The rest of the disc features outtakes from various studio sessions. What’s missing in the collection - and this would be impossible to document fully - is how Hendrix built these recordings into the gargantuan, full-band versions on the album. It’s fascinating to hear how much these songs changed by the time he got into the studio. And then there are three takes of “Long Hot Summer Night” (one version is missing here) that find him settling into the right groove and strumming along on a song that would become a bluesy burner on the LP. You can hear him turn pages of lyrics mid-song in a version of “1983” that’s half as long as the album version and exponentially more intimate. (Some of his handwritten lyrics are reproduced in the accompanying book.) On a funky demo of “Gypsy Eyes,” you can hear him wince through the telephone ringing during an otherwise engaging recording. They’re quieter than the album - you can hear him struggling to keep his voice down and muttering things like “guitar solo” as he mapped a tune out- so as not to annoy his neighbors.
But it’s the non-album material that makes the box set definitive.Ī disc of early takes, dubbed At Last … the Beginning, features 12 amateur recordings Hendrix made himself on a Teac reel-to-reel in New York’s Drake Hotel in 1968. The original album still sparkles, thanks to the remastering job, and the documentary is insightful (most of it came out previously as an episode of Classic Albums).
With the way it tries to cover everything, the collection is nearly as ambitious as Hendrix was when he made it (though that would be impossible).
A new, 50th anniversary box set brilliantly explores Hendrix’s headspace leading up to the record’s release with private demos, a jaw-dropping live performance by the Experience at the Hollywood Bowl, a documentary about the LP and a 5.1 surround sound mix of the record, which is also remastered in its original form, by engineer Eddie Kramer.
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