Jimi Hendrix collaborator Eddie Kramer remembers a studio mistake that him and Hendrix wanted to recreate, but were unable to. The mistake happened when the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s final album, Electric Ladyland, was almost complete.
In a recent interview, Kramer explained that, “There was a period there where something was funky with the console and the phasing that I was doing, Jimi was sitting next to me and we mixed together, as there were no computers in those days. But all of a sudden, there was a sound that by some accident, made a strange thing happen. Jimi’s guitar went ‘woooof’ right behind our heads, and we thought, ‘What the hell was that?’ And Jimi looked at me, ‘Can you do that again?’ I said, ‘No, mate – I have no idea.’ It was a mistake which I tried to duplicate but could never recapture!”
Kramer added that him and Hendrix stumbled on “the beginning of sounds travelling behind you,” adding, “Had he lived, he would have been right in the middle of this amazing new technology, saying, ‘Hey man, let’s pan the guitar this way.’ Or if it was a studio recording – because he was very sharp and really into the technology – he would have wanted me to pan overhead and around the room, which is what I loved to do.”
—
Legacy Recordings / Shutterstock.com