In this case, a double-LP even. Jimi Hendrix, Electric Ladyland. My brother Jean-Pol was 8 years older than me and arrived with this album in the winter of ’68-’69 (the double-LP came out in October 1968). I could hear in the bedroom next to me from the green Philips pickup (with matching boxes), sounds you didn’t hear on the radio. This definitely did not sound like top-40 music. He thought it was funny that his 10 (!) year old brother was fascinated by this ‘underground’ music. ‘And The Gods Made Love,’ immediately followed by ‘Have You Ever Been To Electric Ladyland,’ (certainly one of the very best Hendrix pieces at all). I had never heard of the word psychedelic before but understood at once what it meant, right after that ‘Crosstown Traffic’, what a sound, what an atmosphere, what a feeling this music unleashed in me. That voice, that guitar sound. Bloody hell. I’m not going to review the whole album here, but who doesn’t know the Hendrix version of ‘All Along the Watchtower’? Imagine you are 10 years old, living somewhere deep in South Limburg and you hear this song for the first time in your life. Margraten briefly became New York or London or Woodstock, which is how this music took me.<\/p>\n
Special mention for a song that still gives me goosebumps every time now (a song that may not ring a bell with most); ‘1983 – A Merman I Should Turn to Be’. Thirteen and a half minutes. When I put this on in the car I really have to stand by the side and listen until it’s over. Softly singing along (I know the poetic not everyday lyrics by heart after a thousand listens) and realizing that these were the first Hendrix sounds I ever heard, something happened then in my (now deceased) brother’s bedroom that will stay with me all my life. Later (2002) I had the immense good fortune to play once again with Noel Redding, the right hand of God, so to speak. He told me about his time with Jimi and ‘the Experience’ and I really had to squeeze my arm that this was really true what I experienced. Later it became clear what influence Hendrix had on guitarists and modern music as a whole. To this day, I think it does. Hendrix also made me appreciate the blues, because although he was not a ‘pur sang’ blues musician, his music was certainly deeply intertwined with it. ‘He took the blues to another level’ Steve Lukather once said to me. Luke is also big Hendrix fanatic and from him also the unsung statement ‘Jimi could make a broomstick sing’. Although I spent hours and hours, weeks, months, yes years trying to master guitar playing, I never succeeded to my satisfaction, so I started singing.<\/p>\n
Short anecdote: in 2001 I managed to get a nice group of musicians together in the studio, including Richard van Bergen (Rainy Day, what a sound Ries…), Roel Spanjers, Marcus Weijmaere, Marcel Aeby, Jules Peters and the current mayor of Valkenburg, Daan Prevoo, plus about ten others. The CD release party of ‘The Hendrix Files’ took place in April 2002 with, among others, Noel Redding, Jan Akkerman and aforementioned men. Sweet memories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-11980","bluesvdmaand","type-bluesvdmaand","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n