Jimi Hendrix | Bold as Love | Black Music Month

Friday 08 June, 2012 at 8:26 am Bomani Blog 6

Jimi Hendrix

I think we can all agree Jimi Hendrix was a weirdo. That’s not an insult, but love songs written by weirdos tend to be a bit of a mixed bag. Especially the sorta weirdo who would try to break you for your girl dead in front of you. Jimi was that sort of weirdo (read a story once of him trying to pull Marianne Faithful dead in Mick Jagger’s face and saying “I don’t care about Mick”).

And weirdos do stuff like explain love through the colors of the rainbow, and they don’t bother to make sense until the end of the second verse. And, when the weirdo’s as good as Jimi, they somehow find a way to make it work.

There’s no real science to “Bold as Love.” It rambles around that loose, chromatic theme. It “ends” twice, with a 360-degree rising crescendo of drums in between. It’s the good and the bad. Purple anger and green envy are casually mentioned before the “live-giving” blue waters. And all, as titled, are bold. So are the good things. So is his red confidence and yellow fear. It’s classic Hendrix, fully immersed in whatever he felt or played at the time, even if this one song meant being immersed in them all at one time.

Sure, the whole greatest-guitarist-ever thing is why we’ll always remember Jimi, but that emotion is why we think of him as such. You can go find guys who can do all kinds of twisted shit with they fingers, and you can find folks who can play every note Jimi played and then some. But no one, ever, has been able to tap into the feeling of a song with his guitar like Hendrix. Where so many see the best guitar player as the one who can most blow your mind, Jimi remains the greatest at moving the soul.

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It’s that quality that grounds his often abstract lyrics. Behind “Bold as Love” are notes that dance behind the verses, his characteristic style of breaking down chords into their component parts so nothing gets lost. The solos aren’t fast or necessarily impressive. They’re just perfect, picking up from his confession of love and exploding in something between an expression and a release.

And if you didn’t understand him the first time, he cranked it up again.

The name of the game in music will always be emotion. Great singers make you feel them. Great instrumentalists move you as they make you move. Jimi, awkward though he could be while singing, was great at both. Because no matter what weird shit he was on, you had to feel it. There was no other choice because he had no other choice. He was too confident in his difference, too comfortable in his insecurities, to do anything else. The acknowledgment of fear didn’t require that he bow to it. Love was bold, so he had to be, also.

And he always was. His one guitar did the work of two men. On “Bold as Love,” he did enough feeling for two, also. Except it was always just him. Just his willingness to ride out the dissonant voices inside all of us. But he wasn’t torn between them. He wasn’t even stuck in the middle. He brought it all with him, and whatever else he couldn’t carry was in his guitar case.

He was the best because he was everything, and he said it all, regardless of how it sounded when it came out. He had his guitar to say the rest.

And we heard him, loud and clear.

Textemple

Great track…soaring guitar, typical abstract lyrics, trademark Jimi.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_N36XM4MB3IVKPJEJPKEDVZB6OA Andre

very good article. There are tons of people who can play faster, louder, and are more technical than Hendrix. But none of them can capture the feeling and emotion he did.
Ben

Every time I try to play this song in my mind, I get “Electric Ladyland” instead.
JDGAFFLIN

“Just ask the Axis.”

Bomani, bravo. Phenomenal read.
http://twitter.com/rumblestrip Rumblestrip

Couldn’t agree more. That said, the semi-reincarnation of Jimi, Stevie Ray Vaughn could sling it as well. Go watch and listen to “Live at El Mocumbo” Early in his career, but you will never forget it.
D.K. Wilson

Bomani, you had to know I was coming…

Assessment if Jimi’s playing = on point (“moving the soul,” yeah). But. His love songs being weird??? Wind Cries Mary. Longing? Yes. But not weird. Electric Ladyland. Psychedelic? Yes. But not Weird. Drifting? Poetic, beautiful, a sound and word scape? Yes. But not weird. Angel. Even Rod Stewart sang it!

Now, for Axis, Bold as Love.

Verse One: Jimi’s Purple = royal. The ability to be angry, yet manage a smile, is the gift of the gods, towering in their shiny metallic purple armor. Behind the god-king is his queen, Envy, with her gown not quite as green as grass. so it sneers, envious as it sees itself trailing behind her on the green it is not. Jimi’s Blue – damn that’s a beatific line. Of course water is our life source. And in 1967 it was taken for granted. And as it peacefully laps upon the shores of Earth, “it quietly understands,” when it could just tsunami everything and take all the life away.

Verse Two: Jimi’s Red = Mars (combat, war, the death-defying confidence that goes with that competition). Jimi’s Orange = the 62nd spirit of the Goetia, Valu, or Volac. Orange is his color ( fem. equivalent – Vulana). Mercury is his planet. It is the spirit of craziness, the gamble, the wild-attempt at whatever comes to mind at the moment. The summoning of this spirit is also, in large part, to recapture youth, to travel “counter-clockwise.” Jimi’s Yellow – Besides being a nod to the Donovan, “Mellow Yellow,” (yes, it was about a dildo – and I’m sure Hendrix knew, too) yellow is, even in the West, associated with fear. The colors are Jimi’s life-exploration/fascination, his love (from his descriptions, you might conclude dude was synesthetic!); it wasn’t just love of a woman – it was life and its pursuit that he revered (remember, he spoke of his want to create “sound paintings”).

Love was something more to Hendrix than it was/is to most people. In his first go-round of touring he tasted all the fruit there was to taste. The second time he burnt out at the sameness of it all and saw just how far behind him people were – “FOXEY LADY!” “PURPLE HAZE!” “HEY JOE!” That shit, him introducing himself to the world, was already old. Jimi thought the world would move with him, but he learned there were forces ensuring that it and its denizens, stood still. So, Jimi became more obsessed with self-exploration, how to be the shaman (Voodoo Child), tell the world his vision, and bring them along to stand beside him.

That’s when he became dangerous. And not-so coincidentally, when he died.

“They,” his fans to Mike J. did all they could to make sure Jimi was never comfortable and at ease with his insecurities (the “kidnapping,” for instance). The constant touring was not just for the dough, it was meant to keep Jimi’s mind far away from the theft happening around him; keep him in the box. Hell, by the time he died, he was just learning how much money he didn’t have and how much his life was owned!

So, yeah Jimi Hendrix was “weird,” as in “the freak show is coming to town,” newspaper, contrived image of the “Wild Man from Borneo” coming to your town to plunder your daughters, tear down all the picket fences, and “knock the little jockeys off the rich people’s lawns.” But if Jimi was a different shade, he would have been placed with Watts, Leary and Ginsberg, or been viewed as an even more psychedelic Aldous Huxley, and lived to be known as “America’s Don Juan” (hell, maybe Castaneda wouldn’t have even gone that route!).

The story of Jimi’s life was quicker than the wink of an eye, the story of his love of life, fortunately more than just hello and goodbye. And because he left us his music, we can always meet him again.

(Bo, I know we’re in the same book, probably on the same page… Jimi thought out those lyrics. Most of his writings, Axis being one, underwent constant change. Many, like Purple Haze, were part of a much lager body of written work. As we know, it’s often difficult to reach inside and pull out the essence of yourself and commit it to words. But I’m sure it’s even more difficult for the few people, like Jimi Hendrix, who are conscious of their being watchers and participants of this world in which we live. His poetry should be placed on the same mantle as his music. Thanks for writing this piece and making me think, for the 1000th time, about what Jimi left behind.)