Heart"/"Burning Desire"/"Night Bird Flying"/"Electric Lady"/"Hear My Train A-Comin'"/"Lover Man"/"Midnight Lightning"/"Heaven Has No Tomorrow"/"Sending My Love"/"This Little Boy"/"Local Commotion"/"Dolly Dagger"/"The New Rising Sun."

A photo of the Strate Ahead tracklist.

   Some of those songs are unknown. "Electric Lady" could be anything, my guess being "Dolly Brown" (officially titled "Pali Gap") but there's really no saying. "Heaven Has No Tomorrow" exists only as a rough demo, and "Sending My Love" is probably a version of the unreleased "Sending My Love To Joan Of Arc" from Black Gold, or the unfinished track "Sending My Love To Linda" which has the same chord progression. "This Little Boy" is also pretty uncertain, my guess being that it's a cover of the blues song "Mannish Boy" that was attempted at one of the very first Band Of G****s sessions in April '69. Lastly, "Local Commotion" has extant lyrics (shown below), but as far as I know was only ever recorded as part of the Black Gold suite. Anyhow, one more tracklist was assembled after that, written on the side of a tape box. It outlines a double album but has only three of the four sides worked out, and even then, the third side still seems very up in the air because most of the songs are crossed out. "Night Bird Flying" appears twice, although the earlier placement seems to have been added later. Side A: "Dolly Dagger"/"Night Bird Flying"/"Room Full Of Mirrors"/"Belly Button Window"/"Freedom." Side B: "Ezy Ryder"/"Astro Man"/"Drifting"/"Straight Ahead." Side C: "Night Bird Flying"/"Drifter's Escape"/"Come Down Hard On Me"/"Beginnings"/"Cherokee Mist"/"Angel." 

    What all these tracklists have in common is that they're incomplete; some have multiple placements of a single track, some have songs that were never recorded or were left thoroughly incomplete, some have missing LP sides, and all of them are missing certain essential and nearly-finished songs such as, for example, "In From The Storm." I also believe that all of these tracklists fail to unlock the album's larger vision. It goes without saying, of course, that the vision was incomplete because the album was as well. But through years of tinkering with these tracklists to figure out the ideal placement for each song (generally using the third one as my starting point), I've reverse-engineered, so to speak, about as much of a smooth and highly cohesive musical flow as there can possibly be—maybe one even smoother than what Hendrix would have himself released. In other words, I've done my very best to unlock the album's larger vision: to give the album an enjoyable, sensible, and well-defined structure which shows off many angles of the musician's creativity. I'll dive into it now.

The painting Hendrix comissioned Mouse And Kelley to do for the album. It became the

Journey logo, and was featured on the cover of Ted Lucas' lovely self-titled album

(Big thanks again to Jon Busey Hunt for this one, although I edited the text at the top)

    First of all, I've divided the album into two distinct halves each containing three of the total six sides of (imaginary) vinyl. Both parts are pretty much entire albums in themselves, and would be on seperate CDs. Coming in at 53 minutes long, Part I is what one might call my re-do of The Cry Of Love, that original posthumous album from '71; it contains almost all of Cry's songs (as well as some from its' follow-up Rainbow Bridge) but is sequenced with a far smoother song-to-song flow, and is very sonically unified by way of a produced and polished glean; all four of the finished songs that Jimi played at his studio's opening party are included here, and the others don't sound too incomplete either. Out of the two parts, I would say that Part I works best as a standalone piece, and the only reason I didn't post it as such is because I don't find that the second half is equally strong all on its' own. The first three songs get the album started with some very high energy before a slower one arrives to vary things up, after which the first side closes with another really strong rocker. Similarly, side two continues on with three more, the third of which finishes with a long guitar solo that transitions nicely into a slower and groovier instrumental which closes side two, after which side four contains a longer rocker, a slower ballad, one final climactic rocker, and then a quiet bluesy song performed by Hendrix alone to cap things off.

The cover of ex-Motowner Ted Lucas' fabulously soothing solo album.

    Part II is generally less polished, peeling most of that production back and exposing the bones below; in other words, this is where the band behind it all really shows their stuff. Unlike in the first half, a few songs here are completely live in the studio. This stripped-down style is of course here by necessity, as Part II is where the listener arrives at the most significantly unfinished material. That said, I've been very careful to sequence the songs so that there's never a jarring shift in production quality or album flow; First Rays remains a smooth listen the whole way through. And despite me saying that this half is less finished, a few songs were indeed mixed by Hendrix to his satisfaction and released (although he would eventually return to them and do a bit more overdubbing). I'm talking about "Stepping Stone" and "Izabella," which are feautured here in their final April 1970 single mixes—incorrect ones were of course released and promptly recalled). So like before, some songs are finished, some are rough mixes, some are early '70s posthumous mixes, and (unique to Part II) a few songs were even mixed in recent decades on digital equipement, resulting in higher instrumental clarity.

Journey's Greatest Hits (1988), which was inspired by the Mouse And Kelley

artwork. Scroll between it and the last two photos to see the artwork's

transformation as it was used (or not used) by different artists.

    Continuing on with the flow description, after the quiet change of pace that is the Part I (a.k.a. side three) closer "Belly Button Window," Part II (a.k.a. side four) gets things running again with the full-on rocker "Stepping Stone." Its' second half is mostly instrumental, which transitions nicely into the largely-instrumental opening half of "Power Of Soul." This song shows off Buddy Miles' funky drum grooves that were all over that Band Of G****s live album, and the next track "Come Down Hard On Me" showcases Mitch Mitchell at his funkiest as well. After those two grooves follows "Valleys Of Neptune," a more lyric-oriented song that closes side four. The energy then picks up with two more rockers that precede the album's second and final solo Hendrix performance "Midnight Lightning Blues." From there the album begins one final burst of energy that takes it across the finish line, with the momentum building up across each of the following three rockers. They close side five after which side six begins, which is different from the rest of the sides in that it's almost entirely instrumental. All that previously-accumulated momentum peaks with its' opener "Beginnings," which is followed by the ten minute-long title track "The New Rising Sun" which contains side six's sole lyrics in its' second half. After that ends, First Rays climaxes beautifully with its' closer "Star-Spangled Banner," which is almost orchestral in its' use of guitar layering. After soaring high, those guitars come crashing down with zaps and crackles, like shooting stars burning up in the atmosphere. After over 100 minutes of music, the album then returns to the silence from whence it came. So without further ado, onto the \detailed track-by-track breakdown!

At Last, The Track-By-Track Breakdown

    This titanic, near-two-hour album begins with a drum fill played by Buddy Miles, before a seige of roaring, riffing guitars pull in for attack. "Ezy Ryder" had been in the works in some way or another since December '67, when the Jimi Hendrix Experience's bassist Noel Redding came up with the one of the riffs during the embryonic Electric Ladyland sessions. The track was attempted several other times by the Experience, but never with any vocals. Hendrix wrote the final version of the song after watching the famous counterculture flick Easy Rider (which actually contains one of his songs), and the track began to coalesce into its' final form under the Band Of G****s. It was played live numerous times, both during the G****s' short Fillmore residency and later throughout the Cry Of Love tour, where it was a setlist standard. 

The handwritten"Local Commotion" lyric sheet from

https://bid.juliensauctions.com/lot-details/index/catalog

/110/lot/47258/jimi-hendrix-handwritten-working-lyrics.

