The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Stages: 1967 [A Prof Stoned Comp 2025]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Twenclub", Studio 1 / NDR Funkhaus, Hamburg, Germany
Saturday 18 March 1967
01. 'Introduction'
02. Foxy Lady
03. Hey Joe
04. Stone Free
05. Fire
06. Purple Haze
Announcer: Jochen Rathmann
Note: This is the first high quality live recording made in 1967. The recording engineer was an experienced bigband/jazz sound engineer and he reportedly struggled with the volume the Marshall amps produced. Perhaps this is why the recording is marred somewhat by incessant compression. I previously included this section minus the intro recently on the BBC Sessions comp. The music is sourced from a TDK Type II cassette which was a copy from the pre-FM master tape made in 1993. It's the best out there in circulation but I assume the mastertape still exists. It was never released officially.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Monterey International Pop Festival", Monterey, California, USA
Sunday 18 June 1967
00. 'Tuning'
01. 'Introduction BJ'
02. Killing Floor
03. Foxy Lady
04. Like A Rolling Stone
05. Rock Me Baby
06. Hey Joe
07. Can You See Me
08. The Wind Cries Mary
09. Purple Haze
10. Wild Thing
Announcer: Brian Jones
Producers: John Phillips & Lou Adler
Engineers: Wally Heider with Bones Howe & Abe Jacobs
Note: Monterey Pop is probably Hendrix' best known live recording after Woodstock. This show has a crazy energy which no other professional multitrack recording of a Hendrix show has captured. It is not perfect, but beautiful. 'Swinging London' had recognized Hendrix' potential and talent in late 1966, and now there was finally a place in his homeland where it was happening as well. This was captured on 8-track multitrack by Wally Heider, with help from Bones Howe and also Abe Jacobs who was responsible for the stage and hall sound. Back in those days, there was no front-of-house mixing desk situated in the hall or field because of problems with the cabling; the sound balance heard by the audience had to be done from the stage. Nevertheless, Jacobs reportedly did a great job and he became the band's long-time live sound engineer. The division on the multitrack tape is presumably as follows: drums overhead left/right on the first two channels; bass guitar on track 3; guitar on track 4; Jimi and Noel vocals on track 5+6. I'm guessing one of the remaining two tracks was used for a pulse signal to sync up with film footage, while the other may or may not have had the bassdrum. I have attempted to restore the full Brian Jones intro, mostly from the 'Jimi Plays Monterey' video soundtrack and from the old Polydor 1986 German CD which has a 2-minute-long intro section with mostly just tuning. Basically, two mixes of the full setlist are in circulation; the 1986 Mark Linett mix made under the supervision of Alan Douglas, which is what I have used for this new 2025 'remix'. It is not without flaws; Douglas insisted on adding thunderous fake applause, since hardly any was captured on tape. Eddie Kramer remixed the concert for the 2007 'Live At Monterey' release. In my opinion, this is the lesser version. It sounds mono-ish, dry and closed-in. Despite the fact that it's a sufficient release, I thought it would be fun to redo it and use the advantage of the stereo image of the 1986 mix. I used the 2007 CD for the in-between chatter and some Noel vocal bits. It was not possible to remove the fake audience at the end of 3 songs...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hollywood Bowl, Hollywood, California, USA
Friday 18 August 1967
01. 'Introduction'
02. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
03. Killing Floor
04. The Wind Cries Mary
05. Foxy Lady
06. Catfish Blues
07. Fire
08. Like A Rolling Stone
09. Purple Haze
10. Wild Thing
Note: Even though the band went down pretty well at Monterey, they were still a completely unknown entity in the United States. They had achieved some success in Europe and Britain at this point, but 'Are You Experienced' hadn't come out in America yet. So, after the failure and premature bailing of the Monkees summer tour, the managers arranged for the group to do some one-off gigs. One of those was an opening slot at the Hollywood Bowl in support of The Mamas & the Papas and Scott McKenzie. The group did not get a good response from the audience that night, which you can hear throughout the recording. Hendrix sounds low and a bit moody, using his dedications before every song as a desperate mantra to keep his spirits up. But they still did a solid show. And by being the compelling character that he was, Hendrix managed to engage the crowd, even though he was an outlandish black freak facing an audience of mostly white frat folk. 'Like a Rolling Stone' is much better than the Monterey one, no doubt inspired from being the underdog, which this song dearly represented to him. Abe Jacobs, who was also employed by the M&P's, did the P.A. mixing. A tape was made from the soundboard which became the 2023 EH release 'Hollywood Bowl August 18, 1967'. The sound quality is lacking for a mainstream release and it should have been released on the Dagger Records label instead. But after toying with the recording for a bit, I found there was a lot of room for improvement. In fact, it's now barely the same thing that EH released. Dig brother!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Tonårskväll", Studio 4 / Radiohuset, Stockholm, Sweden
