World Rock Pilgrimages: The Places that Inspired Music

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Bethel, New York Inspired Jimi Hendrix Content provided by Virgin Radio
Although Woodstock has become synonymous with the summer of love in 1969 and thousands of hippies, the festival actually originated and has subsequently returned to Bethal, in The US' capital of commerce and huge corporations - New York. It was Jimi and his backing band that in a short space of time, introduced psychedelic rock to the city back in the 1960's.
In my teens I was always more interested in building my own collection of rock albums, mostly on cassettes back then, I've got some absolute gems from Jimi's live performances but they hiss too much to play on my shows! Leona Graham	The Woodstock festivals were originally planned for a maximum of 200,000 attendees, over 500,000 eventually attended to see the world's ultimate rock acts of the time, namely the 27 year old guitar prodigy. It was during this seminal headline set at Woodstock that Jimi played his Fender Stratocaster guitar with his teeth during a set plagued with technical hitches.
Besides suffering microphone level and guitar tuning problems, it was also apparent that Jimi's new, much larger band was not rehearsed enough, and at times simply could not keep up with him. Despite this, Hendrix managed to deliver a historic performance, which featured his now infamous rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, which became a defining moment of the 1960s, and earned its place in the music history books shortly before Jimi's death in 1970.

Your Comments

mark tyrrell Crewe, November 28th 2006

Iconic because of the Woodstock movie and his inspited rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, the Gyspies Sun & Rainbows provided little more than a backdrop - listening to the official releases and more complete bootlegs that have circulated, Jimi's playing ranges from the shambolic - swapping for bass on Gypsy Woman (unreleased track) to the inspirational on Woodstock Improvisation & Villanova Junction Blues. The pinnacle of his live playing but sandwiched between his more down to earth 'hits' Purple Haze and Hey Joe. Remember though most of the crowd had left and only 30000 remained. What would it have been like with 500,000 out there? Like so many thing about Jimi's life and musical directions - another unanswered question.

Nick Anderson London, November 28th 2006

Hendrix is awesome and the Woodstock is truly a funky site where you can't help but hear the strains of Hendrix's guitar when you're there! Woodstock is also worth visiting for the Pete Townsend and Abbie Hoffman incident!!

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