10. Jimi HendrixLive At The Fillmore East

The Fillmore East was where they recorded so many great live albums. This came out after Sly, and this is Jimi Hendrix going back to more of his funky roots, it is more of a Black record than his other records with Buddy Miles and Billy Cox. I love the album. Most of these songs were never done in studio versions, and the lyrics are great. It feels like he looked at Sly and realised he maybe needed to talk about things, because, you know, this was a very political record, anti-Vietnam war, something like ‘Machine Gun’, ‘Message To Love’, and ‘We Gotta Live Together’, so it was sort of his political album. And then he died very soon after. I got to see this live, and it was amazing. I love Jimi Hendrix. But this record was more where I was going with my music. 

It’s funny, because I have my own radio show on SiriusXM and I play a lot of old records and I have noticed that most of the rock always had funky beats, you know? Looking back there was always a connection with funk and jazz. I could easily have picked a Quincy Jones album, like Gula Matari or Walking In Space, and I almost did, because they were probably some of the first jazzy albums I listened to. I ended up working on a documentary about Quincy, and then I realised I had all of his records, and hadn’t listened to them for a while, so I was definitely also influenced by those kinds of records. I could have picked Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew or something by Horace Silver. I saw Miles play in Boston, around 72 or 73, I would go out and see everything.