Music, Money, Madness captures 1970 gig and the making of the infamous Hendrix-adjacent film, Rainbow Bridge
Jimi Hendrix rips through “Foxey Lady” in a new clip from the upcoming documentary, Music, Money, Madness … Jimi Hendrix in Maui, set to arrive November 20th.
Videos by American Songwriter
The film chronicles the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s 1970 trip to Hawaii, which coincided with the filming of the infamous hippie film flop, Rainbow Bridge, produced by the Experience’s manager, Michael Jeffrey.
The Experience was already set to play a show in Honolulu during the trip, but because Rainbow Bridge director Chuck Wein wanted to feature Hendrix in the movie, he cooked up a plan for a free concert on the lower slope of the dormant Haleakala volcano in Maui (in true hippie fashion, the audience was arranged by astrological signs).
As the clip exhibits, the performance itself was a huge success: Even though Hendrix does appear to forget some of the words to “Foxey Lady” at one point, his guitar playing is impeccable and replete with signature tricks, like playing with this teeth.
The one hiccup in the performance was technical difficulties that forced drummer Mitch Mitchell to overdub his drum tracks at Electric Lady Studios in 1971, after Hendrix’s death.
“He was determined to fix what suffered on the recordings due to the 50-mile-an-hour winds because they were playing on the side of a bloody volcano!” engineer Eddie Kramer said in a statement.
“After Jimi died it took a while before I was able to go back to the closet with all the tapes. Mitch was a trooper with a can-do British attitude. It’s all very well to overdub drums but to do it so you can’t tell, that’s the magic. He knew the material extremely well and it’s a tribute to his sensitivity as a great musician and an equal and willing partner of Jimi’s.”
As for Rainbow Bridge — the film was a massive flop and featured just 17 minutes of Hendrix concert footage when many were expecting a full concert film. Hendrix’s posthumous Rainbow Bridge soundtrack was much more well-received, even though it didn’t feature any music from the Maui concert.
The new doc, Music, Money, Madness, was directed by John McDermott and, on top of the concert footage, will feature interviews with Kramer, Wein, bassist Billy Cox, Warner Bros. executives, and various cast members of Rainbow Bridge. A new two-CD live album, Live in Maui, featuring the two sets the Jimi Hendrix Experience played, will also be released November 20th.
Live in Maui Tracklist
Disc One
1. Chuck Wein Introduction
2. Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)
3. In From the Storm
4. Foxey Lady
5. Hear My Train A-Comin’
6. Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
7. Fire
8. Purple Haze
9. Spanish Castle Magic
10. Lover Man
11. Message to Love
Disc Two
1. Dolly Dagger
2. Villanova Junction
3. Ezy Ryder
4. Red House
5. Freedom
6. Jam Back at the House
7. Straight Ahead
8. Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)/Midnight Lightning
9. Stone Free
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