The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced
Well, all of his records actually. I like the material he did later with Buddy Miles too but particularly the ones with Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding. I loved Hendrix and his songs of course, but I also got to hear a drummer who seemed like he had deep jazz experience and also who was able to play the shit out of rock too. He was another drummer who had this really kind of tight but loose thing and he wasn’t playing some of the traditional moves. I mean he was very different from Ginger Baker, for instance, with Cream - although I liked them too. Mitchell had this way of playing, you could tell he was a jazz drummer but putting that experience he had from the jazz world, into the rock world I think helped to lift Hendrix’s music and so that had a great influence on me too, because I was also involved in the rock world. I think I was either consciously or unconsciously trying to find a way to bridge those two worlds, because they’re similar but different. I think Mitch Mitchell helped provide a bridge for that form, from a song-based perspective and also from a purely improvisational perspective.