Grammy nominated Director John McDermott is a proud Jimi Hendrix completist. When we met on Zoom, John’s background was three gold and platinum Hendrix albums. There are few people, let alone filmmakers, who know the history of Hendrix better than McDermott, which makes him uniquely suited to create a documentary on one of Hendrix’s greatest lasting creations, Electric Lady Studios. The recording studio is still in use to this very day with modern artists like Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, and Beyonce recording some of their best music at the mysterious underground NYC studio.
McDermott’s film, Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision showcases how Hendrix’s last grand statement before his untimely death at just 27 in 1970 came to fruition. It was a fraught process, turning an underground club left in disarray into a world class studio, but Hendrix and his architect John Storyk, and his engineer Eddie Kramer pulled off one hell of an accomplishment. One that sadly, far outlived Hendrix himself, but has extended his legacy well past his death nearly 55 years ago.
Here is my conversation with the Producer and Director of Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision, John McDermott:
Awards Daily: I never got to enjoy Jimi’s music while he was still alive, but oddly enough, my father-in-law was in a band in New York City called the Druids of Stonehenge that were briefly on a major label back in the mid-sixties. My father-in-law broke his arm. He was the band’s guitarist. And Jimi, before he had gone over to record in England, actually sat in and played some gigs with them, which is just astounding.
John McDermott: So this is the Druids, right? That’s a true story. I’ve heard that from multiple people.
Awards Daily: They wanted to ask him to be in the band because not only could he obviously play, he was such a good guy. Trouble was, they couldn’t afford a six-way-split. So they were going to break the news to him because Carl, my father-in-law, was coming back from his injury. The lead singer, David Budge, took Jimi out onto the street at a club and Jimi said I’ve got something to tell you. David, who was not looking forward to giving Jimi that thanks but no thanks, said, you go first. That’s when Jimi told him that Chas Chandler (formerly of The Animals) had reached out to him and said he wanted to take Jimi to record in London, so I can’t consider being part of the band. Budge said it was one of the greatest things that ever happened to him because he didn’t want his legacy in life to be I fired Jimi Hendrix.
Jim McDermott: (Laughs). How would anyone want to be known for that?
Awards Daily: Let’s talk about your movie though. Unless I’m wrong, Electric Lady Studios has been written about, but I don’t know of another film that has really delved into the creation of the studio itself. Did it surprise you that there was this storytelling gap?
John McDermott: I approached it in a different fashion. Many years ago, Eddie Kramer and I collaborated on a book called Hendrix: Setting the Record Straight. And it really wasn’t a classical biography of Jimi, but was a look at his life and career, particularly at the impact that the posthumous decision-making had on his legacy. When I got to meet all these people, I just thought it was an amazing story. So it certainly was a part of our book. I knew that when the time was appropriate, it would make a great film, because it’s such an unusual story. The Hendrix family were fortunate in that they were able to purchase all of John Veltri’s amazing architectural photography, tracing the arc of the construction of the studio. That gave us the real opportunity to be a film because you don’t want people to think oh, it’s just hyperbole, about what a dump it was, and how no one thought it would work. But to see the evidence of how far they had to come to create their vision, I knew that would pay off in a visual medium like a documentary.
Awards Daily: The structure that Jimi purchased was almost a disaster area, which speaks to how long it took to complete the studio.
John McDermott: What’s interesting about Electric Lady is that Jimi Hendrix tended to inspire those around him to use the possibilities that his fame, his success, his artistry created to do interesting things. He impacted rock touring, impacted how merchandise was sold and how much the artists made from the sales. Technically, the original idea of building a nightclub, once it was pointed out to all those directly involved that this was not really a feasible exercise, that the previous club, The Generation, had failed despite booking some tremendous acts, I think at that point creating a studio for him seemed like a new possibility. There was something about that era that was like sure, we could do this, given where he stood at that time as the biggest grossing touring act. In April of 1969, the possibilities seemed endless. By the end of June, Jimi’s bass player, Noel Redding, had left the band, touring had stopped, and there were construction problems at the studio. What seemed an easy path towards a great idea, all of a sudden now became this really difficult challenge.
Awards Daily: I think it speaks to Jimi’s desire for a communal space that a nightclub was the original inspiration. And then he wanted to incorporate more than a studio into that space. He wanted to have a place to hang out, for artists to connect as well as record music.
John McDermott: Ultimately, I personally feel that Jimi had struggled so hard prior to Chas taking him to England and his success was almost unimaginable. To have succeeded in England and Europe, and then to come back post-Monterey and all of a sudden Are You Experienced becomes an enormous record, I have to think that he believed he should use this time wisely because he knew what it was like to be denied the chance to record and to put out records. He really wasn’t a self promoter. He wasn’t a guy who needed 20 cars and limousines. He’s the antithesis of what I guess a contemporary pop star is today. He had a Corvette, a two bedroom apartment in the Village, and he was fine with that. He just wanted his own recording studio. I think the fact that he invested in himself was a gutsy call by a guy who three/four years earlier was effectively starving and looking to take any gig he could just to keep afloat.
Awards Daily: Poor John Storyk, the architect who thought he was going to build a nightclub and then was asked to build a studio. You could tell just from watching the documentary that John himself knew he was in over his head, but he didn’t let that stop him. And the design of Electric Lady is just so unique, in part because of Jimi’s vision, but probably also because John wasn’t a conventional person to choose to make a recording studio.
John McDermott: You’re 100 percent right. The entire exercise was about a bunch of people given the opportunity to do something unique at a young point in their lives. John wasn’t at a point where he’d had an experience creating studios. Even so, he said if you guys aren’t going to listen to me, I’m off the job, but I do want to go forward. All the people that Eddie hired, he effectively went to Kim King and Dave Palmer who gave up their careers as musicians because they wanted to be engineers at this brand new place. I do think that the mission was unique. People viewed it for exactly what it was: a really crazy opportunity that’s before me that I want to be a part of. And I think that Jimi was the kind of guy in his quiet way who generated that kind of goodwill and excitement around this very small group of people who helped bring this dream to reality. He didn’t hector them. He wasn’t a Machiavellian type guy trying to pit one against the other. They became a family trying to build something special for this amazing artist.
Awards Daily: We have to talk about Eddie Kramer. To be Jimi’s main engineer is an extraordinary thing, and if you watch the documentary, you can tell that’s where Eddie comes in to help John understand what the studio needs in this really unique space with this desire for an unusual design.
John McDermott: Eddie and John today are the closest of friends, but I think their age and their enthusiasm was really the glue that held it together. It was their initial enthusiasm that spread throughout this very small group of people who caught the fever, if you will: Palmer, Hanson, and then went to Linda, and obviously Jim Marron was a very quiet, strong force, holding this project together. So this didn’t seem like a wing and a prayer, it just seemed like we’re making it up as we’re going along. I think that was a big difference.
Awards Daily: What I found fascinating in terms of all the information that’s shared in the film is that Jimi was more interested in the feel of the studio and the surrounding space than he was the sound. Not that he didn’t care about the sound, but he left that part completely to Eddie. Jimi was a co-designer of the space to a certain degree. He may not have designed the studio in the conventional sense, but the vision was based around his ideas.
John McDermott: I think so, but I also think that he respected Eddie. Eddie had made his bones with Jimi over a course of ground now that traced back to January ‘67. He knew that Jimi had worked in what was described as the first artist-friendly recording environment which was The Record Plant. Even with the tall order of improving on that studio with his own, he believed in Eddie and the others who were saying we can do this for you. Jimi seemed to be, by all accounts, compartmentalized in terms of his relationships. So he was certainly able to have a relationship with a girlfriend, or a relationship with Eddie that was specific. His relationship with bandmates Mitch Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox, that was specific. Once he placed that trust in you, I think he allowed you to do what attracted that person to Jimi in the first place. He was smart enough to understand that Eddie was committed to his music as far back as recording “Purple Haze,” so he knew that was solid. He knew Jim Marron from the nightclub The Scene and how he ran that venue, and how he treated the people who worked there.
He knew Kim King from jamming at The Night Owl and had worked and worked with him at the Band of Gypsies mixing session. As long as he felt like that person had an understanding of what the goal was, he allowed them to be good at what they did, because in many ways his own preferred way was for those who worked with him to support the song, the album, the session, whatever it was that they were doing in that moment. Jimi was obviously a very present person. He would preface his concerts by saying hey, let’s build a whole world together. Forget about everything that’s happened yesterday, today, tomorrow. We’re here together in this moment. That seemed to be his MO. And I think the excitement of the possibilities that the studio could offer him both, as you say, in terms of a place to hang and be comfortable, but also just be able to have a state of the art facility that he could go into and confirm an idea that had been rattling around in his head whenever he wanted, because he lived a couple of blocks away. That had to be exciting to somebody like him who had never been given a chance just four or five years before, no matter how great the idea might have been.
Awards Daily: The artist that came to mind that did something similar later on in a more recent era, is Prince with Paisley Park. The thing that they shared in common was that they liked to go in and record all night long. Jimi, when he was courting for other studios, not only was he paying exorbitant studio fees, but he was also coming in at nine o’clock at night and leaving at seven o’clock in the morning. It’s a lot easier to do that if you own it.
