Today’s challenge: write over a thousand words about Jimi Hendrix without gushing over his guitar playing! Challenge accepted—with the caveat that I can succumb to that natural urge, briefly, but only in the context of evaluating his songwriting. Why ruminate on Jimi Hendrix, songsmith, in 2026? The triggering event was discovering the full upscaled and remastered Jimi Plays Monterrey footage—captured in all its glory by the late great DA Pennebaker—conspicuously positioned where I couldn't possibly miss it in my YouTube feed. It was almost as if the ever-expanding reliquary of rock history intuited that revisiting the Hendrix oeuvre was long overdue, and that once I dug in, I’d realize that his fretboard theatrics and flamboyant persona had nothing on his ability to conceive, construct, and compose songs.

What if Hendrix enacted this iconic guitar sacrifice to his own primordial "Fire” instead of The Troggs' “Wild Thing?” 

To clarify those aforementioned three C's of songwriting:

• Conception is getting the germ of a song idea and a general sense for the storyline.
• Construction is deciding on a song's overall length, the beats per minute, the number of verses and choruses, whether there'll be a bridge, where the instrumental breaks go, what the arrangement will be, how to handle beginnings and endings, and so on.
• Composition is coming up with the melody, lyrics, and chords. 

I bring those up because, even at this early stage of his career, Hendrix displayed an unusual flair for all of the above. Too bad that prowess went largely unnoticed at Monterey. Why? Not only was that appearance visually and musically boundary-busting enough to give attendees the notion that they were witnessing an alien visitation—those can get a little distracting—but the setlist was something of an anomaly.

A few words about the ratio of covers to originals at Monterey
As the wonderfully-shot 45-minute set that I'd never seen in its entirety marched smartly along, punctuated by cuts to a generous allotment of stunned crowd reaction shots, a grab bag of observations rushed to mind. Thoughts ranged from the small stuff like, “I really wish Mitch Mitchell had held the beat steady while Jimi soloed like Buddy Miles,” to the main takeaway: of the nine songs Jimi mesmerized “the beautiful people” with, only three of them were originals. Hmm. It would never have occurred to me that, in his American debut as a major star, Hendrix opted for a 3-1 ratio of covers to originals—I'd always assumed the numbers were 3-1 the other way. 

In my defense, the original theatrical release of Pennebaker's Monterey Pop I caught when I was a teenage stoner at the Kips Bay Theater on New York's Lower East Side didn't include the whole set. Logically enough, the classic doc focuses on the fireworks at the end, leaving the rest of the show up to the imagination. Music afficionados already had a lot to imagine, as the copious amount of pre-show hype carried over the ether cast this colorfully attired Hendrix cat as some extraterrestrial Johnny B. Goode, the likes of which had never been seen before—another reason I've spent 60 years supposing that Hendrix had won the crowd over with stirring renditions of his own compositions. 

And so he did, even if there were fewer of them played at this Monterey show than at any other one he ever played from that point on. By way of explanation, the newly formed Experience had barely rehearsed enough material to go off on a hastily arranged Scandinavian tour, so playing a bunch of tried and true covers the star of the show already knew were the quickest means to an end. 

Here's the full show. The Monterey performance starts around the 12:30 mark.

Here are the six covers that Hendrix performed at the Monterey Pop Festival:

• Killing Floor
• Rock Me Baby
• Hey Joe
• Can You See Me
• Like a Rolling Stone
• Wild Thing

And the three originals:

• Foxey Lady
• Purple Haze
• The Wind Cries Mary

Stacking up
To this heart, mind, and pair of ears, with the exception of the choice morsel from the Dylan canon, the three Hendrix originals stack up with five of the six covers very favorably indeed. And his own ballad, “The Wind Cries Mary,” gives “Like a Rolling Stone” a real run for its money. The longish cover (he even apologizes to the crowd for forgetting a verse!) is the only segment of the show that could be considered slightly sluggish. Not so for the nuanced presentation of “The Wind Cries Mary.” Bemused expressions on faces in the crowd suggest the “gentle people with flowers in their hair” were stumped by how such a romantic refrain flowed out of the same being who just tore up the joint with an adrenalized rendition of “Can You See Me.”

