Unreleased songs recorded by Jimi Hendrix between 1968 and 1970 will be released next year.
Experience Hendrix and Legacy Recordings announced Wednesday that they will release Hendrix’s Both Sides of the Sky on March 9, 2018. The 13-track album includes 10 songs that have never been released.
Hendrix died in 1970 at age 27. The new album is the third volume in a trilogy from the guitar hero’s archive. Valleys of Neptune was released in 2010, followed by People, Hell and Angels, released in 2013.
Eddie
Kramer, who worked as recording engineer on every Hendrix album made
during the artist’s life, said in an interview that 1969 was “a very
experimental year” for Hendrix, and that he was blown away as he worked
on the new album.
“The first thing is you put the tape on
and you listen to it and the hairs just stand up right on the back of
your neck and you go, ’Oh my God. This is too (expletive) incredible,”
said Kramer. “It’s an incredible thing. Forty, 50 years later here we
are and I’m listening to these tapes going, ‘Oh my God, that’s an
amazing performance.’”
Many of the album’s tracks were
recorded by Band of Gypsys, Hendrix’s trio with Buddy Miles and Billy
Cox. Stephen Stills appears on two songs: '$20 Fine' and 'Woodstock'.
“It sounds like Crosby, Stills & Nash except it’s on acid, you know,” Kramer, laughing, said of '$20 Fine'.
“Jimi is just rocking it,” he added. “It’s an amazing thing.”
Johnny
Winter appears on 'Things I Used to Do'; original Jimi Hendrix
Experience members Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding are featured on 'Hear
My Train A Comin'; and Lonnie Youngblood is on 'Georgia Blues'.
Kramer
produced the album alongside John McDermott and Janie Hendrix, the
legend’s sister and president of Experience Hendrix. Kramer said though Both Sides of the Sky is the last of the trilogy, someone could find new Hendrix music in an attic or a basement, which could be re-worked.
He also said they have live footage of Hendrix, some just audio and some in video, which they plan to release.
“It
was amazing just to watch him in the studio or live. The brain kicks
off the thought process — it goes through his brain through his heart
and through his hands and onto the guitar, and it’s a seamless process,”
Kramer said. “It’s like a lead guitar and a rhythm guitar at the same
time, and it’s scary. There’s never been another Jimi Hendrix, at least
in my mind.”