John McDermott: It is. But in some ways, it’s like musical chairs. Is this going to end, this wonderful ride that I’m on? If you look at Electric Ladyland and how that was recorded, they would do a few sessions, they’d have to go out on the road because Jimi was always ahead of his popularity. By the time he came back to America, he had started to make it in Europe but it took time to launch him again in America. I think his audience was catching up to him and he was exploding from high school and college gymnasiums to big theaters, to now playing Madison Square Garden, now being the headliner of Woodstock. The audience was always chasing him, but yet he was operating at a really high rate of speed. So he knew what he wanted to try to achieve. With Electric Ladyland, he often had to rush out to play live gigs and then go back to work on the record. The benefit of having Electric Lady for him is now I feel like I’m someplace in my career. I can go and play and headline a festival. I can play the LA forum. But with my own studio, I can play live just on weekends now. I can record during the week. So it’s maturity.
He’s now 27 years old, going to be 28 at the end of November in ‘70. There is a part of him that’s different than when he was 24, because now I think he can see, people like what I do and there’s a demand for what I create. Therefore I want to try to change the way in which I know and manage myself so that I can be most productive. You can’t argue against having a facility like that. I think with Paisley Park and other artists owned studios, those are great. But Jimi Hendrix was part of the music business. Prince was later part of the music industry. Those guys in the ‘60s built something that the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, and beyond have all benefited from. But I certainly think, if you’re talking about 1969 when they broke ground on the studio, Atlantic had a facility, Columbia had a facility, Capitol had a facility, Producers had a facility. John Lennon had some reel-to-reel recording equipment at home to have something for himself to write and record on, but to have a commercial operation where you were going to be in (studio) A and clients were going to be in B, that was a ballsy decision by Jimi, without question.
Awards Daily: Speaking to the fact that Jimi’s popularity was catching up to him in the States, I recently covered the HBO documentary on STAX and I did not realize this, but it was similar for them. The STAX artists went overseas to England where they found immediate success and appreciation. There’s something about musicians, from jazz musicians to soul musicians, to blues musicians, to rock and roll musicians who were black and of that era, having to go abroad to find an audience and then come back home and re-find an audience here.
John McDermott: There’s no doubt that American music like Fats Domino, Muddy Waters, Memphis Slim, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, and so many of these other wonderful artists, were celebrated by those folks in England and Europe who were hearing it. I think there were a lot of British musicians who were shocked when they came to America and thought these guys should be the kings. This is the most exciting music. I do think what was unique about Hendrix was that he was steeped in the blues tradition, and wasn’t really a top 40 driven R&B kind of guy. He was like the next generation of what all those guys loved, so when Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck and all these British artists heard Jimi and these other artists, they were blown away because they were like God, not only are they great but they are taking it higher.
There was an appreciation from afar for American culture, and black artists who were denied the commercial opportunities here in America because of how things were 60/70 years ago, and coming over the Atlantic and being able to have access to radio play and bigger crowds. There they were almost these mythical heroes. I think you saw that when the blues artists first toured in the ‘60s and then, of course, with STAX and with other artists going over there, Motown artists, they thought this is some amazing music. The irony of Jimi coming back to America is that they didn’t get it at first. They had many a chance, but it was Chas—a British guy—who truly saw his talent and wanted to bring it out. This isn’t like finding Muddy Waters at 50. This is finding Jimi Hendrix at 24 years old.
Awards Daily: And Chas being a guy who was in a legendary band himself with The Animals, that was very influenced by black based blues music.
John McDermott: Completely. Chas in many ways is the hero of the story, because he totally understood Jimi. He left a successful band because he found an artist whose talent was greater than his own, but yet he understood the commercial parameters of being a pop act in the UK and in Europe and in America. The Animals had 10 top 40 hits, but he knew he could make Jimi a star, and he did. I’ve always felt that Chas deserves special credit because he left The Animals to make Jimi Hendrix a star. Pretty remarkable.
Awards Daily: It’s mind blowing. Being in The Animals was a pretty safe gig at the time. I imagine you took a tremendous delight in finding the new performance footage.
