Jimi Hendrix

It's possible to look at the DVD title Jimi Hendrix and think this is just another of the flat, puff-piece profiles that swamp TV channels and video stores. But that's not what's inside the case. Originally released to theatres in 1973, Jimi Hendrix is a model performer biography which, even if it doesn't probe very deeply, creates a solid portrait of Hendrix as a person and as an artist that will be of interest no matter whether you're a newcomer to Hendrix or a seasoned aficionado. This result comes from taking the subject seriously but still keeping the sense of playfulness so crucial to Hendrix. The film is nothing more or less than a series of talking head interviews describing Hendrix's life in pretty much chronological order with musical performances interspersed throughout. This approach is so simple and so often an excuse for laziness. The key to Jimi Hendrix's success is that compliers (there are no credited directors) Joe Boyd, John Head and Gary Weis found and interviewed the right people. Sure Mick Jagger was apparently included for little more than marquee value but Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend more concretely describe how Hendrix hit the British rock scene. Even better is Hendrix's one-time girlfriend Fayne Pridgon who was an interviewer's dream: smart, insightful and relentlessly chatty. Providing more than platitudes are Hendrix's father Al, buddies Arthur and Albert Allen, former employer Little Richard and bassist Billy Cox. Running through the film are excerpts from Hendrix's appearance on the Dick Cavett Show where Hendrix was amused and open, leading Cavett to meet him on his own terms. Giving depth to the film - indeed showing why we care about Hendrix in the first place - are the performance clips, nearly all presented complete as they should be. (It's amazing how many documentaries on music or musicians don't have this respect; Ken Burns for instance frequently chopped up performances in Jazz.) Despite being of interest on their own, the way the performances are integrated into the film is what ties it together. The opening credits feature "Rock Me Baby" from the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and you could hardly find a better summation of Hendrix. The music is straight blues in structure but with riffs pulled out to the front, the voice-like guitar wails from decades of blues jolted by electricity and the beat agressively syncopated. As a film clip, though, you can see how thoroughly Hendrix had assimilated show business techniques. He assumes theatrical poses, turns body movements into guitar distortion and generally makes a grand production of the song. Other clips show different aspects of Hendrix while also expanding the interviews. A propulsive "Johnny B. Goode" features almost no performing frills but just Hendrix playing and singing like this was his story and he wanted no distractions. An acoustic studio performance on 12-string guitar shows him moving closest to conventional blues which Hendrix treats almost as a meditation (though it does reveal his tentative technique on acoustic). And after interviews discussing Hendrix's reaction to life as a celebrity comes a deeply heartfelt "Like a Rolling Stone" that matches Bob Dylan in a way few other performers could. But this give and take from interview to performance does show the film's limitations. At core, it's basically what is sometimes called a "life and times biography" where the exploration of Hendrix as an artist is mentioned only in superlatives or broad statements. For instance, which music was he playing during his early days? What did he listen to? In what specific ways did he develop the guitar style? How did technology affect his playing? It's easy enough to guess what he learned from Little Richard and Ike Turner but left unmentioned are T-Bone Walker, Buddy Guy and other precursors. (If you're interested, some of this is covered in Charles Shaar Murray's landmark book Crosstown Traffic.) The film does tackle, though a bit too briefly, Hendrix's thoughts and shifting status about race and its complex relations in American music, something more obvious with Hendrix because he was in many ways an outsider no matter where he went. Still, Jimi Hendrix remains a fascinating film. The DVD transfer can't clean up the grain of the original footage but that hardly matters. The lack of film damage or fading shows that enough care went into the DVD that this is probably the best it could be. Bonuses include a performance of "Stone Free" at the 1970 Atlanta Pop Festival, a short look at how a song was mixed in the studio and an hour-long collection of more interviews that's a nice supplement to the main film. For more information about Jimi Hendrix, visit Warner Video. To order Jimi Hendrix, go to TCM Shopping. by Lang Thompson