Voodoo Soup At Jimi's Last Supper

Moebius masterpiece

Having kept a relatively low profile - willingly or not - since Midnight Lightning, Alan Douglas [below - Ed.] stirred things up again with his interpretation of Hendrix’s missing fourth studio album. Hendrix was considering First Rays Of The New Rising Sun as a title, and while this is a little unwieldy, it still seems preferable to the mildly puzzling Voodoo Soup. But there’s an unappreciated humility in the choice of title - right up-front, Douglas is saying, “this isn’t First Rays - that’s something only Hendrix knew about.” Under any name, the album’s still a monster, and by far the most successful of all the post-mortem attempts to give the First Rays material a coherent sound and flow.

Douglas tells me: “I decided to use Voodoo Soup to make peace, bring everybody together, make everybody happy. I called Eddie Kramer, I called Mitch Mitchell, bring them in, and let’s all produce this thing of Jimi’s together. Because from my point of view this feels like the last one, I’d completed most of what I set out to do. Eddie Kramer came to see me, I said, you choose your songs, I’ll choose mine, the ones we agree on, those are what we’ll do. The lists were pretty close ...”

Douglas dries at this point. “I can’t get into too much detail, because it’s going to sound nasty, but I called my engineer to ready the tapes we agreed on, and Eddie Kramer went over to listen to them. My engineer called me next day, told me Kramer had turned up with his friend, John McDermott, and they didn’t want to listen to the tapes I told him to play for them, and what’s going on? So I called Mr. Kramer, and he said, no, no, that’s not true, I’m going back tonight, it’ll be okay. But the same thing happened again, they didn’t listen to what was on our list, they had some agenda of their own, and Kramer went back to New York. So I wrote him a letter, politely telling him I didn’t think we’d be able to work together, thank you for coming, etcetera, and he wrote me back - and if I’d kept this letter I’d have saved myself a lot of problems - asking to come back to the gig. Now, McDermott - I know this guy. he used to be a collector in Boston, I used to give him stuff - he wrote his book, Setting The Record Straight, without talking to me, without asking me anything. I mean, why not? I was there, I was part of it, and I could have given him a lot of first-hand information. But he didn’t call me. So I can see a lot of mistakes, a lot of hearsay in that book.”

It’s all a long time ago now, and Douglas’s frustration is dulled by acceptance that the record, far from being straight, is warped, and that’s the album people like to listen to.

“So anyway, Mitch Mitchell and I were good friends, we’d been hanging out together three, four nights a week when Jimi was alive, so I call him up, tell him I’m trying to get the whole family together again, and he comes over from Amsterdam or wherever it was he was living. And we’re in the studio, I put Stepping Stone up on the machine, with Buddy Miles’s drum track, the one Jimi stripped in but still wasn’t happy with. I said, the drums are all set up in the next room, you ready to do this? And he said ... No. I don’t think I can.”

At that time, Mitchell had a well-known drink problem that clearly distresses Douglas to talk about (he refers to it as a "health issue"), but it's central to understanding why Mitchell didn’t participate in the new mixes. For far too long Douglas has been lambasted for keeping Mitchell away from the project, when the reverse is the truth. I'm going against Douglas's wishes here by being specific about the health issue, but it's out here on the internet already - Mitchell's alcoholism isn't exactly a family secret. What is a secret is Douglas's inclusive approach and his discretion.

We know that Hendrix wasn’t happy with either of the drum tracks for Stepping Stone. We know now that Douglas brought Mitchell in to play new parts on the album, but Mitch didn’t feel he was up to it. And we should know that Bruce Gary is a fine drummer. This is the definitive version of Stepping Stone, and the screeches of outrage from the Hendrix obsessives (who can’t stand that Gary played with The Knack, for some reason) are beginning to sound very thin indeed. Gary co-produced the album with Douglas, and was there when Mitchell ducked out, and he nails it in one take. And gets a shitload of abuse for it. That’s fans for you - the same people who side with the talentless grifters posturing as "The Hendrix Estate". There's a lot of magic in that word estate - it gives an entirely unwarranted impression of wise and benign stewardship. Fans love estates.

The New Rising Sun makes for a hypnotic instrumental overture, and the feeling is immediate, and thrilling. Hendrix plays drums - with a simple touch that neither Mitchell or Miles had - and gets that epic outer-space under-water guitar feel with Uni-Vibe/Leslie effects. Total Hendrix, tripped-out and blissful, and this version is unavailable elsewhere. It shimmers and blurs into Belly-Button Window Again, Douglas pulls off an audacious programming stunt by cross-fading the cosmically out there opener into the most intimately in here song Hendrix ever recorded. The genesis of the new rising sun leads to a very human, and uncertain, birth. This is a small touch of genius, and to follow it up with the punch of Stepping Stone shows Hendrix couldn’t have a better hand on the controls. Already, we know this is an album, not a bunch of tapes thrown into a hat.

It doesn't even try to be complete catalog of tracks from the era, so there are inevitable omissions - fuel for the "I know better" fans - but the programming is an object lesson in pacing and dynamics. There’s not a weak moment in the entire album, and, thanks to the Mark Linett mix and Joe Gastwirt mastering, the songs sound brand new (no tapes were used as they came out of the box). Nothing drags, and the album ends as strongly as it started. A whole new Hendrix album. The real deal.

In spite of the predictable panic incontinence from the obsessives (who believed they’d been denied the “real album”), Voodoo Soup was a commercial and critical success. The sheer quality of the album was undeniable. Charles Shaar Murray wrote that it “more than earns its place in the pantheon of great Hendrix albums” and that it “brought the Hendrix studio quartet -finally!- to a satisfactory conclusion.”

If this album, exactly as is, had been released during Hendrix’s short lifetime, criticism would be unthinkable, and it would be loved and praised as the culmination of his studio output, entirely the equal of the first three. All subsequent attempts to produce a Hendrix album are dull, curiously lifeless things in comparison, and sometimes, unforgivably, boring to sit through. And although the emphasis in this piece may appear to be on Douglas, it’s not him we’re listening to. Voodoo Soup is one hundred per cent concentrated James Marshall Hendrix; funky, alive, thrilling, and as beautiful as the new rising sun. And, as far as I know, out of print since its 1995 release.

Sleeve notes: The superb French artist Moebius did better studies of Hendrix than this - such as the one at the head of this piece. The narrow crop is unsatisfactory (the image is a detail of an already-used gatefold cover) and it's hard to imagine anyone but a Frenchman finding the image of Hendrix eating soup of interest. A missed opportunity.

With thanks and a tip of th' hipster beret to Alan Douglas. Major, major dude.