    Very soon after moving recording into his new studio, Hendrix began adding guitar overdub atop guitar overdub, making this track into a writhing, electric stew of sound. Half of the band Traffic (who had helped Jimi out before) donated backing vocals, and the song was given a final mix on August 22, 1970, during a marathon of mixing sessions right before the tour's European leg. In that mix, the slight return (so to speak) after the fade out was entirely accidental; Jimi and his gang were grooving so hard on the mixing bench that they all fell backwards. Unsure if the song had finished, Eddie Kramer scrambled up and raised the master volume control, before quickly sliding it back down again. Hendrix used this song to open his first two tracklists, but not his third (where "Dolly Dagger" opens instead); I think that "Ezy Ryder" the best opener of the bunch, because of both the way it builds up at the beginning as well as due to the sheer, ferocious energy that it kicks things off with, so I used it as such. The Cry Of Love, though, uses it as the third song following uptempo opener "Freedom" and the slow ballad "Drifting," which I see as a unnecessarily jaunty tempo switch that doesn't allow momentum to be built from one song to the next.

    Following "Ezy Ryder" is "Earth Blues." This one had its' genesis in an Electric Ladyland outtake called "Somewhere" (that song in finished form can he heard on my War Heroes collection). After laying dormant for some time though, the basic track of this version was put down by the Band Of G****s on December 19, 1969 at Record Plant Studios, with overdubs on January 20, 1970, where the legendary Ronnettes added backing vocals (I decided to make them a featured artist for their performance). An alternate version exists from that first December 19th session, featuring some different lyrics. On the final master tape though, Buddy Miles' drums were removed; his only contribution is therefore to the backing vocals, which Billy Cox helped out with as well (besides "In From The Storm," this may have been Cox's only-ever vocals on a Hendrix track). After significant work on it in Electric Lady Studios, this one was still a just rough mix when Hendrix got coins placed on his eyes. It was given a final mix posthumously by Eddie Kramer and his team in the following months, before being released on official Rainbow Bridge Soundtrack (1971) as the second song. I think that's a better placement than it being track three as it is on Hendrix's first two sequences (it's missing from the third) because of its' tempo in relation to "Ezy Ryder" as well as its' strong lyrical emphasis; one could consider this song something of a socio-political statement, so I thought it fitting to make it the second song. To the extent of my knowledge, it was only ever performed live during those Fillmore East concerts.

Hendrix's letter to his record label requesting particular

design choices forthe Electric Ladyland sleeve artwork.

His requests were ignored.

    The tempo rises back up with the semi-psychedelic "Room Full Of Mirrors." Like "Ezy Ryder," this one had a long history. It started as a bluesy demo recorded right at the tail of the Electric Ladyland sessions; Hendrix, in fact, wanted that album to be subtitled "Letter to the room full of mirrors," but his record label ignored all of his design requests. In 1969 the Experience jammed on it a number of times, included with an expanded lineup onstage at their concert at the Royal Albert Hall that February. Snatches of its' lyric also appeared in the very personal blues jam "It's Too Bad" from roughly that time as well, which may feature on a future collection of mine. A loose-but-fiery version of "Mirrors" with some different lyrics will be there too, played with members of the Cherry People in one of Hendrix's first-ever sessions with Billy Cox (after he'd achieved fame, at least). Once it finished, the control room burst into applause. The Band Of G****s helped the song find its' final form though, and the basic track was finally put down on November 17, 1969. 

    Hendrix overhauled it at his lavish new studio that summer adding many layers of guitar overdubs until the song's recording was complete, but he was avidly unsatisfied with the drum sound on this one, so tried to fix that during the mix. He died before a final mix had been finished though, so there were two attempts to redo the drums from scratch afterwards. Soon after his demise, Mitch Mitchell wiped Buddy Miles' drumwork to make place for his own. But he did an even worse job of it, so a rough mix from August 20 was used as the song's final mix instead. On the multichannel mix in the new Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision box set, Mitchell's drums are used because they're the only ones left on the session tape. Later on in the '90s, in preparation for Voodoo Soup, Alan Douglas invited Mitchell to give it another go, but he was incapable of bettering it so the Knack's drummer Bruce Gary did the job instead. The Voodoo Soup mix changes the song significantly but I don't mind it, although the original is still my favourite. Listen to "Straight Ahead" if you're interested in hearing the drum sound Hendrix probably had in mind for the track. "Room Full Of Mirrors" was pulled from The Cry Of Love, the first posthumous album, by Hendrix's manager to conserve the quality material for later releases (at the expense of the albums themselves), so it finally came out on the Rainbow Bridge soundtrack as track four. Hendrix put it in the third placement on his final sequence (it's second on the first two), which works great so I left that intact. It provides a boost in energy after the slightly more subdued "Earth Blues" following the glob of molten energy that is "Ezy Ryder," and so keeps the momentum going strong as we venture deeper into Part I of First Rays Of The New Rising Sun. The song was played occasionally during the 1970 tour, including during his set at the Atlanta Pop Festival.

Along with being professionally recorded, his Atlanta Pop set was also filmed.

    After that song fades back in briefly before returning into the aether once and for all, the dreamy ballad "Drifting" begins with some soft, melodic guitar plucks. A more recent composition, this one seems to go back to the demos for Black Gold. The only song so-far released from that, "Suddenly November Morning," changes mood near the end and features one of the "Drifting" lyrics—it's also possible that it may be the next song sequentially on the tape. The track came together very quickly in the studio, but was quite unfinished when the August sessions wrapped, so Mitch Mitchell added more drums while Buzzy Lindhart was brought in to contribute some tasteful vibraphone (which Hendrix had been looking to add) during a recording session not long after he died, and the song was given a splendid posthumous mix. I don't think The Cry Of Love got it right by putting this ballad in the number two spot, but the song is only present in the middle of the second side on Jimi's third tracklist; on there, side one's opening trio of rockers gives way to the sparse demo "Belly Button Window" as a change in tempo. I decided to slow things down in a similar fashion but keep the production value a little higher by using this beautiful backwards guitar-laden song instead. "Drifting" was never performed live.

    After being set slightly adrift by "Drifting," the huge opening riff of "Freedom" yanks the album back into gear. The song has roots in another called "Crash Landing" which was put down during that 1969 session with some of the Cherry People. It's is about trying to stop the drug habit of one of his girlfriends, which is pretty hypocricitcal coming from a drug-user-of-legend like himself; the topic, though, indeed briefly crops up briefly in "Freedom." Building it up from that opening riff, Billy Cox leter helped Jimi compose the song into completion, and it was just one of their numerous never-credited writing collaboration. They played "Freedom" live many times during the 1970 tour, and by late August the studio version was nearly complete. All it needed was a single guitar overdub to replace the one from 2:22-2:30, and besides that the mix was finalized. One thing about many of this album's songs is that a number of them share lyrical phrases or ideas. "Freedom" finishes with a chant of "keep on pushing/straight ahead/freedom," referencing a song we'll get to very shortly as the first side of the imaginary vinyl draws to a close. On both The Cry Of Love and the official 1997 release of First Rays Of The New Rising Sun this song serves as the opener. While I find that the song  does that very well, I find that "Ezy Ryder" does it even better. On all of Hendrix's tracklists this song seems to occupy the final spot of the first vinyl side, although he only marks that clearly as such on the third one; I think that spot's perfect, so that's where I placed it. The song was played at nearly every show on the 1970 tour.

The official First Rays Of The New Rising Sun (1997).

