(Credits: Wikimedia)
Mon 11 August 2025 3:00, UK
“All my songs happen on the spur of the moment,” Jimi Hendrix once said, as if that was a surprise to anyone. In many ways, this flavour of randomness was the only way his guitar-slinging greatness could be explained, because if he had tried to cultivate it, he surely would have ended up very shrewd.
In this sense, his spontaneity could be viewed under two different lights – either effervescent and spellbinding, or completely terrifying and dangerous. Either way, it would leave people gawping in his wake, whether they were enthralled by the man or cast in abject terror by him. There was, and still is, no one who did it quite like Hendrix.
Although this was absolutely true for all to see, it also made it difficult to really ascertain where the guitar god’s psyche was in relation to his songwriting and composition processes. Was it just an act of luck, or was it actually more meticulous than he ever let on? It was hard to tell, but in Hendrix’s classic way, he couldn’t be drawn to give much away whenever someone dared to ask him about it.
This was to the extent that one plucky interviewer had the balls to question him on whether it was all a ruse, which is quite the unbelievable statement to make when you truly consider it. But Hendrix didn’t seem offended by the covert accusation that his songs were full of “gimmicks”, as he went on to explain that building the art of spontaneity into his work was not just a standard practice, but more a state of mind.
“On some records you hear all this clash and bang and fanciness, but all we’re doing is laying down the guitar tracks and then we echo here and there, but we’re not adding false electronic things,” Hendrix reasoned, making his creative journey sound as if it were a walk in the park, and not one that, to the rest of the world, harboured a sizzling mind-warping intensity.
His mantra was simple: “We use the same thing anyone else would, but we use it with imagination and common sense,” in doing so, exposing the two characteristics he clearly felt the rest of the musical world lacked. “Like ‘House Burning Down’,” he continued, “We made the guitar sound like it was on fire. It’s constantly changing dimensions, and up on top that lead guitar is cutting through everything.”
Of course, making a guitar “sound like it was on fire” is really no mean feat, but this captures the exact essence of elusive spontaneity that Hendrix carried through his whole life and career, rendering him the irreplaceable rock god that no one else could ever even come close to beating. If he used a bit of smoke and mirrors to get away with the magic act, then that was his own prerogative, but he most certainly had the whole world fooled.
Any prolific musician will make their process sound simple. ‘Look how easy it is for me,’ they say, smugly knowing that most will never be able to catch up. But there was something different in Hendrix; an authenticity where you knew he wasn’t joking, that the mastery did genuinely just roll off his fingertips without thought. That’s what made him a genius, but also so dangerously terrifying.
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