Why I Suck.. Series 4, Episode 7 - Jimi Hendrix Pt. 3 "Axis: Bold As Love"

 

As guitar icons go, they really don't come any bigger and more famous than one James Marshall Hendrix. Having covered his blues playing in 2020, and transcribed my waythrough “Are You Experienced” in 2021, this time my goal was to make it through the “difficult second album” that is Axis: Bold As Love. Often seen as the unloved “middle child” between the groundbreaking (for its time) “Are You Experienced” and the 2 disc psychedelic opus “Electric Ladyland”, this is nonetheless an interesting look at the band musically and historically.

Certainly, the feel of the album is a lot less urgent overall, the sound of a band having “made it big” and now struggling to work out quite where they take things from here – there are a lot of hilariously cliché “counterculture” lyrics “White collar businessman flashing down the street.. hoping my kind will drop and die but I'm gonna wave my freak flag high”, but of course back then all that stuff was genuinely new – and some quirky straight up pop songs - “She's So Fine”, “Wait Until Tomorrow”.. but what I found most surprising is the comparative lack of much in the way of Hendrix guitar heroics.. anyone catching the “One Minute Lick” series through July will have noted that it really has been all variations on pretty much the same theme!

What does take centre stage throughout this album, however, is his signature fluid chord/ melody partial chord rhythm style – most famously on the sublime “Little Wing” but also present on “Castles Made Of Sand” and the title track itself, “Bold As Love”... so we're going to take a slightly different slant with this month's article and look at how some of these parts were created.

The basic principles come from breaking the underlying chord down into two or three note clusters, keeping one note static while moving another to a note from the parent major scale and then back. So for example, Jimi might imply a G chord (G B D) by playing the G and D notes at the 3^rd fret B & E strings, then decorate that by adding in the E note (6^th) on the 5^th fret B string before returning to the D at the 3^rd fret, or hold down the D while moving the G to the A and back, usually using a hammer-on/ pull-off manoeuvre.

Don't worry, this will seem a lot less confusing when I do the demonstration video!

Typically, Jimi would hold down the 5^th while moving the 3^rd to 4^th and back again, implying a major-sus4-major resolution, or hold the root down while moving the 5^th to 6^th, or occasionally flip that technique, holding the 5^th down while moving the root to the 2^nd (or 9^th) and back again – and here are two examples, the first being the utterly gorgeous and iconic three minute masterpiece that is “Little Wing”, followed by the equally beguiling but often overlooked “Castles Made Of Sand”:

Little Wing:

Notice in this example as well as the harmonics and partial chords, the fondness Jimi has for first inversion A string root chords, as well as the slid stacked 5ths with the ringing G string flavouring the F & G chords.

Castles Made Of Sand:

 

And of course we couldn't overlook the title track itself, Bold As Love:

Notice the chord sequence here - yep, it's a I V vi IV... even Jimi used it!

However, it wouldn't be a Hendrix Style Analysis without including at least some lead work – and here we have a slightly unusual example, taken from the epic end solo of Bold As Love. Here Jimi is outlining the chord sequence using arpeggios, following a three string pattern using the first inversion starting in the 3^rd on the G string and finishing with a stretch to the 3^rd on octave higher on the high E – this is the same technique the Eagles famously used on the “Hotel California” solo some years later and arguably presages the work of shred virtuosos like Yngwie Malmsteen, who interestingly released a cover of “Spanish Castle Magic” .

So there we have it, a slightly different slant on the playing of a true legend – this has been really interesting as I've always had a thing for Hendrix's partial chord work, probably even more so than his lead stuff – and judging from tracks like “Lenny”, I'm not the only one! It's a really useful skill to be able to weave in and out of what your bandmates are doing, rather than be constrained to a rigid rhythm/ lead role, so I highly suggest taking as much as you can from this album and seeing where you can apply it.


Next month, we take a leap into the dark side as we embrace the bizarre shred lunacy of Buckethead! THIS should be interesting... meantime, don't forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel and click the notification bell as all this month's examples are going to make a lot more sense when shown in context!