Blue Wild Angel: Live at the Isle of Wight (2002)
18 tracks, 119 minutes
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“A bit more volume on this one Charlie, it’s gonna need it! Let’s have a welcome for Billy Cox on bass, Mitch Mitchell on drums…and the man with the guitar…Jimi Hendrix.” The words that opened Jimi Hendrix’s performance at the Isle of Wight Festival in the early hours of 31 August 1970, as well as this recording of it and several other live compilations, have been burnt into my memory since childhood. Simple yet effective. A few seconds of tuning up…and then straight in with the trio’s anarchic version of ‘God Save the Queen’ and ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’. Not a bad way to start a set.
It’s Jimi #3! I’ve already covered Axis: Bold as Love and People, Hell and Angels before, and Blue Wild Angel is going to be the last Jimi on this blog, and the only live album of his. I obviously chose this one because I enjoy it (it is a Good Album, after all), but so many reviews and discussions of this set talk about how Jimi sounds dispirited, his music lacking in passion and the overall performance falling flat. That seems so strange to me, it’s as if I’m listening to a different record than the rest of them. I won’t claim that the performance is perfect, but there are so many sparkling moments all the way throughout that by far make up for any jetlag-fuelled moments of less-than-peak energy.
There’s even bits where some of the performance’s rougher edges are turned into moments of genius. The epic 22-minute version of ‘Machine Gun’ sees Jimi’s solo interrupted by walkie-talkie chatter from the festival’s security personnel interfering with the sound equipment. So what happens? He just builds it into his solo. Without warning and completely on the fly, he turns something that would derail other musicians into something that makes this one a truly unique performance. It goes almost without saying that Jimi’s guitar playing is immense all the way through here, because I don’t think he was capable of any less. His band – half Experience and half Band of Gypsies – have an easy confidence to them and, as always, I’m in awe at the drumming of Mitch Mitchell, who seamlessly turns jazz technique into the perfect accompaniment for Jimi’s heavy blues rock.
Despite what you think of this album as a whole, it’s still mad to think that, just 18 days after it was recorded, Jimi was dead at the age of just 27. What madness to achieve such a height at such a young age. His death was obviously not natural, so it obviously had no bearing on his performance at the Isle of Wight, but it nevertheless gives the whole thing a slightly surreal aspect to it. You can’t help but marvel that the fleetingness of life and the suddenness of death, even when music like this makes you feel so alive.
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