Tuesday 5 September 1967
01. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
02. Fire
03. The Wind Cries Mary
04. Foxy Lady
05. Hey Joe
06. I Don't Live Today
07. Burning Of The Midnight Lamp
08. Purple Haze
Engineer/Producer: Rune Hallberg
Note: After coming back from the States, a Scandinavian tour followed In September. This recording was made for radio with the benefit of having an audience (but of people who were mostly unknown with the group). The sound is different from the other recordings here in that the drums are very direct and lack ambiance, it's also a bit low on guitar which I tried to fix as much as possible. It was released officially in 1991 on a box set called 'Stages' ; a four CD box set that captured one gig from every year 1967 up to 1970 and which inspired me to use the same name/concept here. The producers used an inferior source from a bootleg, while the master recording was still on file at Swedish radio. A much clearer and hiss free source came into circulation later on.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Musicorama", L'olympia, Paris, France
Monday 9 October 1967
01. Stone Free
02. Hey Joe
03. Fire
04. Catfish Blues
05. Foxy Lady
06. The Wind Cries Mary
07. Rock Me Baby
08. Red House
09. Purple Haze
10. Wild Thing
Engineer/Producer: Marc Exiga
Note: Having played in the same venue a year earlier as complete unknowns -opening for Johnny Hallyday- and returning victoriously as made-men, must have been a big deal for the group. So, the Experience played an arousing one-hour set, which again was captured by French radio (RTE). The recording has its share of problems; there is some pretty strong compression, some technical difficulties (vocal & guitar dropping in and out), Catfish Blues is faded out near the end and the song after that (Burning Of The Midnight Lamp) is missing. Everything has been improved here to the best of my knowledge, with bass, guitar and vocals significantly better balanced. The releases from Experience Hendrix have the best quality and are the most complete. Two songs appeared on the 2000 box set of which I only used Catfish because I didn't like the sound of the Wind Cries Mary. Because of its flaws, Foxy Lady remains the only track never officially released, so I took that (and Mary) from a bootleg. The rest was released on the Dagger Records release Paris 1967/San Francisco 1968, which annoyingly was mastered in 'stereo' with all left/right channel imbalances of the original tape intact.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Hoepla", Vitus Studio, Bussum, the Netherlands
Friday 10 November 1967
01. Foxy Lady
02. Catfish Blues
03. Purple Haze
Announcer: Roselie Peters
Producer: Wim van der Linden
Engineer: Adrie Ottenvanger
Note: This was a session for a Dutch national TV program, which was very controversial for its time. On the first episode somewhere in 1967, a topless woman appeared frontally on screen. Naturally, the JHE fit well within this show and played a three-song set with Purple Haze being repeated for a later broadcast which never occurred (surprise: the program was canceled). This set is a little bit on the down low because there was no audience, even though the producers had attempted to make the TV studio as atmospheric as possible. No film footage survives but we do have an excellent quality recording with one song appearing on the official 'Blues' album. The first two songs here originate from a 1992 Univibes fan-club release called 'Long Distance Calling'. The producer of that CD is Caesar Glebbeek, a lifelong Hendrix fanatical and owner of the best quality tape of the whole Hoepla set in existence. The third song here is probably from his tape too but with one or two generations tape loss. It's a composite of an abandoned intro and two complete takes frankensteined by your truly because well... I care for your ears.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mercy Mercy (Flamingo Club, London 04-02-67)
Summertime Blues [Incomplete] (Saville Theatre, London 27-08-67)
Mercy Mercy [Incomplete] (Akademiska Foreningen, Lund 10-09-67)
Hoochie Coochie Man (Tivoli Gröna Lund, Stockholm 11-09-67)
Note: Last and least, we have four selections of three songs Hendrix played during 1967 not included in any of the sets above. There are two versions of Mercy Mercy, the Don Covay song from 1964. We hear Hendrix announce it derisively on both recordings. He never mentions that his playing is featured on the original hit record, which is funny because the song is quite out of place in the band's repertoire. There's a fragment of Summertime Blues from the Saville Theater in the summer of 1967. This is actually an exciting audience recording but it doesn't circulate in full (every song has been cut, perhaps intentionally or not). It's clear and has good bass, even if the vocals are a bit distant. And there is a pretty low-quality version of Hoochie Coochie Man from the Scandinavian tour.