When we put the footage of those three Monterey originals under the microscope, it's not just the jaw-dropping execution that stands out on a 2026 rewatch; it’s the entire conception. It’s the realization that a first-order idea man lurked within the wild-man performer's lithe, agile body. I’d forgotten just how advanced the song's conception and construction were…or, truth be told, perhaps, like most people, I just took those foundational aspects for granted, as if they somehow wrote themselves. It’s easy to overlook specific songwriting aspects like the pacing, the hooks, the originality, the wordsmithing, the leadups to and exit from the mind-bending solos, and the unexpectedly pretty melodies when a sexy-looking guy who’s the GOAT electric guitar player and the flashiest dresser in rock history is laying it on the line when his whole career is at stake. 

Those Monterey originals, destined for Hendrix's eic debut album Are You Experienced, are laced with tricks of the trade employed by extremely talented and highly motivated artists who’ve dedicated themselves to the craft over many years till they finally broke through and mastered the art of songcraft. 

But here's the rub: that Monterey trio came from the first batch of songs Hendrix ever wrote! 

Stone Free,” also destined for Are You Experienced, is often cited as Hendrix's very first effort. Good luck finding a single tune written by anyone anywhere in 1966, a year The Monkees and The Cowsills ruled the airwaves, that soundsanything remotely like it. “Stone Free” wasn't included on the Monterey setlist, but sheesh, that propulsive groove’s one hellacious initial effort. 

Comparing Hendrix's first tunes with his contemporaries'
Until Hendrix came “up from the skies,” invariably, those same esteemed writers who eventually emerged from the songwriting crucible started by scribbling a bunch of heartfelt, if barely listenable tunes musicologists later file under “juvenilia.”  

• No less a songsmith than David Bowie recorded a decade’s worth of drivel with cockamamie titles like “The Laughing Gnome” and “Silly Boy Blue” until guitarist/arranger Mick Ronson snapped him out of it. 
• The best the world-beating duo of Lennon/McCartney could come up with right out of the gate was “Old Brown Shoe” and “The One After 909.” The Beatles' Second Album has a ratio of 6-5 covers to originals. A third Beatle, George Harrison, who most people would agree was an exceptional songwriter, took years to progress before he landed a song on a Beatles album. He apologized for “Don't Bother Me” till the day he died.
• Even longevity kings Jagger/Richards had to borrow Beatles’ B-material like “I Wanna Be Your Man“  before they led the Stones on a decades-long tear. 

And then we come to Are You Experienced. 

Are You Experienced: instant songwriting success
Hendrix didn't have years to ramp up his songwriting to go toe-to-toe with the best in the business. His initial writing frenzy, born of the necessity to leverage his newfound fame as a guitar god as quickly as possible, resulted in the landmark album Are You Experienced. Basically, the mission facing him, his production team, and his record label was nothing less than “come up with something that pops like Cream's Disraeli Gears or Led Zeppelin I to make it obvious what league you're playing in.” 

Starting songwriting life off with a lineup like this boggles the mind: 

• Are You Experienced
• Foxey Lady
• Red House 
• Manic Depression
• Love or Confusion
• I Don't Live Today
• May This Be Love
• Fire
• Third Stone From the Sun
• Remember
• The Wind Cries Mary
• Purple Haze 

Mission accomplished! If there's a greater beginner's effort in rock history, I'm unaware of it.

If you told a music fan unfamiliar with his work that this first collection of tunes was actually a greatest hits playlist— culled from over a dozen albums and hundreds of songs—that person wouldn’t bat an eye. The AI robots who'll one day replace us will still be listening to “Foxy Lady,” “Purple Haze,” “The Wind Cries Mary,” and the rest of the lot centuries from now, like pianists today keep pecking out chestnuts from the days of yore when composers sported ruffled shirts and powdered wigs. 

As a lyricist, Hendrix strides high above other guitar gods
Hendrix being anywhere near as facile at composing lyrics as he was defies the generally accepted order of things in 1966. Typically, the more dazzling someone was on guitar, and the more critics and fans fawned over them, the less likely they were to tackle the diametrically different task of putting pen to paper. Yet Hendrix was light-years ahead of any contemporary who could remotely rival him on guitar. 

