For the last 6 years I have been intermittently enjoying and studying a 2 minutes and 26 seconds long track recorded in 1967 by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and written and dominated (as usual) by Jimi Hendrix’s singing and solo electric guitar playing. It is his Opus Magnum – a mountain-top experience of genius. Such a short little eruption of brilliance and complexity! It contains a beautiful chord sequence that both fulfills and denies the usual laws of music construction. The melody is simply and yet complex in just the right tension. The phrasing hold the listeners’ interest by using intriguing intervals and satisfying resolutions. The singing is mysterious, romantic, accessible and yet other-worldly. The guitar work delivers on every possible front – attack, swoosh, runs, choppiness, grand chords, melodic lines. The guitar techniques are a mini-compendium of all that made Hendrix unique and colossal. Wow. I could listen to it ten thousand times and still enjoy it and pick something new out of it to learn,
As Keith Richards, who himself continues to study the song, once said of it “there’s a lot going on there”. I feel like it was Hendrix’s most exquisite gift to us all. It was the gift of romantic passion for a Swedish girl named Katerina, for all women everywhere, for his mother; it was a postcard from the Monterrey festival; it was a glimpse into his spirituality of The Great Spirit in guardian-angel-like presence; it was an encyclopedia of his musical art.
‘Take anything you want from me‘.