Each of Jimi Hendrix’s live appearances was unique, providing different and evolving interpretations of his songs, giving both the casual collector and diehard chronicler a lot to explore. In fact, there are so many officially available CDs of individual concerts that we hesitate to dive in here, but dive we must. A year after the Lifelines box tested the waters (and fans’ patience), Stages presented four concerts, one each from 1967 through 1970, on four CDs. All but the last featured the original Experience; Billy Cox had replaced Noel Redding on the rhythm section next to Mitch Mitchell in the final year. But even with “Purple Haze” and “Fire” showing up at all four shows, they’re not the same at all.
The first show is also the shortest, coming from a Swedish radio broadcast in front of a polite audience. After a warmup of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, they plow through the familiar songs and singles from the first album, as well as the new single “Burning Of The Midnight Lamp”. (For some reason the songs appear out of order, even though everything played is included.) “I Don’t Live Today” had only just started being played live, and they have fun with it. Jimi sounds tired, but that could be due to a larger concert played the night before. Because Stages went out of print along with Lifelines after only a few years, this show was mostly lost officially, and had to wait three decades until 2025’s Bold As Love set brought it back in context.
Less than five months later, the band was in Paris, and Jimi was tired of playing just the hits. Just like he did at Monterey, he opens with a slightly extended “Killin’ Floor”, but follows it with nine minutes of exploration through “Catfish Blues”, leaving room for a Mitch drum solo. He does treat the crowd to “Foxey Lady”, with Noel happily adding the breathy “foxey” accents, and he gets to play guitar on “Red House”. After nine minutes of “Driving South”, it’s back to the more familiar “Wind Cries Mary”, “Fire”, a reverent if off-pitch “Little Wing”, and a six-minute “Purple Haze”. Throughout, he sounds playful, and his fretwork soars. (This show was reissued on the estate’s “official bootleg” label, bolstered by three songs from another show two months and a continent away, on Live in Paris & Ottawa 1968 in 2008.)
An already-plundered San Diego show made up the third disc. “Red House” had already appeared on Hendrix In The West—four more songs were included on the 2011 upgrade—and “I Don’t Live Today” had also been farmed out to The Jimi Hendrix Concerts and other compilations over the years. As it was only a month after the Los Angeles show that had appeared in Lifelines and was eventually released on its own, that’s the only discernable reason why this hasn’t had a separate rerelease. (Yet.) That’s too bad, because it’s an excellent show that deserves to be heard in full, and in order. Highlights include an 11-minute “Spanish Castle Magic” with a detour into “Sunshine Of Your Love”, the aforementioned “Red House” and “I Don’t Live Today”, and ten minutes of “Voodoo Child”. Even the opening “Intro Riffs” over a rowdy crowd have charm.
A lot of changes happened in the year between Noel quitting and the band’s appearance at the Atlanta Pop Festival the following Fourth of July, which is excerpted out of order on the fourth disc. Some of this had already appeared on 1986’s Johnny B. Goode “mini-LP” shuffled with performances from the oft-plundered Berkeley concert, both sources of which were also used to fill out the inaccurately titled Band Of Gypsys 2 a few months later. The 2015 release of Freedom: Atlanta Pop Festival presented the entire concert (save the final aborted song) as performed, necessitating two CDs, and that’s the way to hear it.
Rather than ease into the set, they bash through “Fire” right away, Mitch playing especially busily and Billy keeping up as best he can through questionable meters. They keep the pace going with “Lover Man”, which sports a quote from “Flight Of The Bumblebee” in the solo. Overall the show is kinda wobbly, possibly because of the scorching summer weather, but he’s enough of a professional to work with it; “Red House” slows things down enough to get everybody back in sync, as does a lengthy “Hear My Train A Comin’” a couple songs later. Being the 4th of July, he hints at “Star-Spangled Banner” before “Purple Haze”, then delivers a full rendition during the encore. He does play some of the hits, but the most interesting thing about this show in context is the new material, which had yet to be released in studio form: “Room Full Of Mirrors”, “Freedom”, and “Straight Ahead”. It might not have been his best show, but 1970 was fairly well documented with live recordings, and others will be assessed in context.
Jimi Hendrix Stages (1991)—3
Current availability: none
Jimi Hendrix Experience Freedom: Atlanta Pop Festival (2015)—3
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