First Rays of The New Rising Sun - Reconstructing The Album

Reconstructing The Album

The tracks for this album ranged from finished to skeletal at the time of Hendrix's death. Much of the material had been recorded over the summer of 1970 at Jimi's just-completed Electric Lady Studios in New York City. Many songs seemed to be missing just their finishing touches, but Hendrix was a perfectionist who had already spent two years developing this album, making it hard to be sure. Mitchell and Kramer have claimed that only the changes that had been discussed with Hendrix have been made for the unfinished tracks.

Recording engineer Eddie Kramer used the same tracks with the same posthumous overdubs, production and mixing that he and Mitch Mitchell had applied on the "Cry of Love", "Rainbow Bridge" and "War Heroes" albums (apart from the removal of the drum beats at the beginning of "Easy Rider"). For First Rays of the New Rising Sun Kramer remastered and resequenced these tracks.

Many songs only needed a final mix, which was made posthumously. However, "Belly Button Window" was possibly intended to have more overdubs. Both "Beginnings" and "Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)" are in early stages of production, featuring basic tracks which might ultimately have been re-recorded. (In the latter song, Hendrix can be heard asking "Is the microphone on?") Some tracks, such as "Straight Ahead", feature a preliminary vocal track that Hendrix had intended to re-record. A vibraphone track was added to "Drifting" like Hendrix had planned - though he also had an idea of using another guitar track instead of vibraphones.

Other songs planned for the album were left out of this compilation as simply too raw, including "Come Down Hard On Me" (originally released on Loose Ends) and "Cherokee Mist" (both released on 2000's four-CD The Jimi Hendrix Experience), "Drifter's Escape" (originally released on Loose Ends and later found on the 1997 compilation South Saturn Delta) and "Valleys of Neptune" (released on the 2010 album Valleys of Neptune in a major remix using the vocal track taken from one version overdubbed on to an instrumental backing track of another version recorded several months apart). "Can I Whisper In Your Ear" is in too early a stage of development to be considered for a mainstream release.

The song "My Friend", is an exception. It was recorded much earlier than the rest of the material (during Electric Ladyland sessions in 1968), and some people have raised doubts as to whether Hendrix had ever intended to include it. "Ezy Ryder" was not used in the similarly named movie Easy Rider but was inspired by Hendrix's viewing of it.