Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision

1968 and Jimi Hendrix is happening. When he’s not playing (and sometimes when he is), he’s enjoying the New York club scene, and in particular he’s digging The Generation on W8 in Greenwich Village, a spot that had hosted BB King, Sly and the Family Stone and Dave Van Ronk. But Hendrix’s close advisors Eddie Kramer and Jim Marron persuaded him he didn’t really need a club—he needed his own a recording studio. And so Electic Lady Studios was born, the first ever artist owned commercial recording facility.

Opening night, August 1970, brought out Patti Smith, Ron Wood, Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood—as well as the reluctant new proprietor. Over the next decade, David Bowie, Stevie Wonder, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin would all record there. (More recently, so have Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Jon Batiste, Lady Gaga, Beyonce and Adele.)

Featuring exclusive interviews, never-before-seen Hendrix home movies and photos as well as revelatory track breakdowns of Hendrix classics such as “Freedom,” “Angel,” and “Dolly Dagger” by Eddie Kramer, this is a musical footnote that proves surprisingly rich.

A compelling story… Embracing the people who constructed and ran Electric Lady in an atmosphere of “creative chaos,” as studio manager Linda Sharlin affectionately puts it, McDermott’s straightforward oral history offers an unfamiliar slant on the biography of a legendary performer, and contains tantalizing asides. Refreshingly, this is a look at Hendrix that isn’t filtered through the mythic prism of his untimely death.

Sheri Linden, Hollywood Reporter