"For me, those times on the road with Jimi and the Experience were incredible. This is what I had always dreamed. This is what music is all about, performing in front of a large audience that appreciated what you do."
-- Billy Cox

On September 16, 2003, Experience Hendrix in conjunction with Universal Music Enterprises will reissue the long out of print, and never before released on DVD feature Jimi Plays Berkeley. Coinciding with this reissue, Experience Hendrix is set to release Jimi Hendrix: Live At Berkeley (The Second Set), a single disc release comprised of the entire second set of The Experience's May 30, 1970 show at the Berkeley Community Theatre. Never before released in a commercial setting, this special 12 song collection is sure to be a new gem for ever Hendrix fan's collection.

In the aftermath of the Band Of Gypsys, Jimi Hendrix looked to refocus his career and meet the challenges of a new decade. His Fillmore East concerts with the Band Of Gypsys had yielded the long awaited album he required to resolve a bitter, longstanding lawsuit. Jimi's manager Michael Jeffery wanted the guitarist to reform the original Experience immediately and resume a schedule of recording and public appearances. To initiate this strategy, Jeffery summoned former Experience bassist Noel Redding to his New York office in early February 1970. The root of Jeffery's desire to reunite the original Experience was clear, the group had provided Hendrix with the platform for his international success. Nonetheless, Jeffery's gambit was not without risk. The relationship between Hendrix and Redding had soured. The bassist had elected to quit the group in June 1969 and in the interim had enjoyed little contact with Hendrix. Undaunted, Jeffery forged ahead and arranged for an interview with Rolling Stone-- the leading counter culture media outlet of that era--to announce the reformation of the original Jimi Hendrix Experience. "It looked as if there was going to be another tour with Noel," remembers Mitch Mitchell. "Suddenly Jimi called one night, just completely out of the blue, and he said, 'I don't want to go there.' To be frank with you, I didn't object. Obviously, Jimi had played with Billy Cox quite a bit through the Band Of Gypsys. My first playing with Billy had been the Woodstock situation. That was just a nightmare. No offense to the other players with us, but that band, [laughter] oh boy! It just wasn't happening. As it slimmed down to a three piece, things were looking a lot better. When Billy came into the band properly, if there is such a thing, as a three piece unit, it gave me a lot more freedom. I started to feel incredibly happy." v

With Cox installed as the bassist, the Experience rehearsed for a string of US concert dates that were set to begin April 25, 1970 at the Los Angeles Forum. Hendrix had brokered a hard fought agreement with Jeffery that made him available to perform on weekends while reserving the weekdays for studio recording. Electric Lady Studios, Jimi's own state of the art recording facility in Greenwich Village, was nearing completion and the guitarist was eager to make use of it. "We had just started to get into the situation of doing a tour spread over a few months, but just working the weekends," explains Mitchell. "This was such a change after all of those stupid years of two shows a night which were just ridiculous. There were still a lot of countries that we would have liked and should have gone to. Japan, Australia, you name it. There again, Jimi could be a manager's worst nightmare, because he would live in the recording studio given half the chance. But maybe that was the right thing. Jimi was just starting to give himself a chance to expand."

"At that time, Jimi was on a roll," continues Billy Cox. "We were in the studio all the time. If we weren't in the studio, we were touring. We knew that we had these commitments but we made up our minds to have fun while we are doing them. There were no free rides so you had to do what you had to do. We made it enjoyable and the camaraderie we shared made the work fun."

It had been Michael Jeffery's decision to have Jimi to perform in Berkeley. Jeffery had grown increasingly aware of his protégé's reluctance to maintain an active touring itinerary at the harried pace of the previous two years. To counter this critical revenue shortfall, Jeffery began to ferment plans to document Hendrix's performances. His concept was to create a film that could be toured around the world to generate cash and maintain the guitarist's high profile while Jimi toiled in Electric Lady Studios. The powerful impact that that Jimi's appearance in both Monterey Pop and, more recently, Woodstock had created had not been lost on Jeffery. Berkeley had developed as a flash point in the heated battle over the Vietnam War and other emerging social and political issues. "Jeffery thought he could make millions with footage of Hendrix performing there," remembers Bob Levine, a member of Hendrix's management team. Jeffery assigned the project of filming Jimi's concerts to Peter Pilafian and instructed road sound engineer Abe Jacob to professionally record the performances for posterity.

