David Noel Redding, bassist, guitarist, singer and songwriter:
born Folkestone, Kent 25 December 1945; married 1969 Susan
Fowsby (marriage dissolved); died Ardfield, Co Cork 11 May 2003.
While a veritable industry has been built on the
talent of the late Jimi Hendrix, some of the principals involved in
the career of the legendary rock guitarist never received full
recognition or fair payment for their outstanding contribution. Noel
Redding, the guitarist who switched to bass and joined the Jimi
Hendrix Experience in 1966, played on the band's three landmark
albums and six hit singles but signed away his royalty rights in
1974 for a one-off payment of $100,000.
Given the subsequent and incessant repackaging of
the Hendrix catalogue on vinyl, CD and now DVD, the bassist should
probably have received royalties well in excess of that amount on a
yearly basis.
In 1996 Redding, a compulsive
diarist, documented his travails, trials and tribulations and his
years with Hendrix in an autobiography entitled
Are You Experienced?
Last year, he belatedly launched a legal action against the
Experience Hendrix company to try and recover some of his royalties
with the help of the former Big Country and Stranglers manager Ian
Grant. But Redding never stopped playing and last year released a
live album recorded in Prague in the Nineties.
Born in Folkestone on
Christmas Day 1945, David Noel Redding first went to art school. As
a teenager, he had played guitar in various groups such as the
Strangers, the Modern Jazz Group and the Lonely Ones, eventually
joining the Burnettes, with whom he worked in Germany in 1965. When
Tom Jones's manager Gordon Mills became their manager, the Burnettes
changed their name to the Loving Kind, and issued three singles on
the Piccadilly label. But Redding's musical career was going nowhere
and he was considering becoming a milkman until he saw an advert in
Melody Maker
in 1966:
It was September 29th. I went for an audition with
Eric Burdon's New Animals but they already got a guitarist. Chas
Chandler came up and asked if I could play bass. I said: "No, but
I'll give it a go." So I played with a drummer, Aynsley Dunbar, a
keyboard player, Mike O'Neill and this American gentleman, quiet and
very polite, who turned out to be Jimi Hendrix.
Redding had very vivid memories of his first
meeting with the guitarist:
We played three tunes with no vocals and Hendrix
only played rhythm. One was "Hey Joe", one was "Need Somebody To
Love" and I can't remember the third. After the audition, he asked
me to go down
to the pub with him for a chat. I was into Sam
Cooke and Ray Charles as well as rock and we got on well. I think he
liked my curly hair. After a couple of pints of bitter, he asked me
to join the group. I was glad to get the job and being paid £15 a
week was wonderful even if I wasn't too sure about switching from
guitar to bass.
Their next rehearsal, a couple of days later, was
with Mitch Mitchell on drums, in a place called Birdland, off Jermyn
Street in London. I wasn't sure what it would come to but we had
great chemistry when we played together. Hendrix was the only guy
who could play rhythm and lead at the same time. He could do chords,
riffs, then go into solos . . . but he couldn't have done that
without me and Mitch backing him up.
Managed by Chandler, the Jimi Hendrix Experience
made their live début in October 1966 opening for Johnny Hallyday on
a short French tour. The power trio played their cover of "Hey Joe",
a song written by the singer-songwriter Billy Roberts which had been
a US hit for a Los Angeles group called the Leaves. In December,
they issued their rendition of the song, more reminiscent of Tim
Rose's version, on the Polydor label and made the Top Ten in
Britain.
Feted by The Who, the Beatles and the Rolling
Stones after a prestigious London showcase, the Jimi Hendrix
Experience signed to Track Records, the label launched by The Who's
managers Chris Stamp and Kit Lambert, and issued "Purple Haze",
their follow-up single, before joining Cat Stevens, the Walker
Brothers and Engelbert Humperdinck on a package tour of the British
Isles.
A No 3 hit in May 1967,
"Purple Haze" heralded the arrival of
Are You Experienced?, the band's
critically acclaimed début album which reached No 2 and gave the
Beatles' Sgt Pepper
a run for its money in the best-seller lists around Europe. By the
time the beautiful "The Wind Cries Mary" charted in June 1967, the
Jimi Hendrix Experience had also stolen the show at the Monterey Pop
festival.
