The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s blistering rendition of The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” from the upcoming archival album Jimi Hendrix Experience: Hollywood Bowl August 18, 1967 has been released as an advance digital track from the collection.
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The legendary guitarist and his band’s version of “Sgt. Pepper” kicked off the show, a full recording of which will be released on November 10 on CD, vinyl, and digital formats.
The concert took place five days before the U.S. release of the group’s debut album, Are You Experienced. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was serving as an opening act for The Mamas & the Papas at the show, held just two months after the band gave its incendiary first U.S. performance at the famed Monterey Pop festival.
A new mini documentary about the Hollywood Bowl show that’s been posted on Hendrix’s official YouTube channel features new interviews with Mamas and the Papas singer Michelle Phillips and longtime Paul McCartney touring guitarist Brian Ray, among others.
At age 12, Ray accompanied his sister to the Hollywood Bowl show, and he recalled that when he heard the Hendrix Experience playing “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “[It] blew anything I’d ever heard or seen completely out of the water.”
Ray, who went to the show to hear the pop stylings of The Mamas & the Papas, says experiencing Hendrix’s monumental performance was “mind-blowing,” adding, “It was beauty, grace; it was sexual, violent, gentle; it was just everything all at once in one band coming out of this one guy.”
Phillips, meanwhile, admitted that when she first saw Hendrix’s over-the-top performance at the Monterey Pop fest, which The Mamas & the Papas headlined and helped produce, she was “mortified” and “shocked.” However, in the documentary, she explained that she got to talk with Hendrix for the first time backstage at the Hollywood Bowl, and she “absolutely loved him.”
“He was so gentle and he was such a sweetheart … He was a gentleman, he was lovely, he was funny,” Phillips noted. “From that moment on, I … actually [became] more understanding of rock ‘n’ roll theater.”
Jimi Hendrix Experience: Hollywood Bowl August 18, 1967 also features versions of such classics by the band as “The Wind Cries Mary,” “Foxey Lady,” “Fire,” and “Purple Haze,” as well as covers’ of Muddy Waters’ “Killing Floor,” Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” and The Troggs’ “Wild Thing.”
You can pre-order the album now.
Jimi Hendrix Experience: Hollywood Bowl August 18, 1967 Track List
- Introduction
- Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
- Killing Floor
- The Wind Cries Mary
- Foxey Lady
- Catfish Blues
- Fire
- Like a Rolling Stone
- Purple Haze
- Wild Thing