    Opening side two comes "Dolly Dagger." This one got mixed to completion during Hendrix's lifetime and was set to be the A-side is next single, with the lacquer needing only Jimi's final approval before a late September or early October release. It's a great song with one of his best lyrics, and along with "The Wind Cries Mary" is Bob Dylan's favourite song of his—the folkie even even played it live on his Never-Ending Tour. I've never read anything saying that the two are linked, but the Dylanesque Electric Ladyland outtake "My Friend" (which was included on The Cry Of Love for largely sentimental reasons) contains the lyric "sharing lipstick around the broken edge," while "Dolly Dagger" has "she drinks the blood from a jagged edge" (said to refer to Mick Jagger who, after getting cut at a party, had the blood sucked out of his wound by Jimi's girlfriend Devon Wilson - right in front of Jimi). This song was recorded throughout July and August, and moved from the penultimate spot on the second tracklist to become the album opener on the third. Along with "Room Full Of Mirrors," Jimi's manager pulled "Dolly Dagger" off The Cry Of Love. The '71 Rainbow Bridge soundrack used it as the opener as well, but after careful consideration I think the song is a little too playful and loose for such a spot; as the first track on side two, though, it works splendidly. The song was a rarity live, and recordings of it were captured on tape only at the Isle Of White festival and one of the Maui sets, possibly the song's only live performances. Its' lyrics also namedrop Superman, which loosly conceptually links it to...

    "Astro Man," another bouncy and playful number about a superhero. He begins the song singing "here I come to save the day," which was the titular character's catchphrase in the Mighty Mouse TV show from the '40s and '50s which he must have watched as a child (a reboot film for which is actually currently in the works, funnily enough). This one seems to have been written around the time of the semi-autobiographical Black Gold suite, and that song cycle is said to include a second half of the track. While never playing it live, the Band Of G****s recorded a loose early version of it at the start of 1970, and the final version was put down over the course of three sessions at Electric Lady Studios. All it needed by the time he died were a few finishing touches which never got added, and the version here is a rough mix Hendrix made. It was originally included somewhere on side two of each of his unfinished tracklists, and maintained that placement on The Cry Of Love. After the bouncy and slightly comedic "Dolly Dagger," I think "Astro Man" matches that energy perfectly while rocking a little bit harder.

 Recorded during the Electric Ladyland sessions, the Experience's great

performance at the 1968 Miami Pop Festival is well worth a listen. It too was filmed.

    After that comes "Night Bird Flying," which was fully mixed before its' songwriter died and was set to be the B-side of that "Dolly Dagger" single (which got scrapped, of course). It never got played live, maybe because it features so much (wonderful) guitar layering; it's a real studio creation, and was apparently the first song recorded from scratch at his studio. Ideas for the track go all the way back to the first sessions following the wrapping up of Electric Ladyland, and an early version of the song with a different title and lyric was put down during the Experience's final studio session together in mid-April '69. The song was later on revived at Electric Lady Studios, of course. Though veiled in metaphor, the track is about spending the night with a prostitute. It's only present on Jimi's second and third tracklists, featuring twice on the latter; he places it roughly in the middle of the album on both sequences, but afterwards changed his mind and marked it in as the second track on that third list. On The Cry Of Love it holds the fourth spot following "Ezy Ryder." I find that it doesn't fit absolutely perfectly in either spot, so found it the perfect home here on side two. The song closes with an extended two-minute guitar solo which eventually fades out, transitioning nicely into the following instrumental, which begins with a long fade in.

    On July 1 1970, Jimi and his trio were trying to record the basic instrumental take which their new song "Dolly Dagger" would be built up from, and soon enough they ended up nailing it. But by the time that the song should have finished, the musicians were having so much fun that they just kept on playing, moving into a jam. The group eventually landed upon a fabulous groove, and Hendrix began laying down some of his most beautiful, melodic guitar lines. This jam eventually drew to a pretty conclusion, after which the guitarist went back and overdubbed a sublime lead guitar part onto the final six-minute portion of that jam, after which he didn't go back to it again (although there's no saying he would never have done so had he survived the overdose). When searching for material to fill up the 1971 Rainbow Bridge soundtrack, his studio team found the jam and mixed it for inclusion. On its' tape box, the song was only labelled "slow part," so Hendrix's manager decided to name it himself, choosing the title "Pali Gap," referring to the space between the two peaks of Maui where the band performed a gig filmed for the movie; those who worked with Hendrix later said that they had never heard him utter that title. Because I am trying to restore this project to as close to how Hendrix may have done it as possible, I decided to take the liberty to rename the track as "Dolly Brown," the full name of "Dolly Dagger's" titular character; this ties the jam in with the song from which it was birthed, which, to me, seems far more apt. The song is one of my longtime favourites of Hendrix's, and is probably as close as he ever got to sounding like Carlos Santana, among others. The two "Dollys" bookend side two of the (imaginary) record, with "Dolly Brown" closing it out. It was obviously never performed live. 

The front and back covers of Electric Ladyland in the U.K., with

black borders added on the top and bottom to square the image.

    "Straight Ahead" then kicks side three (a.k.a. disk two) off with a roar. Like "Earth Blues," this is a lyric-heavy statement song; it opens with "hello my friend," which makes it feel like he's talking straight to the listener, telling the them about the importance of solidarity (an excellent message, in my book). The song begins with some lovely layered vocals, before it strips down to just the power trio and one overdubbed guitar. Despite that, the mix sounds finished (which it is) because of its' clarity and just how good all the instruments sound, especially the drums. Strangely, the song gets slightly muffled and the stereo image skews to the side from 2:56 to 3:04, maybe due to some brief edits. In terms of its' sequencing, the song was placed in the second half of side one on Jimi's first two tracklists, while on the third it became the closer of the first disk. When two of the best songs were pulled from The Cry Of Love, "Straight Ahead" became the side two opener which, being a longer stipped down song, isn't ideal in my eyes. To keep the track from sounding samey compared to what came before it, I placed it as the side three opener following the improvised instrumental "Dolly Brown," bringing the lyrics right to the fore. It was played occasionally during the 1970 tour (its' live debut was captured on tape at Berkeley), but the next song never was.

    "Angel" was written in '67 and is the sister song to the delicate classic "Little Wing" from Axis: Bold As Love that same year. A rough instrumental version was recorded during the Axis sessions, and a nice demo with vocals and a rudimentary drum machine was done just before the first Electric Ladyland sessions started that December, and shortly enough a nice backing track for it was put down. Recording didn't go any further, though, before the song was revived for this new project in mid-1970. Hendrix never quite finished the song, so it was apparently quite a complex job to get it into the final, finished state that it exists in here. Mitch Mitchell added a second drum track atop his first, making this possibly the only song in the famous guitarist's catalogue that has two sets of drums; this was the very first posthumous overdub ever given to a Hendrix song, and it was apparently a very emotional session, coming exactly one month after his passing. The drums add a good bit of weight to the song, and after "Straight Ahead" help keep the momentum going as well. The song is of course a posthumous mix, and a very nice one. Like the previous track, "Angel" also has a strange skewing of the stereo image from 2:52 to 2:55, I believe only affecting Jimi's lead vocal. On the second tracklist it's placed around the end of side two, and on the third it closes out side three; the final song on there. The Cry Of Love uses it to begin its' very solid closing three-song run which I decided to replicate for the finale to Part I (a.k.a. the first CD).

The first of the five gigs the Band Of G****s ever played (also included

in the Songs For Groovy Childen box pictured far above). "Lover Man," "Power Of Soul,"

"Izabella," "Ezy Ryder," "Bleeding Heart," and "Earth Blues" were all played.