With Berkeley as his chosen location, Jeffery secured an agreement with promoter Bill Graham to have the Experience to perform two shows at the Berkeley Community Theater. Hendrix had filled the spacious, nearby Oakland Coliseum the previous year and could have easily done so again, but Jeffery elected for the more intimate theater setting as the venue for the filming. All of the available tickets for both shows were quickly snapped up and on the evening of the concerts, more than a thousand empty-handed fans were turned away. Tensions between patrons, venue security, local police, and those without tickets escalated. Pilafian's film crew documented the gate crashing, as some scaled the building's wall, others tried to break in through the roof, and some resorted to throwing rocks at those with tickets trying to gain entrance.

Ensconced safely backstage, Jimi was unaware of the turbulence that surrounded the building. The sold out house roared its approval as Jimi and the Experience took the stage. Jimi prefaced the concert with a request he often made of his audience, asking them to "forget about yesterday or tomorrow. This is our own little world tonight.' The evening's second set, presented here in its entirety and original sequence, began with Hendrix's modest description of, 'an instrumental jam…to check our tuning. Alright?' That jam would in fact be "Pass It On," a charged, early version of what would ultimately take form in the weeks that followed as "Straight Ahead". Such animated spontaneity was a hallmark of Hendrix concerts and this second Berkeley set provides further compelling testimony as to how unique each and every Hendrix concert truly was.

The Experience, as Mitch Mitchell has explained, used the stage, particularly during the 1970 tour, to build up such promising new material as "Pass It On" and the evening's magnificent second number "Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)" "The stage experience. That was the beauty for me of playing with Jimi," states Mitchell. "I miss him so much for that, because the music always came first. This guy was expanding as a musician and it felt good to get away from the audience perception of him. Jimi was getting very bored with it, as I was, because by that time the act was playing pretty large arenas and you still had situations where people expected the breaking of a guitar or setting it on fire and not just playing new music."

"Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)" was followed immediately by a spirited take of "Lover Man". "Lover Man" was a favorite of Hendrix's live repertoire and this version finished with a rousing flourish as Hendrix ground the strings of his Fender Stratocaster against his microphone stand. As the audience erupted with applause, Jimi delved deep into his songbook and kicked off the notes that announced "Stone Free," the first song he composed for the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1966. A shining take of "Hey Joe" continued that momentum. Jimi adopted a slower, blues influenced tempo for the song that he had not previously utilized. This superb reading was marred momentarily by a jolt of unwelcome amplifier interference, but Hendrix's free form flight would not be impeded.

By now it was clear to everyone in the venerable theater that this was indeed a special performance to be savored. Each song seemed to blend into the next, with nary a pause interjected between songs lest Hendrix temper his enthusiasm. A searing "I Don't Live Today" came next, punctuated by Hendrix's ringing sustain and tremelo bends. Cox and Mitchell insistent rhythmic interplay alternatively challenged and supplanted Hendrix throughout the number, making clear the impact Cox had upon this new edition of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Cox's rock steady rhythmic support granted Hendrix the freedom to soar in new directions-even within songs that had been among Hendrix's first Experience recordings. "The older songs were new to me," explains Billy Cox. "They were old to Mitch and Jimi but they enjoyed the flavor that my bass playing brought to them. It was refreshing for them because I always did something extra or different in the songs."

Hendrix followed next with "Machine Gun," which he dedicated the all of the soldiers fighting in both Berkeley and Vietnam. Where Cox had revitalized classic Experience numbers such as "Hey Joe" and "Stone Free", here Mitchell helped recast the signature of the Band Of Gypsys. "With 'Machine Gun,' when Mitch did it, he came in with a different flavor and that was good," explains Cox. Mitchell's intricate drumming may have, as Cox suggests, changed the song's flavor, but none of the song's brooding intensity was diminished. Jimi's breathtaking solo remains as strident today as it did that evening.

Jimi was a seasoned professional who knew how to pace a performance. From the ashes of his incendiary "Machine Gun" came a sprawling "Foxey Lady" which immediately lightened the mood. To the delight of the audience, Hendrix incorporating many of his trademark stage gyrations, thrusting the guitar between his legs and playing with his teeth. The crowd had been worked to a fever pitch when Jimi offered his rendition of the "Star Spangled Banner". Like "Machine Gun," "Star Spangled Banner" too had evolved from its mighty Woodstock standard while losing none of its biting impact. A rousing "Purple Haze" set up an extended "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" which Hendrix closed with a loose vamp of "Keep On Groovin'" another of his fertile works in progress. This song, chosen to close the 1971 documentary Jimi Plays Berkeley has long defined the special value of the Berkeley concerts in the Hendrix's legacy.

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(ESSAY BY: JOHN McDERMOTT)