Jimi Hendrix: Band of Gypsys [LEGACY]

Why you'll love it

This Experience Hendrix edition is remastered from the original two-track master tapes on 180g vinyl, in a gatefold jacket with an 8-page booklet and liner notes by John McDermott. The album reached No. 5 in the US and No. 6 in the UK and has gone double platinum in the US.

This edition

• Remastered
• 180g vinyl
• Gatefold jacket
• 8-page booklet
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

Most people ring in the new year with a toast. Jimi Hendrix did it with two sets at the Fillmore East that ran past midnight from December 31, 1969, into the first days of 1970, and this album comes from those shows.

With the Experience behind him, Hendrix played with his old army friend Billy Cox on bass and Buddy Miles on drums, and the sound is looser and funkier, with all three singing. "Machine Gun" is the centrepiece, more than twelve minutes of improvisation that Hendrix dedicated to soldiers at home and abroad, often compared to John Coltrane in its reach. "Who Knows" opens with a long, easy groove, and Miles, who wrote "Changes" and "We Gotta Live Together," sings lead on the former.

Vernon Reid and plenty of other guitarists have named "Machine Gun" as a major influence, and the album entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2018. Hendrix made a guitar sound like a storm, a siren and a choir in a single solo, which seems rather greedy given the rest of us can barely manage one of them.

Also at Kops: more Jimi Hendrix on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Experience Hendrix / Legacy (cat# 88697623991), a reissue of the 1970 live album.