The good news: a lost archive containing documents and tapes amassed by former Jimi Hendrix manager Mike Jeffery has come to light. The bad news: it will be up for auction, so there is a quite a big risk that interesting items will be snapped by fans with deep pockets. Jeffrey's Trixie Sullivan has hold on unto the archive for decades, but she is looking for buyer now. Experience Hendrix representatives are having a look into it as well. UK music magazine Mojo had a sneak preview:
Diving into the huge stacks of paperwork in a small office in Pinewood Studios is to immerse in the day-to-day running of rock bands at the end of the ’60s. Here’s a postcard from Hawaii from Hendrix to Sullivan in July 1970, on the trip that incorporated his contribution to the movie Rainbow Bridge, plus photographs the incendiary guitarist took on the flight over. And here’s a letter from Sullivan to Jeffery, dated January 10, 1969, updating him on Jimi’s circumstances. “He’s buying new curtains and carpet for the flat and domestication seems to suit him for the moment,” Sullivan writes. “You never know how long it will last…”
Among the archive’s wealth of tapes, all in perfect condition, most are contemporaneous copies of recordings that Hendrix engineer Eddie Kramer suspects Experience Hendrix have in their library (“Jimi would have a copy, [producer] Chas [Chandler] would have one, and maybe one for Mike,” he says). One, a 7-inch box labelled in red biro in Hendrix’s own hand, contains early versions – possibly from Mayfair Studios in New York – of songs destined for Axis: Bold As Love, including thrillingly raw versions of Up From The Skies and Ain’t No Telling.
Still no news about the announced Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision box set. Its release has been in limbo for more than two years now.
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