    The penultimate track of Part I is the thunderous "In From The Storm." Composed with Billy Cox while on tour (where it got played occasinally), this one was very close to completion; recording was completed but it didn't get further than a rough mix, so it exists here instead as a posthumous one from late November 1970. Immediately before singing the final take of the lead vocal, Jimi said "regardless of wether you can use it or not;" this was kept in to show the album's unfinished nature, and appears immediately before the opening drum fill on that posthumously-completed mix. Billy Cox and Emeretta Marks sing excellent backing vocals, and "crying blue rain" is mentioned in the lyrics, which also happens to be the title of a 1969 jam by the Experience which contains the "Stepping Stone" riff. Despite its' state of completion, this song doesn't feature on any of the tracklists. Nonetheless, it serves as the thunderous climax to Part I.

    What comes next is the final full song that Hendrix ever recorded, "Belly Button Window." The band tried it out in a shuffle-y arrangement before scuttling that idea and Hendrix redoing it as a solo demo (as well, there were several other demos on that tape). He and his team soon became quite fond of this sparse version and decided to mix it during the August 1970 mixing marathon, although there's no saying if this was the final state the song would have ended up in had things gone differently. Considering the arrangement was somewhat up in the air, it makes sense that it never got played live. "Belly Button Window" features only on the third tracklist, where it's placed in the fourth spot right after a trio of opening rockers, presumably intended as a change in pace, but I preferred having "Drifting" there instead. The Cry Of Love included this song as its' closing track, and while that works well, I found there to be songs with more of a finality to them to close out the album proper, so decided to close Part I (which is really my version of The Cry Of Love) with it instead. It still acts as a change of pace as the album reaches its' halfway point, and also masks a subtle-but-significant shift in production value, as just about every song after it has a drier and more upfront-sounding mix. It was written about his drummer's pregnant wife, the child of which Jimi imagined was watching the world from its' personal belly button window. Knowing what happened less than a month after recording this, I also see the song as something of a moment bringing everything full circle; Hendrix, a man approaching the casket, sings about being back in the womb and asking his parents if they want an abortion. That's the cycle of birth and death itself, and, being the final song he ever put down, it's a magical way to go out.

The 1970 "Stepping Stone"/"Izabella" single sleeve, taken from Pintrest.

    Part II (or side four) hits the ground running (and gets the album back on track) with the guitar extravaganza "Stepping Stone." Hendrix had been toying around with some of the riffs since at least early '69 (listen to the afformentioned "Crying Blue Rain" for that), and a portion of the song was eventualy debuted mid-jam at Woodstock that August. The G****s played it live a few times, and also fleshed it out somewhat by way of an early recording made on November 14th and 18th. The final version of the song began to coalesce shortly before the trio split in January '70, but it wasn't played on the big tour later that year. Hendrix gave the song, as well as the forthcoming "Izabella," a lot of attention over the next month or two, overdubbing and mixing them to his satisfaction before preparing them for release as his first single of new material since Electric Ladyland over a year prior - and it got released! In early April, just weeks after the Band Of G****s LP hit the shops, this new single arrived to stores as well, under the moniker Jimi Hendrix Band Of G****s. But to Hendrix's dismay, that incorrect mix had been used; the single was pulled from stores and never charted, now being very rare. Those imperfect mixes featured on it have never been rereleased elsewhere, either (for those with keen ears though, Prof. Stoned's blog has a great digital transfer of the vinyl). Here's what Jimi had to say about it: "I haven't had too many records out for a while. I wanted this out before people forgot about me . . . I don't know how good it is. I can't tell anymore. Some of the copies out here have no bass on them. I had to go out somewhere and tell the guy to remix it, but he didn't. Sure it matters. I'd like a hit single. It's nice to have people hearing your songs all over the world on the radio. I did some recording last year, but I flipped out after two days because much of the stuff was recorded in the gap between the time the Experience broke up and the Band of G****s. So that stuff's another age. I'm losing time with myself." 

    But the song's story wasn't finished there. It had been worked into the Black Gold suite (as was "Machine Gun" from the live album), although that's never been released anywhere. Later on during the summer, the tapes were pulled out in the new studio and recieved a few more overdubs; like with "Room Full Of Mirrors," Hendrix is said to have been unsatisfied with the drums on this song, so they were redone by Mitch Mitchell during those sessions, but his performance unfortunately doesn't give the song the driving energy that it needs, and that Buddy Miles gave it. In the '90s, the Knack's drummer redid the drums for the Voodoo Soup mix, and in my opinion he did a superb job of it. "Stepping Stone" may have been mixed in August '70 (according to the unreliable Voodoo Soup liner notes), but I don't know if the mix was finished or not and it hasn't been released. The standard official version is a posthumous mix featuring Mitchell's drums and those other overdubs. For First Rays here, I decided to use the final mix that had been made back in March 1970 but was mistakenly not used on the single; it has Buddy Miles' driving drums and is a finished mix approved by Hendrix, although he did end up doing a little more work on it later on.

The Rainbow Bridge soundtrack album from 1971. Much of First Rays is sourced from it.

    In terms of song sequence, he placed both "Stepping Stone" and its B-side back-to-back roughly in the middle of his first two tracklists, presumably opening side two on both. It isn't on his third list though, and after he passed was set to be on Rainbow Bridge, but was pulled by that manager to spread out the best songs. At long last, it came to be widely released as the final song on side one of the official War Heroes album the following year. After careful consideration, I placed the song as the opener to Part II (a.k.a. side four) after "Belly Button Window." As with the most of Part II, "Stepping Stone" sounds rawer and drier than any of the tracks thay preceded it, but by being separated from Part I by such a stripped-down song as "Button," this shift in sonic texture is far less apparent when listening through.

    After that song's rousing guitar-fiesta of a climax comes "Power Of Soul." This one has a long, grooving instrumental section before the vocals kick in (which transition very nicely from the instrumental second half of "Stepping Stone"), and it's another statement song. The song was recorded entirely before the Band Of Gypsys split, and was considered by them for release on a single. That didn't pan out, but a live version was released in April 1970 on the Band Of G****s live album, alongside the soon-to-come "Message To Love" (and as far as I know, he only played "Soul" once on the Cry Of Love tour). Speaking of these two songs in his book with Caesar Glebbeek entitled Jimi Hendrix: Elecrtic G**** (1991), Harry Shapiro writes that both song's lyrics show "a Jimi Hendrix who felt an increasing need to impart his compassionate vision of human potentiality [and a] move away from cynicism and bitterness." I fully agree with that, and think that this observation applies to a large number of the First Rays songs. Indeed, here's what Hendrix had to say about this new style of songwriting: "We'd like to turn everyone on to all we know. You can always sing about love and different situations of love, but now we're trying to give solutions to all the protests and the arguments that they're having in the world today. Every time we come into town everybody always looks toward us for some kind of answer to what's happening to them, which is a good feeling, but it's very hard. Therefore I have to live the life, I have to witness all these bad scenes and all these good scenes, so then I can say what I found out. Anybody can protest, but not too many people can offer a decent answer. So we're going to try and do that" (Starting At Zero, p. 134).

The pretty Both Sies Of The Sky cover, but without extensive photoshopping to

Hendrix's face. This is where the featured mix of "Power Of Soul" was released.

The photo is from '67 (many thanks to Kurt Max on the Steve Hoffman Forums).

    Because the song had so recently been released, Hendrix seems to have taken it out of consideration for his next studio album for almost the entirety of the summer sessions. During that late-August mixing marathon however, he pulled out its' tapes and gave it another rough mix, which is the one featured here. An earlier mix from January 1970 was released as a vinyl-only B-side a few yeard before that, but it's inferior to this one. The first official release of the studio version of "Power Of Soul" was on Alan Douglas' Crash Landing (1975) album, but was significantly shortened and re-edited, and had most of the instrument parts completely rerecorded by new musicians. A remix of the song from the session tapes reveals this same edit of the song athough with all of its' original instruments this time, proving that Alan Douglas indeed edited the song's master tapes, the result being that the original version is lost forever outside of Hendrix's rough mixes.

