(Credits: Bent Rej)
Sun 21 December 2025 18:30, UK
Look around the world of rock and roll, and you’ll find no shortage of musicians who would cut their own legs off for the chance to perform alongside Jimi Hendrix. It seems ridiculous, then, that the guitar hero’s very own drummer nearly flitted away his chance to be featured in the pages of rock history forevermore.
Jimi Hendrix, being the otherworldly, revelatory figure that he was, tends to do something of a disservice to Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, the rhythm section of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In far too many cases, the guitarist is viewed in virtual isolation – although, admittedly, the band name The Jimi Hendrix Experience doesn’t help with that – but the musical backing of Redding and Mitchell was utterly essential to his psychedelic mastery.
It was manager and former Animals bassist Chas Chandler who concocted The Experience, after convincing the then-struggling R&B guitarist to up sticks and relocate to the swinging streets of 1960s London. Both Mitchell and Redding immediately impressed Hendrix with their adoration for old-school blues and R&B, and the trio seemed to gel together with effortless ease. Ultimately, though, there was never any doubt over who the star of the show was.
Even Chandler himself, despite being a bassist in his own right, was keen to make sure that Hendrix had full creative control, rather than the band being a democracy of equal votes. “I wasn’t concerned that Mitch or Noel might feel that they weren’t having enough – or any – say,” the manager once recalled in the book Ultimate Hendrix.
Still, it took the young Mitch Mitchell a little while to fully understand the opportunity that had been presented to him, playing with one of the greatest rock and rollers to ever grace the airwaves. Living the archetypal life of a young musician during the height of the most exciting period in modern history, the drummer – ironically – wasn’t too concerned with time-keeping or, indeed, sobriety.
“He used to be late all the time,” Mitchell’s former bandmate Noel Redding shared in the book Jimi Hendrix and the Making of Are You Experienced. “When times were tight, recording, Mitchell was always late.” Before too long, then, the rest of the band, including Hendrix and Chandler, started to get pretty sick of Mitchell’s tardiness.
When, for instance, the drummer didn’t appear for a CBS London session, Hendrix offered his job to the readily available John Banks, once the rhythm man behind The Merseybeats. Ultimately, though, Banks turned the proposition down, if only due to his fear of flying.
Instead, Chandler came up with a different method of putting a fire under Mitchell. “Chandler at some point docked him his wages for that week,” Redding remembered, “and he was never late again.”
Seemingly, it was money which motivated Mitchell, rather than the opportunity to perform with an artist as revolutionary as Hendrix. Regardless, the relationship between the trio soon improved, and together they ruled the waves of 1960s psychedelia like no other.
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