Listened: Monday June 21
I love how the cover of Electric Ladyland is so obviously a sexual reference. I am guessing Jimi has been caught by the camera in the middle of playing his guitar. But it looks like he could also be in the middle of a sexual act. I didn’t realize until now that the photo was taken by Linda McCartney. Nice!
Clearly Jimi was even farther along in his musical evolution and experimentation with this album. More than prior albums, the vocals on Electric Ladyland can sound very motowny – high pitched crooning like the Temptations. But then a song like Voodoo Chile is still clearly blues-oriented.
Jimi is another one of those guys who could completely both transform and improve a Bob Dylan song – he owns All Along the Watchtower, as he previously owned Hey Joe and Wild Thing, two songs he also didn’t write, but greatly improved upon.
I also love the way Jimi makes his guitar sing with him on Gypsy Eyes and the intro to Burning of the Midnight Lamp is one of my favorite song intros ever, which then proceeds to develop into a painting in sound, complete with the music flowing from left to right channel and back again. 1983 (A Merman I Should Turn to Be) also is very much a painting in sound. Beautiful, fitting, and depressing that this was the last studio album he released!
Emily's Albums A to Z 
[…] album art is classic along the same lines as Electric Ladyland – it looks like a very cool artsy photograph on its own, but then you try to figure out […]
[…] the guitar and the vocals on this album are both similarly shredded, in a good way. I can hear the Jimi Hendrix influence in the guitar solos and CCR do not skimp on […]