See a Full Jimi Hendrix Experience Concert on Restored Footage Thought Lost for 35 Years

Maybe there’s truth to the old joke about the 60s—“If you remem­ber it, you weren’t there”—but it’s hard to believe any­one could for­get see­ing Hen­drix. If you caught him in Stock­holm in 1969 how­ev­er and it some­how slipped your mind, you can relive it again for the first time in the well-pre­served, new­ly restored con­cert film above: a full hour of “elec­tric church music” from the Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence.

The event was not meant to have been pre­served at all. As Cata­ri­na Wil­son of Sweden’s pub­lic tele­vi­sion sta­tion SVT explained to the BBC, the tape should have been erased and reused because the sta­tion couldn’t afford to keep so much raw footage. Some tech­ni­cian at the sta­tion like­ly real­ized its val­ue and stashed it away. Since it was unla­beled, the footage sat for­got­ten on the shelf for 35 years, until a team under­took a project of trans­fer­ring archival mate­r­i­al to dig­i­tal and dis­cov­ered the full Hen­drix gig.

“The tape was shot on Jan­u­ary 9, 1969 at Stockholm’s Kon­serthuset,” reports Swedish news site The Local, “for a pop music show called ‘Num­mer 9.’ Only ten min­utes of the con­cert was broad­cast on Jan­u­ary 21st of that year.” After their intro­duc­tion, Hen­drix ded­i­cates the show to “the Amer­i­can desert­ers society”—soldiers refus­ing to go to Viet­nam, some of whom may have been in the audi­ence. Then, after a lit­tle tun­ing up and anoth­er obscure ded­i­ca­tion, the band launch­es into “Killing Floor.”

See the full track­list for the Stock­holm Kon­serthuset show below (the tape cuts off right before the encore).

01 Killing Floor
02 Span­ish Cas­tle Mag­ic
03 Fire 04 Hey Joe
05 Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
06 Red House
07 Sun­shine Of Your Love

Hen­drix also men­tions that the band will only play “oldies but bad­dies,” hint­ing at one of the many ten­sions between him and bassist Noel Red­ding that broke the band apart just six months lat­er. “The audi­ence want­ed us to play the old Hen­drix stan­dards,” Red­ding told Rolling Stone in Novem­ber, “but Jimi want­ed to do his new stuff. The last straw came at the Den­ver Pop Fes­ti­val when Jimi told a reporter that he was going to enlarge the band… with­out even con­sult­ing myself or our drum­mer, Mitch Mitchell.”

Com­pared to this sure­ly mem­o­rable, yet fair­ly stan­dard Stock­holm con­cert, the Experience’s last stage appear­ance in Den­ver “end­ed up being an unfor­get­table show,” notes Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock, “for all the wrong reasons”—containing all the things we asso­ciate with the chaot­ic late six­ties. Hen­drix dropped acid before the gig. “Com­bined with the near-riot that took place out­side of the venue by those who demand­ed that the pro­mot­ers make the event free, it made for a bad vibe over­all.”

You can hear that con­cert above, includ­ing Hendrix’s dec­la­ra­tion, mid-way through the set, that it would be “the last gig we’ll ever play togeth­er.” Just a few min­utes lat­er, police fired tear gas into the crowd, the wind blew it back toward the stage, and “the Expe­ri­ence set down their instru­ments for the final time and fled for cov­er.” Red­ding quit that night and board­ed a plane for Lon­don, and just over a year lat­er, Hen­drix was gone.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Ear­li­est Known Footage of the Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence (Feb­ru­ary, 1967)

Jimi Hendrix’s Final Inter­view on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1970: Lis­ten to the Com­plete Audio

Hear a Great 4‑Hour Radio Doc­u­men­tary on the Life & Music of Jimi Hen­drix: Fea­tures Rare Record­ings & Inter­views

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness.