JIMI HENDRIX — War Heroes (review)

JIMI HENDRIX — War Heroes album cover Album · 1971 · Jazz Related Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
Sean Trane
Last album that most expert consider valid, exploiting recorded material finished in an acceptable manner that Jimi would’ve (maybe) released. These tapes were found at the Electric Lady studio, and even feature three tracks with Noel Redding on bass, the rest being handled by either Jimi or Billy Cox.

What to say of the music, except that we are in a typical Hendrix mode and sonically, this is much wilder than Cry Of Love, but also much less refined and sometimes the rawness is chilling my spine. Indeed guitar bonanza tracks like Midnight or Tax Free are almost blues-derived jams that soar, with some great drumming, pedestrian bass and searing guitar histrionics. Exactly the type of track that inspired Italy’s Garibaldy or Germany’s Guru Guru in their early days. Beginnings is somewhere between the jam and the song and might be the most interesting for progheads with its tempo changes. At other times, some tracks are song format such as the almost-finished Bleeding Heart or Highway Chile or the work-in-progress cute 3 Little Bears or Izabella. And then there is the useless but aptly-titled Peter Gunn “Catastrophe” obviously included as a filler, just like that unjustified Stepping Stone version.

As I said above, if you care for Hendrix’s career, but don’t want to do with exploiting products, War Heroes is (with some rare exceptions) the last album chronologically that you should venture in. In this regard, avoid the next two, Crash Landing and Midnight Lamp, where a producer erased the bass and drums to record them anew. So three starsd is well paid for such an album. All I can say from those three legit posthumous releases is that I see no evidence that Jimi was to start in a jazz or funk mode. WH, CoL and RB are well in the line of Electric Ladyland.

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