• Mick Ronson, Bowie's aforenamed guitarist and arranger, was as daring as they come when it came to augmenting arrangements with Echoplex delays, always-on wahs, and lo-fi but evocative Mellotron string machines—but never waded into the lyrics waters. 
• The other prodigious guitar-playing Jimmy, Page, one of the few axemen with enough verve and panache to stupefy crowds like Hendrix, is credited with writing a few syllables of Led Zep I—then goes uncredited over the entire breadth of their extensive discography. 
• Eric Clapton kept at it until he eventually turned into an advanced wordsmith. Sure, big hits like “Layla “and “Wonderful Tonight” stand out on his resume, though graduation with honors had to wait until his “Clapton is God” phase petered out and Cream, which turned to poets Pete Brown and Martin Sharp to conjure the lyrics to arguably their most compelling material— “White Room,” “Tales of Brave Ulysses,” and “Sunshine of Your Love”—had disbanded.
• Another renowned Hendrix contemporary who certainly knew his way around a Stratocaster, Deep Purple's Richie Blackmore, left the word work to Ian Gilliam or whoever the lead singer was in their various incarnations. 
• That leaves Jeff Beck as the last possibility standing among Hendrix rivals. Should anyone want to sing along with words he wrote, well, you can cross all the Yardbirds tunes off the list since he didn’t write a single line of “Shapes to Come,” “Heart Full of Soul,” or any of them, for that matter. 
• Brian May had a knack for coming up with enduring lyrics to Queen songs—but his string of successes started a good four years after Hendrix was laid to rest, or seven years after “Purple Haze” had set the precedent.

These short but sweet lines from “Foxey Lady” are a sterling example of Hendrix's startling lyrical dexterity:

I wanna take you home
I won't do you no harm

On the surface, there's not much to them, but, if you've ever wrestled with rhymes, you'd realize that home/harm isn't a hard rhyme like home/dome (preferred as the most desirable). It's also not a soft rhyme like home/bone (a secondary solution, but close enough to be in the acceptable zone). Someone has to be pretty sophisticated to come up with a rhyme that's neither hard nor soft but works anyway—even if it doesn't rhyme at all—because the imagery's good, the alliteration is likable, and it moves the story along. 

His favorite lyricists 
A few contemporaries whose writing rose above pure pop and nestled into the loftier realm of poetics caught Hendrix’s attention. First and foremost among them was Bob Dylan. The folkie who changed things up at the height of his fame demonstrated how one guy could crank out unlimited amounts of top-rate tunes, connect deeply with concertgoers and record buyers, and be hailed as "the voice of a generation.” Dylan steadfastly refused to elucidate about his own work for the benefit of clueless reporters, leaving his legions of fans to decipher his vivid imagery for themselves. Inevitably, they'd extract nuggets of wisdom applicable to dramatic situations in their own lives.

According to his clothing designer and close friend Michael Braun, Hendrix was “way into poetry” and carried around books of it that he constantly pressed Braun to read. The man who tailored his velvet pants and hand-selected his Indian jewelry relates that once Hendrix got the hang of how powerful imagery could be, provocative lines such as “you could see happiness staggering down the street” and powerful phrases like “footprints dressed in red” jumped off his lyric sheets.

Predictably, Hendrix was also consumed with admiration for The Beatles and their groundbreaking Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. The Liverpudlians shared a profound admiration for Dylan. Lennon/McCartney would never have made the leap from “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” to “A Day in the Life” without studying him intently. They, too, took delight in tossing off imagery that was open to multiple interpretations ("Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," i.e.)—which they also refused to demystify for the fourth estate. 

Sgt Pepper reprogrammed minds during the 1967 “Summer of Love,” the exact timeframe when Hendrix's career trajectory was rocketing due north. In tribute, he even performed a version of the title song at the Royal Albert Hall. The lesson Hendrix learned from Dylan and The Beatles was that stocking albums with norm-challenging material was no hindrance to commercial success. In fact, the opposite now appeared to be true—the record-buying public seemed to have developed a craving for it. 

Blues and alien influences
According to various girlfriends and bandmates, if Hendrix the homebody wasn’t listening to Dylan, The Beatles, or Ravi Shankar, he was spinning blues records. Band Of Gypsies' bassist Billy Cox called his bro “a blues man at heart.” That said, while he’d think nothing of jamming the night away with blues musicians, Hendrix didn’t really sell himself as one. Unlike Cream or Led Zeppelin, which embraced their blues roots, he was judicious about how often he played numbers like “Born Under a Bad Sign” live. 

