Jimi Hendrix - Rainbow Bridge "Original Motion Picture Soundtrack"
Transferred from the 1971 first US LP pressing.
01. Dolly Dagger
02. Earth Blues
03. Pali Gap
04. Room Full Of Mirrors
05. The Star Sprangled Banner
06. Look Over Yonder
07. Hear My Train a-Coming (Live)
08. Hey Babe (The Land Of The New Rising Sun)
All songs by Hendrix except 5 Trad. adapted by Hendrix
Produced by Jimi Hendrix, Mitch Mitchell, Eddie Kramer & John Jansen
Engineered by Eddie Kramer, John Jansen, Dave Palmer, Kim King & Abe Jacobs.
Mastered & Lacquer cut at Sterling Sound, New York by Robert Ludwig
Executive Producer: Michael Jeffrey
Line up:
Jimi Hendrix: Vocals, Guitars
Billy Cox: Bass
Mitch Mitchell: Drums
Buddy Miles: Drums in 4, Backing Vocal in 2
Juma Sultan: Percussion in 1, 3 & 7
Noel Redding: Bass in 6
The Ronettes: Background Vocal in 2
The Ghetto Fighters (Arthur & Albert Allen): Background Vocal in 1
Source: Reprise MS 2040 (Matrix: 31260/31261 - 1A - RL - sterling) ->
Technics 1210mk2 with -881mk2s stylus -> Tascam DA20mk2
(A-D conversion 16 bit, 44kHz) -> PC -> Adobe Audition (Editing,
Manual Volume Adjusting, De-clicking by hand, Waves Crackle (very light),
UAD Precision LIM) -> CDwave -> FLAC (8) -> Torrent
Transferred by Prof. Stoned
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Written & Researched by Prof. Stoned
The story behind this album starts in late 1969 when Michael Jeffrey -Hendrix manager- had
'a vision' about a roadmovie which would equal the success & cult-status of 'Easy Rider'.
Jeffrey had been impressed by both the scenario and commercial success of said
film, and was determined to come up with something even better.
Michael Jeffery was a man with many faces.
Legend holds him as the bold & untrustworthy manager who had made Hendrix
a star, but who -in the end- milked his artist to the bone.
But there are two sides to every story.
Jeffrey was indeed a very sly businessman, who had mastered the art of manipulation
like no one else. But there was also a deeply insecure side to his personality.
Jeffrey was scared of getting older, of becoming 'uncool' and he started using drugs in a
attempt to keep up with the young hip people, including Hendrix.
He also secretly envied Hendrix' ability to attract any woman he wanted,
not in the least because Jimi slept with one or two of his girlfriend's.
In 1969 the relationship between Jeffrey and Hendrix had severely deteriorated.
During the first years, Hendrix had been deeply grateful for everything that
Michael & Chas Chandler had achieved for him.
But as time went by, Jimi started to get more and more frustrated with
the relentless tour schedule, the pressure to record new albums, and
the eternal lack of privacy that comes with being a superstar.
Jimi blamed Michael for all this, but failed to acknowledge that this was the life
that he had always wanted, and that his own excessive lifestyle was
taking its toll on his mental and physical health.
It was in this period that Jeffery realized that his contract with Hendrix
wasn't going to last forever, and that he may needed to bet on more horses than one.
Jeffrey had always gathered interest in the film industry.
He met Chuck Wein, a former Yale student, who considered himself a filmmaker.
Together they envisioned 'Rainbow bridge', a movie that would throw the
world of conventional filmmaking upside down, and become a blistering
artistic and commercial success.
Wein would be the director; Jeffrey would take care of the business side.
'Rainbow bridge' was a vain-project for both men and was destined to become a
failure, but Wein had considerably less to lose than Jeffrey.
Jeffrey managed to convince Warner Brothers to finance the project.
And of course, there had to be a soundtrack album as well.
Back in 1967, when Jeffrey had set up a record deal with Warner Brothers
for the American market, he had managed to include a special
clause into the contract.
If Hendrix was to record a soundtrack album, Warner would not have the rights
to release it, but they would be given the first option to buy the rights.
It didn't seem important at the time, but when Jeffrey told the Warner executives
(who were already hungry for a new Hendrix product) in early 1970
that the next Hendrix album was going to be the soundtrack to the film and asked
whether they wanted to buy it, they exploded with rage.
But needless to say, they were forced to come to an agreement with him.
Of course, Hendrix had no idea what his manager was up to, and wished to steer
clear from the whole 'Rainbow bridge' project.
With a budget for the film secured, Chuck Wein started filming the movie on Hawaii
in the spring of 1970, without a script...
He indeed had very strange idea's about how to make a film.
To him and his crew, the vibrations of the environment he was filming were far more
important than an actual story or plot.
After a while, Jeffrey started to realize that the film was flushing thousands and
thousands of his dollars through the drain, and left him without a satifying result.
