Things I Used To Own #1

In my early 20s I lived a very chaotic & unsettled existence. During that time I sold or otherwise lost track of all sorts of things I had acquired from 15 (that is 1985) upwards, including things that weren't fully mine in the first place, for instance Mum's late Beatles' singles on the Apple label. There are very few things I have which pre-date 1993 in terms of when I got them. I want to talk about one of those things, which disappeared to who knows where, in the following piece.

It was a commercially-produced tape copy of an American radio show, the purpose of which was to play alternate takes of the released versions of songs by Jimi Hendrix. I bought it in W.H.Smith's, if I remember right, out of sheer curiosity. Perhaps I had a record token I needed to spend. In the main it was a great disappointment. The alternate takes were so similar to the released versions they were essentially indistinguishable. So the bulk of it was a wash-out. But - BUT - there was one extraordinary track on it. It was Jimi, alone in a hotel room somewhere with a tape recorder & an acoustic guitar, playing an early sketch of his song Angel. It was just him singing & the basic chords which are the architecture of the song. It was spell-binding, so poignant; it made the released version - which is magnificent - by contrast seem ruined by having been elaborated.

The lyrics of Angel by the way contain an image which is among the greatest in the whole of popular music, in my opinion. The action described in the song, in case you don't know it, is that in the first verse an Angel comes down from Heaven to the singer &, as he sings, "She stayed with me just long enough to rescue me." The Angel promises to return the next day. In the second verse, the Angel returns as she had promised. Jimi sings:

"Sure enough, this morning came unto me -

Silver wings sillhouette against a child's sunrise."

That image ! So simple ! So powerful ! We are somewhat beyond the realm of moon/June/spoon song-writing here.

I don't think I am too wide of the mark in suggesting that the primary inspiration behind Angel, the ghost that haunts it, is Jimi's beautiful & wayward mother Lucille, who died in 1958 when he was 15. His constant unsatisfiable longing for her & for her love go into this song. She is also the subject of Little Wing, I think - another song that .... calling it poignant seems insufficient.

It is interesting to compare this source of inspiration in Jimi's song-writing with a similar thread in that of John Lennon. His mother Julia, another wayward soul, was killed by a car, also in 1958, when Lennon was 17. It's hard to think of a more haunting song than Julia on The White Album which Lennon wrote about her.

I also wonder what role the loss of their mothers played in both Jimi & Lennon's drive for fame - to seek for the mother's love that was lost to them forever in the love of the audience.