There are guitarists, their are guitar heroes, and then there’s Jimi Hendrix. Between his arrival in Swinging London in the winter of 1966 and his death four short years later at the age of 27, Hendrix turned rock’n’roll inside out. No one played guitar like him - even such acknowledged masters of the instrument as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page could only bow down in reverence.
But revolutionising the guitar wasn’t the only thing that made Hendrix so incredible. He was a killer songwriter too. Blues, R&B, psychedelia, hard rock, proto-heavy metal – his music sounded like it had beamed in from several different dimensions, often at the same time.
Hendrix released 60 songs during his lifetime, with many more following posthumously. But which of those songs is the best? Scholars and Hendrix heads have long argued over the merits of everything from Purple Haze, Voodoo Child (Slight Return) and his game-changing covers of All Along The Watchtower and Hey Joe to the soaring Little Wing or the blazing anti-Vietnam screed Machine Gun.
We've decided to settle the matter once and for all by throwing it open to the floor. That's right: we want you to vote for the greatest Jimi Hendrix song of them all.
To make things easy, we've listed every studio song he recorded during his lifetime, together with the key songs from the 84(!) albums that have been released since his death. If you want to choose a deep posthumous cut, don’t worry – there's space to add it at the bottom. And you get three votes in total, so you can spread the love.
Got it? Easy, right. Now over to you…
