Jimi Hendrix – “Spanish Castle Magic” Live
Jimi’s Slaying It Onstage!
Man, this was INTENSE! This may not have been his best performance due mainly to exhaustion but he’s still undeniably amazing. starsoffline.com I mean, look at how he’s ripping that guitar. He plays it as though life was oozing out of the instrument. It’s incredible — so much talent and brilliance in one man!
“We’re gonna play nothing but oldies-but-baddies tonight,” Hendrix says at the start. “We haven’t played together in about six weeks, so we’re going to jam tonight and see what happens. Hope you don’t mind.” As he steps away from the microphone he can be heard to mutter, “You wouldn’t know the difference, anyway.”
At the beginning, they were introduced as an “electric church” band and they lived up to it. Jimi was electrifying on stage. “Spanish Castle Magic” was among the tracks they performed which is a psychedelic rock written by Jimi. It’s often a part of their concert repertoire and had several live recordings. The song talks about a club where Jimi used to play. Other music artists who made their cover versions of this song are Carlos Santana, Spin Doctors, Fly, and Hay and Stone.
Hendrix biographer Harry Shapiro commented on the song’s instrumentation: “[The] guitar and bass in unison has the immediate effect of locking up a song in a strong rhythmic voice … [Hendrix uses] some unusual chord progressions and a large number of bend in the solo ending up with a crazy double-stop.”