The exception to the rule is his “Red House,” with its traditional blues lyrics: 

There's a red house over yonder, baby
That's where my sweet baby stays
Lord, there's a red house over yonder, girl
That's where my baby stays, yeah
I ain't been home to see my old fat baby
In about 99 and one-half days, yeah

Blues man at heart or not, Hendrix consciously chose to pursue a less traditional image, one that leaned more toward the extraterrestrial than the earthbound. We see it in tunes like "Astro Man," “Up From the Skies,” “EXP,” “Third Stone From the Sun,” and “Valleys of Neptune.” Where exactly does this infatuation with space stem from? From reading lots of science fiction and binge-watching sci-fi flicks, according to his brother Leon Hendrix’s book A Brother’s Story:

"As young boys growing up in Seattle, Washington, Leon Hendrix and his older brother Jimi often dreamt of outer space and far-off worlds. Early on, both became fascinated by Larry “Buster” Crabbe’s Flash Gordon science-fiction film serials that played at the activity center where they lived. Jimi even insisted that friends and family call him by the nickname “Buster.” The boys’ other favorites included movies like The Thing and The Day the Earth Stood Still.

At night, Leon and Jimi would often lie on their backs and gaze up at the glistening stars in the sky. Jimi was enchanted by the origins of the universe and relayed stories about the different constellations to his younger brother. They both often wondered how many planets and galaxies existed. Leon recalls that off of the top of his head Jimi spouted stories about ice ages, burning planets, and the creation of the universe. 

These experiences not only influenced Jimi’s childhood drawings of spaceships and intergalactic battle scenes, but also informed a great deal of his songwriting later in life."

Where on earth or from what galaxy do his song concepts originate?
While pinpointing Hendrix’s favorite lyricists is child’s play, tracing the source of his non-cosmic song ideas and his innate ability to frame them into a coherent, if not sublime whole is more resistant to research. There was nothing remotely comparable to the groundbreaking material or studio sounds Hendrix poured into Are You Experienced on the “Chitlin' Circuit” (segregated black clubs), where he cut his teeth as a hired gun for touring acts like the Isley Brothers, King Curtis, and Little Richard. For the most part, those outfits followed proven “soul band” formulas calling for fabulous lead singers, two or three backup vocalists who’d been the best singers in their church choirs growing up, tight horn sections, keyboards, and funky guitar woven into tight, meticulous arrangements.  

Ironically enough, once superstardom was in his sights, Hendrix went out of his way to avoid sounding anything remotely similar to the same acts who'd suppressed his individuality. Conversely, perhaps in a nod to the worldwide reverence that fellow Hall of Famer Eric Clapton and Cream enjoyed, Hendrix and his brain trust elected to model The Jimi Hendrix Experience after the renowned power trio and its technicolor voyages into “acid rock.” 

An acid-head like himself very well may have taken a cue from the ultra-trippy “Tales of Brave Ulysses,” which would have slotted right into the soundtrack of a Claymation classic like The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. In common with Cream albums, the first Jimi Hendrix Experience compendiums were purist affairs largely devoid of backup vocalists, horns, keyboards, strings, and synths. Listeners' interest was piqued and sustained primarily through maximizing the power layered electric guitars, a stack or three of high-gain amps, and a few experimental effects pedals could wield over listeners—especially if the right amount of “magic fairy dust” was sprinkled in by pioneering engineers like Eddie Kramer (Hendrix) and Tom Dowd (Cream).  

A myriad of very watchable videos showcase Eddie Kramer back at the console in Hendrix's Electric Ladyland Studio, dissecting the ins and outs of various Hendrix productions for posterity. He waxes on and on about the guitar work and his studio tweaks. It's all good stuff, hearing individual tracks isolated is illuminating, but I’ve yet to hear Kramer bring up anything about the song frameworks. Song construction does not appear to be in his wheelhouse. 

While Manager Chas Chandler is credited as producer on the first two Hendrix albums, there’s no evidence he had any say on any matters weightier than suggesting he tone down an inclination to include as many verses as Dylan. 

My best theory is that Hendrix attacked song construction with the same relentless work ethic that enabled him to cram 25 years of guitar practice into five, becoming so practiced at it that it seemed as if he just had a natural aptitude for it—even though he actually spent the same amount of time rearranging song elements as mere mortals.  

From the “how” did Jimmy James become Jimi Hendrix to the “where”
Here's one more enigmatic question I can’t resolve: when working out bolts-from-the-blue tunes that leapt out of home hi-fi speakers like the fuzz and feedback-infused “Foxey Lady,” where on earth did Hendrix find a soundproof refuge to harness all that volatile, high-gain energy? Did he woodshed at some out-of-the-way industrial spot, perhaps an abandoned aircraft hangar on the edge of town, where he could wail away to his heart's content without driving the neighbors up a wall? No matter how much of a whiz he was, the prospect that he could stroll onto a stage somewhere, set multiple 100-watt amp heads to ten, stomp on fuzz, wah, octave, and vibe pedals, contend with a dozen Celestion speakers screeching and howling in protest, then instantly demonstrate complete mastery over all that megawatt instability isn’t remotely believable. 

