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Jimi Hendrix, session guitarist turned solo superstar, was primed to explode when he landed smack in the middle of London’s burgeoning psychedelic rock scene in September 1966. Former Animals bassist Chas Chandler had imported Hendrix into Britain, impressed with his performances in New York, and it had been decided that his first single would be Hey Joe, a traditional song of uncertain origin made famous by folkie Tim Rose.
The following month, Chandler took Hendrix and his swiftly assembled band – completed by bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell – into De Lane Lea studios in Holborn, with a newly acquired Marshall amplification rig. Chandler had recorded there often with The Animals, but Hendrix immediately took charge, fighting with him over the necessity to record at the high volume essential to the creation of his sound.
"This is useless," Hendrix lamented, "I’ll never be able to make a record here."
Sensing that his control over his protégé could disappear before the sessions were underway, Chandler thought fast. "I’d just come from the Visa Office and I had his passport and a return ticket to America in my pocket. So I handed them to him and said, ‘Go on then. Fuck off back to America.’ And he just burst out laughing."
With the hierarchy restored, work resumed. And after several dozen takes and more studio time – the delays caused by Hendrix's uncertainty about his own singing – Hey Joe was in the bag. And what a recording it was.
You’ll have heard the stories of how British guitar potentates such as Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton were awe-struck by Hendrix’s otherworldly abilities when they saw this new American kid play his first, low-key shows in London. Now imagine what the public at large, most of whom couldn’t tell the front end of a Fender from the back end of a frying pan in those far-off days, felt like when they first heard the scintillating solos on Hey Joe.
Not to mention the lyrics, which concern the confession of the titular Joe as he plans to murder his ‘old lady’ after he ‘caught her messing ’round with another man’. By the song’s end, the crime has been committed, which must have been something of a shock for the average British rock listener. It was as if the sound of ancient blues had been reborn in hard-rock form; the ghost of Robert Johnson, reanimated.
Hey Joe was released in December 1966 on Track Records, the label owned by The Who’s managers, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp. It was backed with Stone Free, a Hendrix original, and distributed by RCA. Appearances on the TV shows Ready Steady Go! and Top Of The Pops helped the single to climb to Number Six in the UK, although, sadly, no known footage of either performance exists, as UK broadcasters routinely wiped and taped over master reels, believing them to have no historical value.
Hendrix’s trajectory, which we now know was to burn brightly but briefly, was set in motion.
"It was amazing to watch him for the first time," said Marc Bolan, who was in the room when Hendrix appeared on Ready Steady Go! "Everyone else used to use backing tracks, but he was going to play live, because they got him on the show the same day.
"I was in the control room with the producer, just sitting about, when they started Hey Joe, and this old lady really freaked out and said: 'Turn the backing track down!' Because it was really loud. All the machines were shaking. And they said: 'But there is no backing track.'"
Hey Joe is not Hendrix’s most incendiary performance, musically or politically – consider Fire and All Along The Watchtower or even his Woodstock attack on The Star Spangled Banner for that. It’s not his most psychedelic, most subversive, or his most epoch-shaping song, depending on your point of view.
But Hey Joe was the gateway to his artistry for the public of 1966, and as a vehicle for the total summation of Hendrix’s skills at this early point in his career, it’s unbeatable.
