Jimi Hendrix

USA, 1963–1970

American guitarist and songwriter who extended the electric guitar's range through feedback, controlled distortion and studio processing, and whose technique became a reference point for rock guitar.

MusicRoots documents 9 artists who influenced Jimi Hendrix and 30 artists Jimi Hendrix influenced in turn. Every connection cites a published source.

Who influenced Jimi Hendrix?

• Robert Johnson — Robert Johnson was the spiritual predecessor Hendrix acknowledged as foundational.
• T-Bone Walker — T-Bone Walker pioneered the showmanship — playing behind his back and with his teeth — that Hendrix made iconic.
• Lightnin' Hopkins — Lightnin' Hopkins was among the first blues artists Hendrix absorbed while growing up.
• Chuck Berry — Chuck Berry's guitar style was the rock'n'roll foundation Hendrix built upon and then transcended.
• Muddy Waters — Hendrix recalled that the first blues that scared him was Muddy Waters's.
• B.B. King — Hendrix absorbed B.B. King's expressive blues phrasing.
• Little Richard — Hendrix played in Little Richard's touring band.
• Bob Dylan — The 'All Along the Watchtower' cover is a tribute to Dylan's influence.
• Buddy Guy — Hendrix sought Guy out rather than the other way round: he turned up at a 1968 show carrying a reel-to-reel machine to tape the set, telling Guy he had come because he had picked things up from him. Film of the two playing together that year survives.

Which artists did Jimi Hendrix influence?

• The Stranglers — Jimi Hendrix was among the acts the Stranglers named as formative influences on their sound.
• Nile Rodgers — As a young player Rodgers jammed with Jimi Hendrix — an 'earth-shattering' encounter he describes as changing how he heard the guitar.
• Muse — Jimi Hendrix is one of Bellamy's core guitar influences, audible in Muse's blues-rooted lead playing and expressive use of the whammy bar.
• Blue Cheer — Hendrix's extreme guitar volume and distortion was the primary model for Blue Cheer's proto-metal sound.
• Deep Purple — Ritchie Blackmore cited Hendrix's volume and drive as a benchmark.
• Motörhead — Lemmy worked as a roadie for Hendrix and considered him a huge influence.
• Robert Fripp — The other half. Fripp took the volume and the electricity and left the blues phrasing behind — which is why he sounds like nobody else who came out of 1967.
• Bill Laswell — Named in the same adolescence — the electric instrument treated as a sound source rather than a guitar.
• Patti Smith — Hendrix's free improvisatory spirit was a touchstone for Smith — she opened her recording career in the spirit of his Electric Lady Studios.
• Prince — Hendrix's psychedelic-soul guitar was an obvious touchstone — though Prince insisted his own playing owed more to Santana.
• Lynyrd Skynyrd — Gary Rossington named Jimi Hendrix among his guitar influences — the electric fire under Skynyrd's leads.
• ZZ Top — Hendrix was at the top of ZZ Top's book — Gibbons's Moving Sidewalks opened for him, Hendrix praised him on TV, and emulating that sound helped form the band.
• Thin Lizzy — Hendrix was Phil Lynott's early hero — a huge inspiration as a fellow Black rock musician, and audible in Lynott's playing and vocals; he wrote 'Song for Jimi' in 1980.
• Scorpions — Hendrix was the guitar model behind the Scorpions' mid-70s sound, above all via Uli Jon Roth, whose lead style was an avowed Hendrix continuation.
• Stevie Ray Vaughan — Vaughan openly built his repertoire around Hendrix covers.
• Queen — Brian May built his guitar vocabulary around Hendrix's innovations in tone, feedback and expressive range.
• Parliament-Funkadelic — Clinton named Hendrix the direct model for joining heavy psychedelic guitar with the Black musical tradition.
• Red Hot Chili Peppers — Hendrix's electric blues-rock is the guitar half of the RHCP formula — John Frusciante's playing is steeped in him.
• The Cure — Hendrix was the young Robert Smith's first idol: 'the first person I had come across who seemed completely free... he represented this thing that I wanted to be.' Smith (11 at the Isle of Wight, 1970) has named him the reason he wanted to become a singer and guitarist.
• King Crimson — Hendrix — who told Fripp 'shake my left hand, it's closer to my heart' after an early Crimson gig — was Fripp's declared benchmark of electric guitar.
• Ash Ra Tempel — Göttsching's guitar cosmos began in Hendrix worship — the documented root of his improvising style.
• Tangerine Dream — Froese named seeing Hendrix live in 1960s Berlin and London among the events that pulled him from painting into music — the guitar cosmos before the synthesizers.
• Toto — Steve Lukather has named Jimi Hendrix his first and greatest guitar hero — the rock-guitar fire beneath Toto's studio polish.
• The Police — Andy Summers has named Hendrix a defining influence — the power-trio guitar space the Police built their sound in.
• PJ Harvey — Hendrix is the third of the three she names.
• Gilberto Gil — Hendrix's electric guitar is the sound that made Tropicalia scandalous to the Brazilian left.
• Wolfmother — Jimi Hendrix is among the classics Stockdale names, his psychedelic blues-rock feeding Wolfmother's fuzzed, wailing sound.
• UFO — Jimi Hendrix's blues-rock firepower is among the influences behind UFO's guitar-driven hard rock.
• Yngwie Malmsteen — The starting gun. Malmsteen was seven, watching a television report of Hendrix's death that showed him burning his guitar, and picked the instrument up that day.
• Joan Jett & the Blackhearts — One of the three records Jett taught herself guitar from.