    The drummer changes but the funky grooves grow only stronger on "Come Down Hard On Me," a song written and recorded around the time of the Electric Lady Studios sessions, but never played live. My favourite part is during the solo from 1:35 to 1:45; the syncopation between the guitar and drums is absolutely fantastic, and makes me move with every listen. The song contains the lyric "show me that I'm your lover man," referencing a song that will appear later on on this album, and I've heard that "Come Down Hard On Me" actually evolved out of that one, but I'm not dead certain. In terms of placement, it was only included on Hendrix's third tracklist, at the heart of the clearly unfinished (sequencing-wise) side three. It first came to be released on that fourth '70s posthumous album, Loose Ends, where it was placed as the opener. I decided to put it here so as to keep the grooves going along nicely as the listener travels through side four, which helps because it isn't as lyrically strong as many of the other songs on First Rays. Although the track remained unfinished, engineer Jon Jansen gave it a nice mix for Loose Ends (as Eddie Kramer had by that time jumped off the barrel-scraping ship), letting it fade out in a bath of echo. This mix hasn't appeared anywhere else, but I decided to use it and took it from a Japanese CD. The currently in-print version of the song, though, is an inferior rough mix by Hendrix.

The German Loose Ends cover with the red border cropped out.

    What follows is, in recording terms, one of the sketchiest songs on the album: "Valleys Of Neptune." Hendrix had earmarked it for inclusion on First Rays during that interview from earlier. But he never came close to finishing this one, despite having been working on it since at least early '69 when he laid down some solo guitar and piano demos of the chord changes (found on the official Hear My Music sessions compilation). A studio demo with a guide vocal was recorded in the fall of that year, and an instrumental backing track was put down in the summer of 1970 (as well, there's an instrumental jam which shows what the final arrangement may have looked like, as well as a demo with lyrics from these sessions). This version here is an amalgamation of the two, with that 1969 vocal overlaid atop the 1970 backing track. The result is certainly much better than nothing, but is nonetheless a bit jaunty as Hendrix shouts his lyrics over the rock band backing. Some fans consider this version to be "frankensteined," but I'm just glad to have it and find it works well enough to be up to snuff for this album, not sticking out like a sore thumb. Despite their delivery, its' words are some of the most poetic on First Rays. This version was mixed in the 2000s by Eddie Kramer, and ended up as the title track to a 2010 outtakes compilation to which it served as the title track. The unfinished song was placed as track four on Hendrix's second tracklist, but doesn't appear on any others. This version surely isn't what he imagined the song could become, and in its' current form is far too unfinished for Part I, so it's placed here closing out side four, one of the most stripped-down sides on the album. As one may have guessed, it was never performed live.

    Opening side five with a bang comes the fantastic "Message To Love," which became a setlist standard in 1970. This song's composition began during the Experience's sessions for their fourth album, and in late May '69, Hendrix put down an early, jazzy version which got released as the title track to the official (but long-deleted) album Nine To The Universe (1980). He debuted it live as his opening song at Woodstock, and recorded an early version with the same expanded band shortly thereafter. The Band Of G****s thereafter did the most work on it, recording the entire studio version before they broke up, and while it was considered as a single (where it would have been the A-side to "Power Of Soul"), it came to be put out on their contractually-obligated self-titled live album instead (where, apart from "Machine Gun," it proved to be the only song that Hendrix was actually proud of). Just like "Power Of Soul," after a long time of being out of the running for First Rays, the song was suddenly given a rough mix on August 22, 1970; that's the mix featured here (with a fade out that I added myself), as the song's master tape was similarly cut up by Alan Douglas, who inserted an excellent (but entirely different) guitar solo right into the middle of the song, not to mention rearranging and permanently removing several other portions of the track altogether.

The cover for the 2010 "Valleys Of Neptune" single, painted by a certain

young boy called James Marshall Hendrix.

    After that comes the funky "Izabella," a song about a soldier dreaming of his partner back home. Spiritually it's the sister song to the devastating "Machine Gun" from the 1970 live album, to the extent where Hendrix began a studio take of it by hollering out "yeah, yeah, Izabella, I said it's so hard out here in this war, child." During the first of the Band Of G****s' four sets at the Fillmore East on New Years' 1969-1970, he even segued directly from "Izabella" into "Machine Gun" without so much as stopping for a breath. Interestingly, "Izabella" is also the song whose lyrics contain the album title, for in it he sings "here come the rays of the rising sun, here they come." Like "Message To Love," it too debuted at Woodstock. Unlike it though, it wasn't played during the 1970 tour. Several early studio versions have been released, two of which were made by that short-lived Woodstock band. This here version, though, was put down by the Band Of G****s and released as the B-side to "Stepping Stone" in April 1970, but was of course quickly recalled.

    Overdubs were added later that summer (where, unlike for "Stepping Stone," Buddy Miles' drums were left intact) including a new guitar solo, but, again, I don't really know if the song was mixed before Hendrix was buried six feet under. I decided to go with the Hendrix-approved-but-accidentally-not-released-on-the-single mix, instead of the later posthumous mix that was included on the official War Heroes album as its' closer. Both mixes are good, but the song fits best on Part II, and the dryness of Hendrix's mix helps it fit in there. I think I prefer the rythm of its' solo better, as well. On his first two tracklists, Hendrix placed it right after "Stepping Stone," presumably as track two, side two, but it wasn't included on his third sequence. The official 1997 release places "Izabella" as track two, which, in my opinion, is one of the big mistakes that its' compilers made, as it totally kills all of the momentum. I instead decided to include it towards the back end of the album, as I think that's where it fits best, as well because its' big guitar flash leads us into a significant change of pace, song-wise.

The original 1971 cover of Hendrix In The West - the 2011 reissue

photoshopped it. Not a perfect live album, but contains some stunners

like the most beautiful version of "Little Wing" you may ever hear.

It's also got the first official release of the song "Lover Man."

    Coming several tracks after "Belly Button Window," the album's second and final Hendrix-only performance is here: "Midnight Lightning Blues," featured in a mix from the '90s. It was recorded in March 1970 at The Record Plant Studios, shortly before Electric Lady Studios was ready for use. My first Hendrix upload on this blog (War Heroes) includes a song called "Midnight Lightning;" that one was built up from a later rough version recorded at Electric Lady Studios, overdubbed to completion in the '70s by Alan Douglas and his crew. Despite sharing the line 'midnight lightning' in the chorus, both songs contain otherwise-different lyrics, arrangements, and feels, and as a result I decided to make an exception from my no-song-overlap-across-Hendrix-albums rule. To differentiate them, I retitled this one "Midnight Lightning Blues" because of its' distinct bluesy style. The track was only ever performed at the Isle Of White Festival, again with a different set of lyrics (which mention "both sides of the sky," the title of one of the posthumous studio session releases). "Midnight Lightning" is only written into the second tracklist, seemingly on the penultimate side of the album. That works, so that's where I've put it as well: at the heart of side five.

    Picking up the energy after that is another blues, this one a full-band recording of legendary bluesman Elmore James' "Bleeding Heart." It begins a four-song sequence of songs Hendrix didn't write which together make up First Rays' final energetic push which climaxes on side six. He'd been playing the song for years, and there's indeed a recording of him (pre-fame) covering it in '65 or '66, but as time went on the song gradually evolved into its own thing. There are live recordings of it from '68 and '69, during the latter of which he recorded several versions of it in the studio, all with somewhat different arrangements. It was again revived during the sessions at his studio (but not for the tour), where the song made it to the rough mix stage. The version featured here is a posthumous mix from the official War Heroes (1972) album, where it served as the opener. "Bleeding Heart" only appears in the middle of the album on of the second tracklist, following "Angel" and preceded by the long (though never-finished) "Burning Desire." I decided to place it after the slow "Midnight Lightning Blues" so that after its' slow introduction it can smoothly segway the album back to a higher tempo.

