People, Hell and Angels (2013)
12 tracks, 53 minutes
Spotify • iTunes
There must surely be hundreds of Jimi Hendrix compilations out there, and a good handful of those are made up of never-before-heard studio bits and bobs, and People, Hell and Angels is one of those. It’s much better than some though. The songs presented here are work-in-progress versions of pieces that were intended to go on his fourth studio album, the production of which was cancelled abruptly for unavoidable, mortality-related reasons. With Jimi’s famed perfection, though, you’d barely guess that these were unfinished.
Come on. You know that the stuff on here is going to be top notch – he was the greatest guitarist of all-time, and even his unstructured jams reach heights most players can never hope to achieve, so when it was with an album in mind, it had to be the next level, and that’s what you get here.
Although Jimi was always a blues guitarist at heart, that’s a more obvious focus here than on his other releases, and a good deal of the tracks here are straight-up blues. There’s a lovely version of ‘Hear My Train A Comin’’ (although it’s never going to be able to live up to the impromptu acoustic 12-string version he did – for my money, one of the greatest tracks of all time), and a cover of Elmore James’ ‘Bleeding Heart.’ But what I find most interesting about this album are his excursions into full-on R’n’B, where we get to hear Jimi play in a way he hadn’t since his days as a backing band staple.
Two tracks stand out in particular. There is ‘Mojo Man’, with a full horn section, percussion and even piano played by NOLA legend James Booker, that’s got a real funk to it, but the show stopper is ‘Let Me Move You’. It’s seven minutes of no-frills, hard-rocking R’n’B, with screaming vocals and honking sax from Lonnie Youngblood. It’s just a massive amount of fun. We all know Jimi’s immense skills as a lead guitarist and bandleader, but this piece lets us see a different side of him: Hendrix as sideman. He’s effortlessly excellent in that role too, of course. He takes some solos and enjoys some noodling around behind Youngblood’s singing occasionally, but even when he is working rhythm guitar duties, he brings a flair that is nigh-unmatched.
Hearing Jimi playing in this different setting just makes it even more painfully obvious how much we lost upon his death at just 27. He wasn’t just an amazing rock musician; he could slip into any format and excel, and pioneer. What could have been. Luckily, we can still enjoy what was, and really, at quality like this, we’re being spoilt as it is.
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