Exclusive video: Jimi Hendrix engineer talks 'Train'
- Hendrix was eager for an %22expansion of his musical ideas%2C%22 says engineer Eddie Kramer
- The new album features a dozen unreleased songs that showcase the guitarist%27s emerging direction
- Helping anchor Hendrix%27s sound are Buddy Miles on drums and Billy Cox on bass
Think recording engineer Eddie Kramer ever gets tired of deconstructing tracks cut by a Seattle kid whose studio work he oversaw in the late '60s? Fat chance. In this exclusive Paste BN video, hear Kramer wax lyrical about Jimi Hendrix blasting through Hear My Train A Comin', one of 12 songs featured on People, Hell and Angels, a new album of previously unreleased music out March 5.
"This is May of '69, and the beginning of Band of Gypsys," Kramer says of the howling track that featured Hendrix's post-Jimi Hendrix Experience band, which found Buddy Miles on drums and Billy Cox on bass. "Jimi had done three albums with the Experience and he knew it was time for an expansion of his musical ideas."
Kramer says the new trio "shared a common love of the blues," a canon that Hendrix not only covered but also added to, as with Hear My Train. As the tape rolls, Kramer shakes his head in amazement at Hendrix's mastery and fire. "That's Jimi just tearing it up, with superb control of the distortion," he says. "It just burns."