On August 1, 1970, Jimi Hendrix played a spur-of-the-moment free concert on a slapped together stage on a cattle ranch in Maui so filmmaker Chuck Wein could shoot some live footage to insert into an awful sounding Easy Rider rip-off called Rainbow Bridge. This was just four weeks before Hendrix’s infamously disappointing performance as the headliner of the Isle of Wight Festival— just seven weeks before his death. Under such circumstances, it’s natural to expect little of Hendrix’s Maui gig. Yet, recordings prove it was a spectacular testament to how in charge of his powers he still was so close to the end of his life.
After performing a couple of jammy, fairly nondescript songs he intended to include on the uncompleted First Rays of the New Rising Sun, Hendrix—with Billy Cox on bass and Mitch Mitchell from the Experience on drums—settles into a stunning run of material played with all due beauty and fury. Hear a stormy “Foxey Lady” melt into a gorgeously fluid, string finessing “Hear My Train A-Comin’” that builds to a scorched earth climax. Hear an explosive “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)” on which Hendrix draws out the song’s depth by singing as though he’s crooning at the bottom of a cavern. Hear vicious versions of “Fire” and “Ezy Ryder” and a very funky “Message to Love”.
Despite the ramshackle set up, the recording is pretty solid. Hendrix’s guitar and Cox’s bass are sufficiently clear and deep, though Mitchell’s drums sound a bit like a rack of tin cans. While not every unreleased live recording from even an artist of Hendrix’s stature deserves release, the Maui gig certainly does, and The Jimi Hendrix Experience-Live in Maui is now appearing available from Sony Legacy as a triple vinyl set and a double CD set with a Blu-ray that includes all existing footage of the gig as well as the documentary Music, Money, Madness … Jimi Hendrix and Maui. It’s an attractive package, but it’s what may be the last recorded evidence of Hendrix’s on-stage brilliance that makes The Jimi Hendrix Experience-Live in Maui essential.