The People, Hell And Angels leftovers compilation from 2013, which contains

early versions of "Earth Blues," "Bleeding Heart," "Ezy Ryder,"

"The New Rising Sun," and "Izabella." He considered that title for this album.

    Immediately following that is "Drifter's Escape;" Hendrix's first Bob Dylan cover since the chart-topping "All Along The Watchtower" from '68 (one of his greatest recordings), and one that's actually sourced from the exact same Dylan LP, the wonderfully story-laden John Wesley Harding (1967). Although it's a cover, it fits in well with many of Hendrix's songs because its' lyrics are (obviously) preoccupied with escape, something which I've noticed throughout quite a bit of Jimi's work. I suppose he was maybe using the drugs and music as a distraction from himself, and although apparently lovely sober, he was known to be a furious drunk, which leads one to wonder what he was trying to run away from. But that's none of my business. Anyways, I can't say that this one betters "Watchtower," but it must be remebered that the track is unfinished. Despite that, this rough mix is tantalizing; layers of churning guitars make zaps and feedback sound like chaotic thunderclaps, sound-painting Dylan's words. Had it been finished I think it would have been one of the highlights of the album, but it's certainly no bore. Apart from "Stepping Stone" and "Izabella," this song is the only time where there's an early-'70s posthumous mix available that I did not decide to use; Jon Jansen's mix from Loose Ends is very good, but it strips the production back, removing many overdubs and effects added by Hendrix in the process. This simplifies the song when, by comparison, Hendrix's rough mix is confronting in its' density and intensity, something I see that as the rough mix's strong point. Uniquely for a song in Part II, this one features on all three tracklists (yet despite being clearly intended for the album, it was left off of the official 1997 First Rays. As I wrote before, that collection has many issues). It's the penultimate song on that first tracklist, lodged near the end of what I imagine would be the second side in the second, and is the second song on side three on the third. I think placing it near back is ideal, so put it here. It was never played live, as far as I know.

    Closing side five with a bang comes "Lover Man." Like "Bleeding Heart," this song is built up from another blues cover, B.B. King's "Rock Me Baby," and also happens to have a long history. The Jimi Hendrix Experience played B.B.'s song during their famous debut American performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival (which was captured on both film and tape). That song slowly began to morph into "Lover Man" (primarily a lyrical change), and a backing track for it was of the few leftovers from the sessions for Hendrix's debut LP Are You Experienced (1967). Hendrix played it live hundreds of times over the course of the rest of his too-short solo career. Despite many attempts at recording it in the studio with the Experience (for their unfinished fourth album which I reconstructed as Hear My Train A-Comin') and the later Band Of G****s, a definitive version seems to have eluded him until mere months before he passed, where after 16 takes he and his band put down a great one, before adding a few overdubs. I'm not certain if it was mixed during the August sessions or not. The version here is a digital posthumous mix Eddie Kramer made around the turn of the millenium, although I removed some studio chatter at the end. "Lover Man" was featured only on the back half of second tracklist, in the spot right before "Midnight Lightning" and right after the guitar workout and fellow stage staple "Hear My Train A-Comin." I put the song here to both strip things down after "Drifter's Escape" and continue this gradual building of intensity, and the sparse lyrics of "Lover Man's" second half help guide the listener into the next track, which is an instrumental called...

One of Hendrix's most spirited gigs, featuring the definitive live performance of

"Lover Man" with the live debut of "Straight Ahead" coming right after. Filmed.

    "Beginnings," which opens the final side of (imaginary) vinyl. It's an early-'70s posthumous mix. This one, apparently written by Mitch Mitchell, was also debuted at Woodstock, then titled "jam back at the house." The Hendrix/Cox/Mitchell lineup played it live after that once or twice, most notably on Maui, and would launch into the song between takes of other things at Electric Lady Studios. The resulting instrumental is furious and fiery, and another of my critiques of the official First Rays Of The New Rising Sun (1997) is that they made no use of the potential momentum that this song could inject into a tracklist: on there, it comes after the slow ballad "Drifting" and precedes the rocker "Stepping Stone," which itself begins with a musical build up; it would flow better if they didn't include "Beginnings" there in the first place. The song was included in the middle of side three on the final tape box tracklist, but I think it should sit right near the end for maximum, climactic effect. And if one consider's the song's title, it sort of brings things full circle; it's the beginning of the end.

    After that number explodes into musical sparks, the listener is propelled into the title track, "The New Rising Sun." Its' first half of is instrumental and its' second contains the only vocals on side six, which, as Hendrix said below, ask one question; "where are you coming from and where are you going to?" The song goes back at least to October of '68, when that title was used on a musically-unrelated (to my ears, at least) demo of pretty, psychedelic noodling made entirely by Hendrix (he even played some light drums). The song then languished for a while before being brought back with lyrics during some of the final Band Of G****s sessions in January 1970, and was then played a number of times during The Cry Of Love tour. This recording is made up of two parts; an instrumental half called "Bolero" (which is a Spanish dance) and then the main song, titled "Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)." When performed, it always seems to have recieved an improvizational instrumental introduction instead of "Bolero." After an energetic start, it kicks off and goes as a bolero for a time (big surprise there). One can hear the musicians really lock into gear at 2:06 when Hendrix begins a series of fast and fiery runs, soon letting out an off-mic "yeah" to show how much he's enjoying the performance. After that, the musicians' shared grip on each other lightens slightly as the first half winds down before fading to near-silence. When the song builds up again, it's markedly different and more controlled; the trio render a loose, beautiful, and emotive version of "Hey Baby," which for a long time stood as my favourite Hendrix song.

The South Saturn Delta compilation from 1997, which contains several tracks

from this album. In the cover photo he seems to be the ezy ryder himself.

    Coming in at just over ten minutes, it's by far the longest song on the album. The first and second halves were recorded seperatly during the same session and then edited together in a very rough mix made that August (which is found on the recent Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision box set). It never got further than that, and as a result I needed to do some significant editing so as to bring it into a relatively finished state. A large section coming right after the introduction had to be removed from "Bolero" because the band were still getting the feel for the song. As well, the song's second half, "Hey Baby," was the only part to ever recieve an early '70s posthumous mix, and it's a wonderful one, in my opinion by far the best mix that any part of the song has ever received. It begins with a fade-in though, so to attach it to "Bolero" I had to fade "Bolero" out to near-silence until it matched the volume of the first chord on "Hey Baby." I also panned the song slightly during that fade so that the stereo placements of the instruments doesn't shift as the halves transition quietly from one into the other. This mid-song fade helps keep things interesting, and conventently hides a source-changing edit as well; I used West Coast Seattle Boy (2010) for the first half, and the 2014 CD reissue of Rainbow Bridge for the second. The song was only included on the second tracklist, acting as the closer, and the second half of the song maintained that position on the official Rainbow Bridge album from '71. I too had it as the closer for a long time, before realizing that the following track was the perfect finale. As a result, "The New Rising Sun" is now the penultimate track.