Jamming with Stevie Wonder at
the BBC, making up radio jingles on the spot, Hendrix, Mitchell and
Redding were on a roll. They issued the "Burning of the Midnight
Lamp" single and the Axis: bold as love
album at the end of 1967. The album even included a Redding
composition:
"She's So Fine" was about hippies, I had seen some
bloke walking about with an alarm clock around his neck, attached by
a bit of string. He must have figured that it looked very
avant-garde. The session was great. I showed Hendrix the riff and he
thought of the G solo in the middle. Hendrix and Mitchell did those
funny vocals in the background. I was overwhelmed that my song was
being recorded.
Now a global phenomenon, the Jimi Hendrix
Experience charted with a cover of Bob Dylan's "All Along the
Watchtower" in September 1968 but, according to Redding, the writing
was already on the wall:
We worked our arses off for three years, we were
on the road for too long and the band got too big. We were spaced
constantly, we stopped playing music and started doing time. Hendrix
got a bit of an attitude, he was moody on stage, there were too many
hangers-on, the band just started to fall apart. I went down to the
studio for two days and no one even turned up. That's when I did
"Little Miss Strange" just to fill in the time.
Assembled with a variety of
guest musicians such as Al Kooper and Steve Winwood as well as
Redding and Mitchell, Electric Ladyland
eventually came out in October 1968 and
topped the American charts on its release. The Experience soldiered
on but the bassist didn't help the mood in the camp by insisting
that his new project, Fat Mattress, open the concerts as well.
Chas Chandler, their manager,
walked out during the recording of
Electric Ladyland in New York and he
advised Redding to leave the band, but he didn't until June 1969 –
"when Jimi decided to expand the group without asking us", said
Redding:
My last gig was in Denver in front of 30,000
people who basically tried to get on stage with us. The police used
tear gas but the wind was coming towards the stage and we had to
stop. The next day, I got on a plane and went home. I don't think
Jimi believed I would do it.
Hendrix formed the Band of
Gypsys with Buddy Miles and Billy Cox in late 1969 but, by the
following March, Mitchell was back in the fold, though Redding
remained persona non grata.
"I found out through somebody in the management office that I'd been
asking too many questions about money and that Hendrix had just been
advised to get somebody else," explained Redding, who remained
adamant about his contribution to the trio:
The thing is, myself and Hendrix used to compete
and it worked. Being an ex-guitar player, I was playing chords and
stuff which impressed Hendrix. Not many bass players play chords. I
know Billy Cox is an excellent bass player but I was probably a bit
more flamboyant.
Indeed, Redding's Afro and dandyish dress-style
matched that of the Experience frontman for the three years they
were together:
I think that the clothes and hairstyles of the
Jimi Hendrix Experience really helped in our success. We were there
in London when the King's Road/Carnaby Street fashion was in and we
were part of it.
When Hendrix died in September 1970, Noel Redding
admitted he was shook up. It was the first time in my life that
someone I had known was dead. All these women came to my room and
wanted to commit suicide, to throw themselves out of the window. I'm
not religious but I went with all these women to church. Then we
went to a cocktail bar and we got rotten. Then one night I had a
dream and Jimi came into the room. I said, "But you're dead", and he
said, "It's cool, I just wanted to see you again."
Later that year, having
abandoned Fat Mattress, Redding began work on a solo album,
Nervous Breakdown,
in New York:
I went ahead with Lee Michaels and Roger Chapman
[of Family fame] and a 15-year-old drummer. I paid for it all
myself. They didn't release it. All it got us was a bad financial
situation. I started drinking and I got busted. Then I got sued for
maintenance.
What nagged away at Redding was the ill-advised
decision in 1974 to accept a lump sum in lieu of past and future
royalties for the Jimi Hendrix Experience recordings. "I should have
been a plumber. That's a joke but the thing is, plumbers get paid,"
he joked, somewhat bitterly, since, at one time, he had to sell the
instrument he used to record with the Experience to make ends meet.
But he did eventually manage to get publishing royalties for "Little
Miss Strange" and "She's So Fine", the two songs he wrote for the
Experience.
The bassist formed the short-lived Road and then
the Noel Redding Band and carried on working into the Nineties,
playing with the Spirit guitarist and protégé Randy California and
briefly joining the heavy rock band Mountain. Redding was planning a
retrospective CD of his varied pre- and post-Hendrix career and
still played the odd gig at weekends. "I wouldn't go on tour ever
again. I realised I prefer staying at home, even though I can't
afford it," he said.