So in an attempt to save the project, he managed to convince Hendrix to
do open-air concert on the Maui crater which would be filmed.
Hendrix was disgusted by Wein, his crew, and the whole project in general
and it only drove another wedge between him and his manager.
After Hendrix' sudden death in September 1970, Jeffrey and Wein decided
to change the accent of their film from a 'documentary about a spiritual
journey' to 'a tribute to Jimi hendrix'.
At this point, Jeffrey could no longer hide from the fact that the film was becoming
a failure, and by upgrading it with all the film footage of Hendrix that he owned,
he hoped to make the most out of it.
At the end of 1970, the film had been more or less completed
and was previewed at small cinema in New York.
However, the full 123 minute version was edited down to 75 minutes on
instigation of the Warner executives, to great frustration of Chuck Wein,
who blamed the flopping of the film on the fact that the edit "lacked any
coherence".
Meanwhile, Hendrix' engineer Eddie Kramer & drummer Mitch Mitchell,
with help from assistant-engineer John Jansen had completed
the first posthumous Hendrix album "The Cry of Love".
It had been quite a struggle to complete this album, but Jeffrey was quick to send
them off to work again on the second posthumous studio album, which would be the
soundtrack to Rainbow bridge.
However, Kramer & Mitchell soon found they didn't have enough quality material to work
with and told Jeffrey to convince Warner to send them the many multitrack reels that
they still held in their archives.
These included the sessions that Experience had done at the TTG studio's
in Oct. 1968 and many of the Record Plant sessions from the spring and autumn of
1969 with the Band of Gypsys.
Both Mitchell or Kramer had little idea what to expect from these recordings, but
when Warner executive Mo' Ostin finally ordered the tapes to be sent to
the Electric lady studio's in February 1971, they turned out to offer surprisingly little
useable material. Only 'Look over yonder' and 'Star Sprangled banner'
were selected for the album.
As with 'Cry of love', during the last phase of the production of 'Rainbow bridge'
two songs ('Stepping stone' and 'Izabella') were omitted from the album.
Instead, Michael Jeffrey wanted to have a version of "Hear my train a-coming"
on it as the song could also be heard in the film.
But the recording of the concert on Hawaii was marred by technical problems and
regarded as an inferior performance, so Kramer & Mitchell choose to use the
much better version from the 1st Berkeley set instead.
When the album finally came out in October 1971, it proved to be a
much lesser commercial success than 'The cry of love' had been.
A couple tracks on 'Rainbow bridge' sounded (and were) incomplete
and the album therefore simply wasn't as coherent.
It would go on to sell about 44.000 copies in the next four years.
Together with 'War Heroes' & "In the West, 'Rainbow bridge' was deleted
from Warner's catalogue in 1975, after WB's chief Mo' Ostin decided that
Alan Douglas was far more capable of maintaining the quality of Hendrix's
posthumous discography than Michael Jeffrey and Eddie Kramer had been.
A dumb & unnecessary move from Mo', as history has proven it.
The fact that nearly all Warner executives at the time hated Michael Jeffery
(who died in a plane crash in 1973) may have played a role in this decision.
As the 'Rainbow bridge' album had been exclusively licensed to WB,
it has stayed out-of-print in the states ever since, although the German
division of Reprise started re-pressing the album on vinyl during the 80's.
And thus 'Rainbow bridge' never got a re-issue on CD.
But in 1997 'Experience Hendrix' finally released 6 of the 8 tracks on the
CD's "First rays of the new rising sun" and "South saturn delta".
In 2000, the 4cd box set was released, and it meant the CD debut of another
'Rainbow bridge' track: 'The Star Sprangled banner'.
The CD-sleeves bragged about using the original master tapes, but during the mastering
the dynamics were completely squashed by mastering genius George Marino
(with approval of Eddie Kramer), in order to compete with the ongoing
loudness war (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ).
So, for this release I decide to work with vinyl, instead of a reconstruction
from the existing CD sources.
Rather than using the LP copy that I already had for years (the German re-press
that I mentioned), I decided to invest in the very first US pressing on Reprise.
Cut by Robert (a.k.a. Bob) Ludwig at Sterling Sound, this vinyl copy simply
makes all later pressings with a different matrix code useless.
Ludwig's LP cutting work is much praised among audiophiles, and not without reason.
His work sounds dynamic, has depth, and does not suffer from distortion
near the end of the LP sides. Besides, he worked with the mastertapes.
My budget doesn't allow me to pay 150 USD for the occasional sealed/unplayed
copy that turns up on eBay, but I found a nice EX+ copy, which I gave a long
good clean with anti-stat. The results are quite stunning, I think.
To my ears, this sounds a lot better than EH releases.
But the final judge, of course, will be you - the listener.
Additional info about the songs are included. These are jpegs scanned from
the CD sleeves of above mentioned EH's releases.
Unfortunately, there's no artwork of the sleeve, apart from a pictue of the front cover
which I found on the www, as I don't have a digital camera.
Enjoy!