From April 25 to August 1, 1970, Jimi, Mitch Mitchell (drums) and Billy Cox (bass) appeared in more than 30 American cities for what Jimi called the Cry Of Love tour. Recordings from 20 of these concerts have been collected and any astute evaluation reveals that 1970 was a phenomenally inspired time for the guitarist's musical development. Show for show, the spring of that year contained some of Hendrix's most sophisticated concert performances. Yet, ironically, this period has in retrospect received the least critical acclaim of any. There are dozens upon dozens of accounts of Jimi's career which gloss briefly over the 1970 American tour as if it consisted of a half-dozen dull and poorly received shows! This is the most tragic falsehood of the Hendrix legacy.

Three days after Earth Day 1970, Jimi's Cry Of Love band made their debut at the Los Angeles Forum (4/25/70). This music shimmers with a clarity and precision unlike any other of Jimi's recorded concerts. It's as if the environmental awareness of that week had inspired his highest degree of sustained concentration and determination to "get it together." The "shakiness," as Jimi called it, that permeated much of the Band Of Gypsys music had vanished.

Commemorating the beauty of this night, a mystifying new "little tune" is introduced. Land Of The New Rising Sun, with its flamenco-flavored Phrygian mode prelude, represents the first recorded evidence of Jimi's study and grasp of advanced theoretical concepts. Of the 115 collected concerts, this 1970 L.A. Forum performance represents Jimi's musical zenith (the show was recorded by several audience members, but the best audio sound comes from a tape on which a girl exclaims "Look at him, oh he's beautiful!" as Jimi introduces the band at the beginning, and the girls are heard giggling). Only sections of Jimi's Berkeley music can approach the L.A. Forum show for sustained perfection.

Oddly, Jim Bickhart writing for Entertainment World called the Forum show "deadly dull," further noting that "Jimi's attempts to update too-familiar guitar solos became pure cacophony and Cox was half asleep as he played bass runs first created by Noel Redding." It seems many members of the press (and rock guitar fans) couldn't resist the urge to play push-the-icon-off-the-pedestal when it came to Jimi. Many such negative reviews were printed about concerts that later surfaced on tape and revealed themselves to be, in fact, superb performances. Certainly, comments like those by Bickhart must have had a disturbing effect on Hendrix, especially on the heels of a monumental show like the L.A. Forum. The point was painfully obvious: the musical quality of his improvizations didn't register with people who came to see his axe smashing act. One segment of his audience was made up of musicians who responded to the symmetry of his melodies, while another segment responded to his guitar acrobatics and violence. These were often mutually exclusive groups egging him on in opposite directions - with each side merely tolerating his concentrations on the tastes of the opposing side. While trying to accomodate them both, Jimi sometimes satisfied neither.

But as a group, the 13 recordings from Jimi's April, May and June 1970 concerts contain the most highly concentrated music of his career. The importance of Billy Cox's bass playing should not be underestimated. Billy's tone provided the massively deep throb and stability that Jimi craved. Together they would swing like a pendulum right over the rhythmic edge. Billy, who had known Jimi for years, had always been the guitarist's first choice for bass. There is no doubt that much of the sheer joy and rejuvenation heard in the band's music was in response to Billy's solid accompaniment.

Without question, the Cox/Mitchell rhythm section provided Jimi with his finest tour band. The first three concerts - Los Angeles (4/25/70), Sacramento (4/26/70) and Milwaukee (5/1/70) - all contain urgent music. Though many of these audience-made tapes are plagued with distortion, Jimi's sustained musical genius is more than evident in the melodies and hermonies that these recordings reveal.

MACHINE GUN TOUR

Jimi once said that "everything influences my music." Perhaps the most dramatic example of this comes from a concert performed shortly after National Guard troops killed four Kent State University students during an anti-war rally.

During that week of national turmoil, Jimi performed on another mid-west campus for an audience of Oklahoma University students, on a site that was illegally and brutally swindled from the Cherokee Indians 40 years earlier (Jimi was part Cherokee, and the word "Oklahoma" translates in English to literally mean "red man's territory.") Caught in the currents of this time and place, Jimi dedicates Machine Gun to the Kent State slain, improvises a six-chord salute, and wails forth a fountain of tears. Like an eternal swirl of collapsing sorrow, this Norman, Oklahoma (5/8/70), music is the definitive dirge of utmost pathos. This version of Machine Gun is the single most chilling and fascinating track in Hendrix's bootleg legacy.