====================================================================================================
Total time: 3h36m47s
All tracks are Mono except Monterey is Stereo.
Demix Mastering & Research: Prof Stoned
v1.0: 16:07-2025
v1.1: 13-08-2025 (speed corrected to Paris show with +0,5 semitones, that'll teach me for trusting Eddie Kramer/EH's quality control)
====================================================================================================
Note:
Here is my latest project: an overview of all Jimi Hendrix 1967 gigs captured in good sound quality. I guess you could call it a study of the progress made during that year. All shows have been meticulously restored using Demix technology and careful mastering.
Considering that Hendrix achieved most of his biggest commercial successes after 1967, it is somewhat of a miracle that we have as many good quality recordings here as we do. These shows all have the advantages of being short, concise and brimmed with energy. No notes are wasted. Only one year later, the band had blown up worldwide and the stage would often be used to rehearse and jam in excessive length. But in 1967, the JHE was hungry and had something to proof. They made ground breaking music and lived from gig to gig. Hendrix had been a drifter for 6 years and he was ready to fall back in the gutter if that was what life had in store for him. He was a free spirit, unleashed to an unsuspecting, bewildered world and he got the best platforms to kick everybody's ass with his glorious noise. Once he became a star, all that went away ... eventually.
====================================================================================================
A note about mastering with demix technology:
You may have heard some of my recent offerings where I have used demix pro for spectral extraction. I believe it is the most revolutionary audio processing tool since ages. It enables us to break a mono signal down into 4 dedicated elements: vocals, drums/percussion, bass guitar and whatever remains after. These extractions are of such precision they allow for a realistic reconstruction of a mix.
Why is this useful? Well... the original mix may have flaws that affect the quality of the sound. By nature, the process of mastering is designed to improve upon such flaws by applying equalization and/or processing of dynamic range. But what if one element within a recording needs more treble, while another element is already bright enough? At that point, EQ is not sufficient anymore because your choices will affect both. Of course, mastering does not begin and end with just EQ; there are always other ways of emphasizing or hiding elements in a recording. But spectral extraction allows you to improve upon the sound of one element without 'harming' the sound of all the others and also to re-balance those elements if necessary.
It goes without saying that all tracks that were originally in mono have stayed mono. The goal has not been to change the integrity of the original recordings but to make them sound as pleasing as possible. A perfect mix does not need fixing but nearly all recordings here were made under primitive circumstances and mixed directly to mono while the band performed. Heavy compression was used to keep things in place. If one element suddenly became louder than others, the compressor would slam the recording level back down. This was certainly necessary because the audio signal needed to be as loud as possible for when it was put on the air.
I have used demix on nearly all the recordings with decent fidelity. Being able to correct balancing mistakes; having the flexibility to mesh the bass guitar and kick drum together nicely and putting the vocals precisely in the mix where they need to be is a great luxury. Especially when it doesn't have to be achieved with buss EQ and/or compression. I believe these new masters have a more dynamic, open sound than the source material. The goal has been to stay true to the original feel but with added clarity and depth.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have used the following digital studio gear and monitoring in the making of this:
- DeMix Pro 3.0.1 & Spectralayers Pro 10
- Cubase 13
- Universal Audio UAD-2 Satellite Quad-Core (incl. various extra plugins I purchased over the years)
- Neumann KH150 & iLoud Micro monitors
- Adobe Audition
- Izotope RX9
