WI: Hendrix Lives

Heavy

Banned
Supposing Jimi Hendrix had not died in 1970, what musical avenues would he have been likely to pursue through the rest of his life? How would his historical ranking as a guitarist be affected in comparison to contemporaries like Clapton and Beck, or successors such as Van Halen and Rhoads?

For example, would he have had an "embarassing disco period" or the like with the onset of the 1980s? Would he have adapted or expanded his playing style with the popularisation of shred techniques in the early 1980s, or would he have continued with his regular style?

Would he have eventually recorded a duets album or an unplugged live album, as many aging rock stars end up doing?
 
It depends on whether he gets more involved with fusion jazz via Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock did (as suggested by his later studio work) and reaps the commercial and critical cred or just chases the bread making records with the Experience.
There's a myriad possibilities that were sadly closed off by his premature death.
 

GarethC

Donor
Random thoughts:

EVH's solo on Beat It would no longer be seen as so iconic, after Jimi's effort on the Bee Gees' You Should Be Dancing.

If Hendrix's emphasis shifts, Stevie Ray Vaughn may not get anywhere. Nile Rodgers may get fewer production opportunities.

It would have been Hendrix's guitar work on Daft Punk's Aerodynamic on the Discovery album, heralding a return from the jazz odyssey wilderness and to the apex of cool.
 
Jazz, jazz and jazz! Hendrix wasn't 'that' good, there where a number of other guitarists that could do the same stuff and some of them better. He was a GREAT showman which IMO counts a lot more than any tech playing. He would now be playing about 100 shows a year in front of upto 1,000 each time, more likely 500, and playing very few if any of his hits from the '60's and early '70's. One of the best things would be very few would want to play his, sh1t version of Hey Joe!
 
IMO, jazz fusion is the route Hendrix would take. From the accounts I've read, he was getting kind of bluesed out, and was tired of playing his psychedelic stuff. It's not to say that down the road he wouldn't revisit his late 60s musical style, but by 1970, he was looking to move on musically.
 
Hendrix would still be dead by now. But only recent, with successes on tracks like Just Like Starting Over, Aerodynamic and Beat It.
 
I could certainly envisage him going through a jazz-funk phase, maybe an acoustic album is likely, but I don't see him as a Travelling Wilbury somehow :D
 
He was a kid.

I'm forty-one.

If I'd told my early-20s self what I would be doing now, my younger self would be quite surprised.

There is no telling what he might have ended up doing stratospherically beautifully in in addition to the very righteous stuff he had come out with already.
 
I could certainly envisage him going through a jazz-funk phase, maybe an acoustic album is likely, but I don't see him as a Travelling Wilbury somehow :D

He would have had a moment or two at least with George Clinton, at the very least in passing!

(At the very very least, I think he might have liked "Flashlight," etc.)
 
Immediate impact, Black Gold, First Rays of the New Rising Sun/Strate Away (depending on what title he finally ended up settling on) and People, Hell and Angels probably get released at some point during the early 70's.

Touring, on the other hand, is a bit trickier.

At the time he died, he was said to be utterly exhausted from travel and was in a deteriorating relationship with his management (over just that subject, as well as others) so, Jimi might become, for the most part, 'Studio' Jimi, with occasional concerts performed on his terms, his choice of scheduling and his choice of venues.

It's said that he really didn't like playing in front of big audiences (anywhere north of 50k people) so, I think he would probably become the first 'arena rock' (if only in that the venues he'd be playing would be arenas/coliseums) star of the '70s, playing venues like MSG and the like, large theaters (Jimi at The Hollywood Bowl, anyone?:cool:) things like that, and being the hottest ticket in town, as, the performances would be far less frequent, but the shows would be of higher quality than competing artists because of the rest periods between shows/tours.

So let's say that's what carries him through to the mid '70s.

From there, who can say, concretely, which way he would have gone, but one thing I think can be said concretely about his music from that point on, is that he would have continued to be experimental and push the envelope with what he did. That was his nature.

Jimi in the '80s...who knows? He'd turn 40 in late 1982, so maybe he'd turn to more mellow work; acoustic and experimental jazz.

I think, once he quits drugs, he may very well end up working heavily with Frank Zappa, actually. (That could be in the '70s or '80s.)

THAT could produce some very interesting stuff. :cool:
 
I think, once he quits drugs, he may very well end up working heavily with Frank Zappa, actually. (That could be in the '70s or '80s.)

THAT could produce some very interesting stuff. :cool:


IIRC Zappa owned one of Hendrix's burned guitars. (I think he had it re-stringed and otherwise preserved.)
 
I think he may go into a funkier direction for any further albums. I can see a lot of live albums with songs spanning twenty minutes too... a lot of jamming and whatnot.

Hell, I can see him becoming a producer in the 80's working with bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Maybe a collaboration with Prince?

He'd still have a legacy but not as intensified.. but he was still revered even during his heyday.
 
He played with the Isley bros for a while, maybe some of that would have come out in his later work.

I remember reading back in teh seventies that he had plans to work with some jazz producer that would have included horns.
 
Top