There are plenty of live albums that sound carefully choreographed and planned. Band of Gypsys, by contrast, is more like a glimpse inside Jimi Hendrix’s rehearsal room.
The six tracks recorded at the Fillmore East on New Year’s Day 1970 seem like a rather brilliant work in progress. “Who Knows” settles into a thick, slow groove until repetition begins to feel hypnotic. “Machine Gun” uses the guitar to mimic sirens, gunfire and human cries. Elsewhere, you can hear the musicians listening to one another, holding back, pushing forward and occasionally losing their footing.
Released partly to satisfy an overhanging contractual obligation, Band of Gypsys captures Hendrix at the least settled point of his brief and tragic career. The Jimi Hendrix Experience, with which he had recorded three landmark albums and risen from the Greenwich Village club circuit to international superstardom in barely three years, had dissolved after British bassist Noel Redding walked away from the project due to creative disagreements. In the Experience’s place, Hendrix formed an all-black trio, drawing from the musical world he had inhabited before his time in Britain: he recruited Billy Cox, an old army friend and veteran of the Chitlin’ Circuit, to play bass, and Buddy Miles, a drummer and singer steeped in soul, funk and R&B.
Band of Gypsys captures Hendrix at the least settled point of his brief and tragic career.
The material they played was largely new. The band had no previously established stage routine and very little shared history. They were still learning how to leave space for one another. And within weeks of recording Band of Gypsys, the arrangement had collapsed.