One week later, a second group of students were murdered by police and troopers at Jackson State in Mississippi. The next day Jimi appeared before students at Temple University in Philadelphia (an 8mm color film of the show exists). Following the Grateful Dead and Steve Miller, Jimi arrived with a feather in his headband. Like Geronimo on the warpath, he scowled to the students, "It's a drag that America's guns have made the crack in the Liberty Bell their symbol!" Again, a supematurally charged version of Machine Gun provided epic catharsis for the students attending.

It is nice to Jimi Hendrix is such an incredible guitarist, for the Hassle Factor at his Berkeley Community Theater, 10 p.m. concert on Saturday [May 30] was high. The show was sold out, as was the 7:30 concert…Hendrix really is an exceptional musician. His playing appears effortless even to the point of locking his right hand into a fixed position on the guitar's neck (he is, of course, left-handed), and then playing for what seems to be 30 seconds or a minute varying only his finger-work, not his hand position. By using the electronic variations available, he is able to very for sound from oily to icicle. His technique from blues to steel to flamenco, and the shimmering shattering high notes sliced through the brain like those of no other musical instrument. He played for about an hour… he sang adequately and generally unintelligible, slammed the neck up and down the microphone stand, went on his knees to his back, picked with his teeth and indicated on a couple of occasions that the guitar was not so much a guitar as an appendage of his lower body. In other words, he did Jimi Hendrix to perfection and played so well that it never interfered with the emotional communication…So, you may say, he played beautifully.

When the Cry Of Love group hit the open-air concert trail in July, August and September (Atlanta, New York, Isle Of Wright, Stockholm, Isle Of Fehmarn), the precise timbres of Jimi's earlier indoors sound system were unfortunately replaced by a congested, bloated and over-distorted guitar tone.

NEW RISING SUN TOUR

Jimi's appearance at the Isle Of Wright Festival on Sunday, August 30, 1970 is not a fitting portrait of Hendrix's music at the end. Fortunately, all of his last seven concerts were recorded in their entirety. I refer to this tour as the New Rising Sun Tour, because Land Of The New Rising Sun is the only song common to every concert and it seems to be the centerpiece of Jimi's message at the time. Each version of "Sun" is like a serene prayer. Of the seven concerts, Gothenburg (9/1/70) and Copenhagen (9/3/70) reveal themselves to be two of Jimi's most elaborate and mystifying appearances.

Mitch Mitchell's daughter, Isha, was born on the day of the Copenhagen show and to commemorate the occasion, Jimi presented his drummer with one of his fabled white Strats. The music created with Billy Cox that night is the jewel of the New Rising Sun tour (an 8mm color film exits from this show). This electric show is my third favorite of 115 concert recordings, right behind LA. (4/25/70) and San Jose (5/25/69).

In connection with the aborted concert in Arhus last Wednesday, Jimi Hendrix is supposed to have said that he had 'been dead for a long time.' If this is correct, I would suggest that the concert in Copenhagen a day later was a resurrection from the dead. A similar musical liveliness I have rarely experienced. It lasted one and a half hours, and left one like a rag. It was hard to bear. More reserved listeners might make objections, saying that Hendrix fails to give the audience breqaks, and that he played at unvaried speed at the highest volume and intensity. But I am afraid there seems to be nothing to do about that. After all, it is on this level of sound that he utilizes the guitar amplifiers tonal possibilities...it is not frequesnt you experience something like this...it is music which is continually built up, music which, almost from minute to minute, exceeds its own limits. Not to forget his unique appearance, his colorful dress, and most of all his supple grace in every movement during his playing. I do not think I know any musician who offers the eye as much as hendrix...Drummer Mitch Mitchell is an excellent third paert...with a rhythmic complexity and an ability to follow Hendrix everywhere, which can be hard to imagine any other drummer doing.

The label 'Concert of the Year' has beeen used many times, but thistime it is justified. Jimi Hendnrix at the K.B. Hallen last night surpasses anything we have heaard until now. A filled hall made love to him, sat with open mouths and vibrating nerves, and heard him him, Billly Cox, and Mitch Mitchell (who went to London yesterday and returned onn a rented plane, to say hello to his newborn daughter). Jimi was ill and tired in Arhus, but was so high in Copenhagen that it was true energy, true adrenalin which ran through his fingers, through his guitar, and into all of us. That any human being can contain this much is incredible. He gave the peace sign when he entered, and the feelings he and his group expressed through their music was true love, a love which contains all the aspects of life, from sorrow to rebirth. As a warrior of love he stood, dresssed in many colors, and was the best guitarist rock 'n' roll music can offer. What Hendrix, Cox, and Mitchell gave to those who were at the K.B. Hallen, no one can take away.

I've tried to point out some of the highlights to help you initially sort through this incredible catalog of music. Hendrix fans should, however, explore these tapes and pick their own personal favorites.

- James Sedgwick]