    After the album's longest song comes its' last: the closing climax, Hendrix's stunningly beautiful rendition of a song that he had to sing in school as a child, the "Star-Spangled Banner." Unlike the rest of the album, this track dates from March 1969, not long before the Experience's final studio session together. His bandmates aren't present here though; it's just the guitarist and one half of early electronic music group the Silver Apples, Simeon (may he rest in peace), playing bass on a huge set of oscillators (the band's other half happened to know Hendrix from his pre-fame days). Both had been playing the song live at their shows and happened to be recording in the same studio, so decided to collaborate on it. Half a year down the line Jimi played it near the end of his Woodstock set, wrapping up the entire festival. He called the festival the "sky church" while onstage, something which helps me understand his religiosity. 

A much-improved fan-made edit of the cover for the recently re-released L.A.

Forum gig from this time period. He played "Star-Spangled Banner" there, saying;

"Here's a song that we was all brainwashed with! Remember this oldies-but-goodies?"

(Thanks again to John Busey-Hunt on the Steve Hoffman Forums).

    Woodstock's resulting live album was actually released in 1970 shortly before his death, and he admitted that he didn't know why it included his performance of the song. Unlike fans of generations since, he didn't see it as a political statement in the least; "I don't know what all the fuss was about the National Anthem. I'm American, so I played it. They made me sing it in school, so it was a flashback, and that was about it. All I did was play it. I thought it was beautiful..." (Zero, p. 152). So it was a reference to his childhood (similar to Mighty Mouse in "Astro Man"): an achingly beautiful, orchestral, emotional, and grandiose song that was important to him. But despite that, whether intentionally or not, it was undoubtedly political. I quoted him before as saying that everywhere he went, people were looking to him for answers, and that these songs show him trying to respond to that in his own way. This number was recorded a while before he said that, but that doesn't necessarily mean he wasn't feeling that way already. That's part of why I made this song the album closer; it's a much-needed climax, a victory lap, and a profound political statement (the meaning of which I will let readers deduce for themselves), all simultaniously. It was also performed at just about every show of the Cry Of Love tour, so it was clearly on his mind while he was recording music in 1970. The track was originally released at the end of side one of Rainbow Bridge (1971), but I found that it had the finality of an album closer. It's the climax that this very lengthly album needs, so I decided to use it as such despite the song never being in the running for this album in the first place.

    "Star-Spangled Banner" is in my eyes the single greatest pointer towards Jimi Hendrix's largely unexplored skills of arrangement and orchestration, a pointer, in other words, towards the more classical-oriented music which he was planning on making. It reaches arresting heights (my favourite part is 1:29-2:05) before burning out like a shooting star (or, burning out like his shooting star, so brief and so bright) before collapsing into an electric chaos of buzzes, zaps, and melodic runs until all that remains is the deep, rumbling bass, which itself gradually fades out before returning just once for the album's final single curtain-calling chord (in a similar way, actually, to what his guitar does at the end of the Are You Experienced stereo mix, making this a subtle but perfect full-circle moment). Once that deep chord fades to silence, and following a mammoth near-two hours of music, the final album that Jimi Hendrix ever made finishes and returns to the silence from whence it came. With the context of his premature departure in mind, "Star-Spangled Banner" takes on a special meaning in my eyes; with it, Jimi Hendrix waves goodbye to his home country as he sets off on the journey into the afterlife.

Conclusion

    I owe a huge, huge thanks to Soniclovenoize and his Albums That Never Were website for helping me make sense of the album's songs, along with the kind members on the long Steve Hoffman forum thread "Jimi Hendrix's unfinished fourth album - how would you sequence it?" This would not have happened without them. As I wrote earlier, this Ultimate Albums edition of First Rays Of The New Rising Sun has been a very long time in the making. Once I'd gotten through my inaugural listening of Hendrix's hits back during that first lockdown of 2020 ("Little Wing" had really touched me, I remember) but before the main albums had actually clicked with me, I began learning about this unfinished album's production which I outlined in great detail earlier. I developed a deep fascination with the thing. This project (in some other form) was the first full album of his that I listened to, and if it isn't yet clear, I've poured my soul into this project. I couldn't count the number of variations that this thing has gone through if I tried, but it's probably well over one hundred, if not two. Again and again and again and again, for over four long years I thought I was done, that at last it was as good as it could be, until upon a later listen I found more improvements to be made. The fruits of that seemingly endless search are what I'm presenting to you, dear reader, here. 

An alternate Electric Ladyland cover made by his American label Reprise.

It came to be used as the back cover to the album in some regions and the front in others.

    So many life milestones have come and gone as I've worked on this project that it's actually silly. Finishing high school. Moving across the continent and starting university. Getting seriously into writing poetry. Starting to date and get into relationships. Realizing I'm trans (I literally don't have the same name or gender that I did when I first began making tracklists for this thing, how crazy is that). It's a lot, and this album has been a throughline through everything. It's in large part responsable for both my fascination with sequencing, my method for assembling these albums, as well as the fact that I went through with my idea of launching a blog to talk about them; I realized this thing was too good not to share with other music lovers outside of my social circles. 

    This post (which I've been writing over the last 12-or-so months) is easily the biggest post on the blog, and I don't really plan on topping it. I've come back to this album so many times since I got the sequence down, and I'm super happy with it. Possibly due to the sheer number of times I've played the songs, I can actually play most of the album in my head while sitting in silence. There were times I listened to it so much that I couldn't stop myself from playing it, at the expense of all other music. There were still a few minor changes to make, but when I took "Star-Spangled Banner" off Hear My Train A-Comin' and put it here instead, something clicked. I realized that what I'd been putting together had seriously become larger than the sum of its' parts. For a while, listening to the last few songs on the album (and especially its' newfound closer) got me really sad. Why had I done this? Why had I poured my entire heart into "finishing" this art piece by this person who died over 30 years before I was born? I mean, I did it for the music of course (and close friends reassured me of that) because all songs deserve albums which let them shine their brightest, but that question nagged at me for a while. I suppose I've processed those emotions now, as that nagging thought hasn't really stuck around.

The (sequentially-improved) U.S. edition Are You Experienced (1967). 

    Apart from just being really good rock music, I hope that this album reveals two things about the man who made it. In the way that I've constructed it, this unfinished album should to some extent expose (in a very listenable way) Hendrix's creative process. As well, because my bar for song exclusion was focused much more on level of completion than content, I really hope that across its' 26 songs First Rays Of The New Rising Sun communicates something about the depth and scope of his artistry that most listeners won't have realized before. From his poetry-lyrics to his writing, his singing, his imagination, his skill as a bandleader, and the wide scope of his artistic vision (even when as unfinished as this); in essence, I hope people hear his sheer artistic power. Jimi Hendrix was no mere guitaritst or rock diety. He was an artist in the truest sense, and his canvas was more than just the wax. The guitar was simply his choice of paintbrush at the time, and he was on the verge of expanding his palette, as well as, seemingly, his brushset. It's no wonder so many artists of all mediums have deeply appreciated his music. Fragments of his soul can be found within it. Vocal cords long-decomposed, he still sings loud and strong. 

    Judging by his final interviews, he was not only on the verge of musical growth, but of one in maturity as well; "My nature has changed . . . I just hid for a bit, and now I'm emerging as me. I suppose I'm growing up a bit. I feel as though I get little sparks of maturity every now and then . . . I like the idea of getting married, just someone who I could love, though one can never tell if the time is right . . . One day I want to become a parent [he already was, actually, but that's another story]. Now that's what the world is all about. Having kids. Like planting flowers" (Zero, 187). In terms of more musical plans, he said that "I'd like to see as many places as I can and play in as many atmospheres as I can. Your home isn't America, it's the Earth. I'm planning a major world tour, either before or just after Christmas. I want to go to Japan and Australia. We also want to come back to England and do one big concert at each of the major cities. Jimi Hendrix at the Oval! I'd like to do Stonehenge, for the vibes. In fact, I want the group to work all over the place. I want to turn the world on" (Zero, 188).

