Live at Woodstock

Live at Woodstock is a posthumous live album by Jimi Hendrix released on July 6, 1999. The album documents Hendrix’s performance with his band Gypsy Sun and Rainbows at Woodstock Festival on August 18, 1969. Many of the tracks on this album were released in 1994 on Woodstock. Apart from the cover of “Gypsy Woman” (The Impressions) and “Mastermind”, both of which were sung by rhythm guitarist Larry Lee, Live at Woodstock contains the full set played by the band.

The recording, sound mix and the 1999 remix were completed by Eddie Kramer, who has pointed out that the conditions were primitive; in view of that, the result has been acclaimed, though the radical editing results in the group sound being reduced to a three piece of Hendrix, Cox and Mitchell. Lee, as noted above, and the two percussionists are essentially edited out of the mix. The original recording of the complete performance can be heard on several bootleg releases and the full group is clearly audible, notably on “Jam Back At The House” (aka “Beginnings”), where the volume of the two percussionists and Lee’s guitar are noticeably a part of the whole.

Hendrix’s psychedelic morning after pill was a gloriously unfocused affair, at times sprawling and tentative, at times like his “Star Spangled Banner,” timeless, brilliant and classic. At his most tentative that morning, playing with a newly assembled group, Hendrix was still in control, still exploding the limits on what one man can do with an electric guitar.