John McDermott: Anytime you find footage of Jimi Hendrix it’s great because there’s so little of it. Like everybody else, I was incredibly excited to watch The Beatles: Get Back movie. The idea of having fifty or sixty hours of professionally shot film to draw on, my goodness. One can only dream of that. We find three minutes of something Jimi did and if it helps tell the story, we’re ecstatic. It’s funny. His career was so fast. His life during that time was so fast. We’re fortunate that we have the materials that we have. But, I always look at other artists of that era and I’m shocked at how deep the reservoir is of archival material. With Jimi, despite his fame, other than major gigs that were filmed and professionally recorded you just don’t have as much as you would think. He didn’t do press conferences. He didn’t do the kinds of things that Dylan and the Beatles did. And boy, I wish we had it because hearing him talk would be fantastic. That’s what you really want at the end of the day is his philosophy, his music, all articulated in a way, no matter what your generation is, no matter what country you’re from, whatever, nothing articulates Hendrix better than Hendrix. I wish we had more of it. Sadly, he wasn’t that kind of guy. He wasn’t a self-promoting kind of guy in that manner.
Awards Daily: One thing that my father-in-law told me though, is that he was just one of the sweetest guys you would ever meet.
John McDermott: Everybody says that. You see the people in the film and the commitment that they made to a very difficult journey to get from idea to completion. And I think, you can’t discount the fact that Jimi Hendrix was the kind of guy that was worth pulling for.
Awards Daily: It is a painful thought to think that after all the effort to create this studio, Jimi himself only got about 10 weeks worth of time in Electric Lady. What he produced was extraordinary over that short period, but it’s hard not to think of the music that he could have made with that freedom of having the accessibility of the studio, like you said, two blocks away the entire time. The “what could have been”s are endless.
John McDermott: I agree, but look at the artists that came to the studio as soon as it was operational, Stevie Wonder being an obvious example. You can’t tell me that having Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Wonder in the same building that something good wouldn’t have come from that. Writing songs or playing on each other’s records or whatever. That’s just one example of what I think would have made a lifetime of incredible creativity in that place. I think that Jimi, given how popular he was, given how successful he was, would have had the opportunity to make records with the blues artists that he loved or produce them or write, the possibilities were endless. Now with the benefit of time, we can look back and A: his idea did take form and flourish, and B: he continues to still inspire successive generations. So how could we not extrapolate that to if so and so is in the building, wouldn’t Jimi have just said hey, I’ve got an idea, let’s do something cool. He left a tremendous amount of music despite how short his life was, and made such an enormous impact. Ultimately, you lost a guy way too young who still had so much to offer. That’s the sad part of the story for sure. Jimi, through reckless behavior, lost a remarkable life. We just have to be grateful for the fact that in the four years he had, from late ‘66 to the end of ‘70, that he did all of what remains now, decades later, an enormous cultural force. It’s pretty remarkable.
Awards Daily: And I think of those artists who died young from that time period I think, other than maybe Otis Redding, he’s the easiest one to look at and think he had the most to offer. He was in his prime, he was right there in the pocket, in a way that even those other great artists of the era like Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, I don’t think quite were. He was a level above. It always bothers me, because when you listen to his unfinished recordings, the possibilities you hear that were forming in those songs are amazing.
John McDermott: There’s no doubt. The clues are there, the next direction. That’s certainly a lot of what you’ll hear on the box set that’s going to accompany the film next month. It’s more about that than it is here’s a group of songs that he didn’t live to complete. His approach to creativity was unique in the sense that he didn’t read or write music. So having a facility like Electric Lady now gave him the ability to routine demos over and over, almost polishing them down to get to a place where this is now the foundation, now I want to add to it. I think that hearing that process, having a window to that process as a fan, on one hand is exhilarating and on the other hand, it’s tragic. I think Dave Palmer says it in the film, this is what it’s gonna be like every day. Just going out there making great stuff and I can’t believe we’re doing it. That’s really the true tragedy of it all.
Awards Daily: I want to end this on an up note. The fact that the studio still exists, is in high use by some of the greatest artists in the world, and the fact that it is named Electric Lady, and Electric Ladyland is the name of the proper final third album, because of the studio’s name, it will always redound back to him because of the name of the record that preceded the studio’s creation. The really wonderful part about it is that it’s still a living organism and in its own way, it still carries him forward.
John McDermott: Jimi was a guy who didn’t give a lot of interviews. He was a private guy. And there was always an air of mystery about him. The same thing applies to the studio. It’s downstairs. They don’t give tours. People don’t really see footage or photographs of it. Something’s going on down there and all these artists use it. I do think that air of mystery is part of its appeal. I also think too, that they did a hell of a job building an acoustic sounding facility that sounds amazing. So if you have Beyonce in there or Taylor Swift or John Mayer, or any of these people that use the studio frequently, it still works 55 years later. It’s still the cutting edge place you want to go to. And it has that aura of being Jimi’s place. So there’s something that’s welcoming to an artist. They don’t feel like they’re going to their record company’s facility. They feel like they’re going to a safe space where they’re able to be creatively free and approach their projects in exactly the manner in which they wish.
Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision is playing now in select theaters
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