The original U.K. cover of Are You Experienced (1967).

    I think that it's only fair to let Hendrix speak for himself as I close this big essay out, so here are the last bunch of illuminating pages from Starting At Zero. It seems that as his time came, he was reflecting on his life and work up to that point, and like a bluesman, he was at a crossroads. "Billy Cox has split, so I don't kmow what to do next [Cox is, as of writing, his only bandmate still breathing. Maybe he jumped ship just in time]. I don't know what my music will be like. It's really hard to know what people want around here sometimes. I'm just going to go on and do what I feel, but I can't feel anything right now because there's a few things that's just happened. So I just have to lay back and think about it all. It's got to be quiet for a while. I'm so tired of everything. I lose myself, I can't play anymore. I've been working very hard for three years. I sacrifice part of my soul every time I play. Certain things recharge me in an instant. I might get work out in an instant too. It all depends . . . Direction is the hardest thing for me to find right now. I can't even try to think how this life has affected me. Somehow I must have changed, but I can't know how. That's the problem. I've turned full circle. I'm right back where I started. I've given this era of music everything, but I still sound the same and I can't think of anything new to add to it in its present state. Sometimes I can't stand to hear myself because it sounds like everyone else and I don't want to be in that rat race. 

    The trouble is that people won't let me change. I tried a couple of years back, but it didn't work then either. You're still supposed to entertain, no matter what's happening to you as a musician. I wrote "Foxy Lady" so long ago by now that she's going to have three kids . . . I still can't figure out what directions my writing is going at the moment, but it'll find a way. All I write is what I feel, that's all. And I don't really round it off too good. It's almost naked. The words are so bland that nobody can get into them, and when we play - flip around and flash around - people just see what their eyes see, and forget about their ears . . . I've got to try something else. I'd like to get something together, like with Handel and Bach and Muddy Waters and flamenco - that type of thing. If I could get that sound, if I could get that sound, I'd be happy.

    I think I'm a better guitarist than I was, but I've never been really good. Every year, like my writing, it slips further and further away. The music I might hear I can't get on the guitar. It's a thing of just laying around and daydreaming or something. You're hearing all this music, and you just can't get it on the guitar. As a matter of fact, if you pick up your guitar and try to play, it spoils the whole thing. I think of tunes, I think of riffs. I can hum them. Then there's another melody [that] comes into my head and then a bass melody and then another one. On guitar, I just cant get them out. I can't play guitar well enough to get all this music together. I want to be a good writer, and I'd like to be a good guitar player. I've learned a lot, but I've got to learn more about music because there's a lot in this hair of mine that's got to get out. There's so many songs I wrote that we haven't done yet, that we'll probably never do.

    I won't be doing many live gigs because I'm going to develop the sound and then put a film out with it. In five years, I want to write some plays and some books. I want to write mythology stories set to music, based on a planetary thing and my imagination. It wouldn't be like classical music, but I'd use strings and harps, with extreme and opposite musical textures, even greater contrasts than Holst's Planets. Then I would like to write a story for the stage and compose the music for it. Take Greek mythology, for example, or your old stories about the Vikings and Asgard. I'd like to present that on stage with lights and lots of sound. Or perhaps a space war between Neptune and Uranus. My initial success was a step in the right direction, but it was only a step. Now I plan to get into many other things. I'd like to take a six-month break and go to a school of music. I want to learn to read music, be a model student and study and think. I'm tired of trying to write stuff down and finding I can't. I want a big band. I don't mean three harps and fourteen violins, I mean a big band full of competent musicians that I can conduct and write for.

    I want to be part of a big new musical expansion. That's why I have to find a new outlet for my music. We're going to stand still for a while and gather everything we've learned musically in the last 30 years, and we are going to blend all the ideas that worked into a new form of classical music. It's going to form the background of my music. Floating in the sky above it all will be the blues - I've still got plenty of blues - and then there will be western sky music and sweet opium music (you'll have to bring your own opium!), and these will be mixed together to form one. And with the music we will paint pictures of Earth and space, so that the listener can be taken somewhere. You have to give people something to dream on... It seems to me like music goes in a big cycle. The circle is completed and I'm starting back already. My goal is to be one with the music. I just dedicate my whole life to this art. You have to forget about what other people say, when you're supposed to die, or when you're supposed to be living. You have to forget about all these things. You have to go on and be crazy.

    Craziness is like heaven. Once you reach that point where you don't give a damn what everybody else is saying, you're going towards heaven. The more you get into it, they're going to say, "Damn, that cat's really flipped out. Oh, he's gone now." That's what they call craziness. But if you're producing and creating, you're getting closer to your own heaven. When the last American tour finished I just wanted to go away and forget everything. I just wanted to record and see if I could write something. Then I started thinking. Thinking about the future. Thinking that this era of music sparked off by the Beatles has come to an end. Something new has got to come, and Jimi Hendrix will be there. The moment I feel that I don't have anything more to give musically, that's when I won't be found on this planet, unless I have a wife and children, because if I don't have anything to communicate through my music, then there is nothing for me to live for. I'm not sure I will live to be 28 years old, but then again, so many beautiful things have happened to me in the last three years. The world owes me nothing.

    When people fear death, it's a complete case of insecurity. Your body is only a physical vehicle to carry you from one place to another without getting into a lot of trouble. So you have this body tossed upon you that you have to carry around and cherish and protect and so forth, but even that body exhausts itself. The idea is to get your own self together, see if you can get ready for the next world, because there is one. Hope you can dig it. People still mourn when people die. That's self-sympathy. All human beings are selfish to a certain extent, and that's why people get so sad when someone dies. They haven't finished using him. The person who's dead ain't crying. Sadness is for when a baby is born into this heavy world, and joy should be exhibited at someone's death because they are going on to something more permanent and infinitely better.

    I tell you, when I die I'm going to have a jam session. I want people to go wild and freak out. And knowing me, I'll probably get busted at my own funeral. The music will be played loud and it will be our music. I won't have any Beatles songs, but I'll have a few of Eddie Cochran's things and a whole lot of blues. Roland Kirk will be there, and I'll try and get Miles Davis along if he feels like making it. For that it's almost worth dying. Just for the funeral. It's funny the way people love the dead. You have to die before they think you are worth anything. Once you're dead, you're made for life. When I die, just keep on playing the records" (Starting At Zero, 189-195).

The story of jesus

So easy to explain

After they crucified him,

A woman, she claimed his name

The story of jesus

The whole Bible knows

Went all across the desert

And in the middle, he found a rose

There should be no questions

There should be no lies

He was married ever happily after

All the tears we cry

No use in arguing

All the use to the man that moans

When each man falls in battle

His soul it has to roam

Angles of heaven

Flying saucers to some,

Made easter sunday

The name of the rising sun

The story is written

By so many people who dared,

To lay down the truth

To so very many who cared

To carry the cross

Of jesus and beyond

We will guide the light

This time with a woman in our arms

We as men

Can't explain the reason why

The woman's always mentioned

At the moment that we die

All we know

Is God is by our side,

And he says the word

So easy yet so hard

I wish not to be alone,

So I must respect my other heart

Oh, the story

Of jesus is the story

Of you and me

No use in feeling lonely,

I am searching to be free

The story

Of life is quicker

Than the wink of an eye

The story of love

Is hello and goodbye

Until we meet again.

CD-quality down-low'd linc's here.

Happy listening, and tell me what you think of it below!