Jimi: All Is By My Side

Synopsis:  The story of the rise of Jimi Hendrix (André Benjamin) from backup guitarist at New York's Cheetah Club in 1966 to just before his image-defining appearance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. .

Written and directed by Oscar-winning 12 Years A Slave screenwriter John Ridley, Jimi: All Is By My Side comes to us with a fair degree of negative publicity. This largely centres on the fact that there are none of Hendrix’s well-known songs included and that the film plays fast and loose with Hendrix’s life, notably a scene in which he beats his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham (Hayley Atwell) with a telephone receiver, something which the real life Etchingham claims never happened. The incident may not have happened but, really how much can we know of a person’s life particularly when they are, as Hendrix was then, a virtual unknown?  Surely most biopics invent incidents to illustrate their subject’s qualities and presumably Ridley had some justification for its inclusion.

Unable to secure the rights to any of the music from Hendrix’s estate Ridley focusses on the period prior to his Top 40 success. This works quite well as we get to appreciate Hendrix’s skill as a guitar player (the scene in which he blows Eric Clapton offstage is brilliant), and this surely must be regarded as an achievement (although the actual playing is by veteran session  musician and producer Waddy Wachtel), before his well-known style cemented itself in songs like “Purple Haze”  and ‘Crosstown Traffic”.

Less justifiable is Ridley’s recourse, particularly in the early stages of the film, to splitting the audio and video and overlapping them so that we hear one thing, see something else. Oddly this seems largely confined to when Linda Keith (Imogen Poots ) and Hendrix are together.  The other significant miscalculation is the use of look-alike actors that bear the scantest resemblance to the people they are supposed to look like. The use of superimposed labels - Andrew Loog Oldham, Paul McCartney etc – only make the incongruity more rodiculous.  It is a common practice in films dealing with this period and really should stop.

On the other hand Andrew Buckley does very well as Hendrix’s manager and onetime Animals’ bassist Chas Chandler whilst Oliver Bennett  and Tom Dunlea are a good fit for Experience bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell. But dominating the show, understandably is André Benjamin,  a.k.a. Andre 3000 of OutKast who gives a very good interpretation of Hendrix both onstage, brilliantly emulating the legend’s fluid left -handed guitar playing, and off, creating a portrait of a thoughtful but sometimes arrogant young man acutely aware of his extraordinary gift.

The women come off less well. Although Ridley makes clear the importance of women in shaping Hendrix’s career, from Keith who essentially discovered him, Etchingham who was his protective/controlling girlfriend during the period under the viewing glass and a made-up composite character, Ida (Ruth Negga), a black American activist living in London who tried to politicize Hendrix, dramatically speaking they remain of secondary interest, even when Hendrix himself is doing nothing but lounging around. Such is star power

1960s buffs. nostalgics amongst others will find plenty to enjoy in the period settings. Ridley uses footage and photographs from the time to suggest its flavours whilst costume designer Leonie Pendergast’s recreations of the Carnaby Street fashions are simply fab.

 

Want something different?