Wow! I've now been posting these for a full year. Time flies. I wasn't even sure I'd be able to do more than a dozen, and yet here we are.
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Jimi Hendrix's First Rays of the New Rising Sun is basically one of the holy trinity of unfinished albums, along with The Beach Boys' Smile and The Who's Lifehouse. Debate rages on about what tracks Jimi would have included on the album had he lived to complete it.
What we know is that it was to be a double album and that two tracklists have surfaced, one incomplete and the other possibly without Jimi's input.
I am working with the incomplete track list (that only shows tracks for the first three sides) because I just have a feeling that it has a logical flow.
- Side A is easy enough to put together since all five songs are shown on the list.
- Side B lists only four songs and appears to be pretty short. Some argue that they think Jimi wanted it that way. I think he hadn't yet decided on the final song for that side.
- Side C shows "Night Bird Flying" as the opening track, but the title had also been written in darker pencil as the second track on Side A. And obviously the song wasn't going to be used twice.
- Anyone familiar with this tracklist knows that the final side was left blank. So what to do?
SIDE A
1. Dolly Dagger
2. Night Bird Flying
3. Room Full of Mirrors
4. Belly Button Window
5. Freedom
SIDE B
1. Ezy Rider
2. Astro Man
3. Drifting
4. Straight Ahead
5. Izabella
SIDE C
1. Earth Blues
2. Drifters Escape
3. Come Down Hard on Me
4. Beginnings
5. Angel
SIDE D
1. Stepping Stone
2. Bleeding Heart
3. Lover Man
4. Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)
5. In From the Storm
For the last song on Side B, I went with the rockin' "Izabella." To me, this mirrors the selection of "Freedom" from the first side. I chose "Earth Blues" to replace the second listing of "Night Bird Flying" as the opening track on the third side. For the final side, "Stepping Stone" seems like a natural for the opening track, and the hard-driving "In from the Storm" as a great way to end the album. "Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)" seems like from the title alone it belongs somewhere, and I chose it as the second to last track. Both "Bleeding Heart" and "Lover Man" fill out the side.
Is this perfect? No. Is this the way Jimi would have done it had he lived? Most probably not. But I think it works, and works a lot better than the version that was officially released in 1997.
The album cover is from http://idesignalbumcovers.tumblr.com.
Looks like we have pretty similar tracklists, and even use the same album cover! But for mine, I diverged in including Cherokee Mist instead of Lover Man.
ReplyDeleteI believe that's more faithfull to what Jimi intended, since Cherokee Mist was included on his two tracklists for the LP, while Lover Man was only included in one. And Mist was still being worked on during his final studio week, while Man had been abandoned after the basic track was recorded.
Perhaps we could use it on the "Rainbow Bridge" sountrack, released after First Rays?
But my version of the album consisted of:
Side One: (19:11)
01 Dolly Dagger - 24/8/70 Jimi & Eddie mix from Rainbow Bridge
02 Night Bird Flying - 24/8/70 Jimi & Eddie mix from The Cry of Love
03 Room Full of Mirrors - 20/8/70 Jimi & Eddie mix from Rainbow Bridge
04 Belly Button Window - 24/8/70 Jimi & Eddie mix from The Cry of Love
05 Freedom - 24/8/70 Jimi & Eddie mix from The Cry of Love
Side Two: (22:20)
06 Ezy Ryder - 22/8/70 Jimi & Eddie mix from The Cry of Love
07 Astro Man - 22/8/70 Jimi & Eddie mix from The Cry of Love
08 Cherokee Mist - as we don't have J&E's 22/8 mix, the posthumous Eddie one will do
09 Drifting - the posthumous Eddie & Mitch mix, due to the overdubs
10 Straight Ahead - 25/8/70 Jimi & Eddie mix from The Cry of Love
Side Three: (19:04)
11 Earth Blues - 22/8/70 Jimi & Eddie mix from the Purple Box
12 Drifter's Escape - 22/8/70 Jimi & Eddie mix from South Saturn Delta
13 Come Down Hard on Me - 22/8/70 Jimi & Eddie mix from the Purple Box
14 Beginnings - as J&E's 5:28 mix is unavailable, the posthumous one is used
15 Angel - the posthumous Eddie & Mitch mix, due to the overdubs
Side Four: (19:40)
16 Stepping Stone - the posthumous Eddie & John Hansen mix, as he didn't mix it post-overdubs
17 Izabella - the posthumous Eddie & John Hansen mix, as he didn't mix it post-overdubs
18 Bleeding Heart - the posthumous Eddie & John Hansen mix, as he never mixed it
19 Hey Baby (New Rising Sun) - the unfinished version from Rainbow Bridge
20 In From the Storm - 2o/8/70 Jimi & Eddie mix from West Coast Seattle Boy
Wow, our tracklists are very similar. Very nice
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