Basically, I can’t dig up a single article or video that focuses on where inexperienced and hamstrung hired hand Jimmy James trained to become unconstrained Jimi Hendrix, sonic trailblazer. Think about it: Jimi’s songwriting was highly embellished with innovative guitar sounds that didn’t exist until he produced them. I'm talking about sounds that can't be reproduced at anything approaching low volume. He wasn’t banging those parts out on an upright piano in the Brill Building like Carole King.

On the other hand, I can come up with various locales Hendrix wasn’t turning into experimental high-volume sound-shaping labs:

• It’s known that Hendrix settled into girlfriend Kathy Etchingham's London flat after he arrived in England, circa 1966. The flat is now a tourist attraction, with all the period-correct psychedelia impressively staged. It's easy to see from the promo material that this flat shares ceilings, floors, and walls with those above, below, and to the sides of it. Photos show an acoustic guitar lying on a bed, a Stratocaster hanging on a wall, and a tiny Peavey practice amp. Maybe he could have written his prettier ballads like “The Wind Cries Mary” or “Castles Made of Sand” in those environs, but there’s no way that he unleashed “I Don't Live Today” in a confined space like that. 
• Earlier in 1966, on-the-make Jimi was bumming around New York City, at least four years away from opening his Electric Ladyland studio in 1970. Ya think building supervisors were simpatico with some “gaily dressed” hippy dude with an Afro and an appetite for pure LSD cranking 100-watt Marshall stacks in their walkup apartments? Especially if that being was intent on exploring how 12" speakers cry out when a guitar with single coil pickups is held six inches from one?
• Going further back in time, Hendrix spent a few formative years stationed in Tennessee, training to be a US Army paratrooper. Does anyone believe that a southern drill sergeant looked the other way while a grunt like Private Hendrix worked out the whammy bar pyrotechnics for “Machine Gun” or “The Star-Spangled Banner” from his bunk in the Fort Campbell barracks? 
• Or maybe the transformation took place in the apartment above Joyce's House of Glamour in Clarksville, Tennessee, where, according to Band of Gypsies bassist and army buddy Billy Cox, Hendrix landed after he was discharged from the service? Doubtful. Beehive-shaped hair dryers that ruled the day put out substantial dBs…but weren't anywhere near powerful enough to blot out the sheer audacity of “Foxey Lady.”

• Or maybe the transformation took place in the apartment above Joyce's House of Glamour in Clarksville, Tennessee, where, according to Band of Gypsies bassist and army buddy Billy Cox, Hendrix landed after he was released from the service? Doubtful. Beehive-shaped hair dryers that ruled the day put out substantial dBs but weren't anywhere near powerful enough to blot out the sheer audacity of “Foxey Lady.” 

Exactly where Hendrix worked out his high-volume histrionics remains a mystery for the ages.  

LSD to PhD?
One substance widely available in his prime that’s been verboten ever since may have had everything to do with Hendrix accelerating straight past songwriting preschool to doctorate-level domination—skipping the usual developmental phases like elementary school, high school, college and grad school. 

Those of us fortunate enough to have had access to the same pure LSD suspect the potent psychotropic gave the already formidable Seattle-born savant an extra edge. Owsley, Orange Sunshine, Windowpane, Blotter Acid, you name it, all had something in common: in addition to their much-lauded hallucinatory effects, they included a “speed” component which enabled someone like me, who lived in Boulder, Colorado at the foot of the Rockies, to spot some prominent geological feature miles away, and easily have enough energy to scamper and scramble around mountainsides until I was standing on the desired ground. That same ingredient made it a snap to play acoustic guitar in a tiled bathroom for five hours in a row, easy. Riffs I’d struggled to play became a breeze. I recall finally putting down my guitar, spotting a can of tennis balls, seeing myself juggling them in my mind’s eye, then doing it, which I’d never come close to doing successfully before.  

That’s why I’m inclined to believe that LSD aided and abetted Hendrix's songwriting prowess in every conceivable way, from the conception, construction, and composition to the poetry to…what was that other skill? Oh, yeah, they say he was no slouch on electric guitar…     

{Further rumination in progress}