The Vinyl of the Day is ‘Rainbow Bridge’ by Jimi Hendrix, 1971. ‘Rainbow Bridge’ is the second posthumous album release by Jimi’s official record company and is mostly composed of recordings Hendrix made in 1969 and 1970 after the breakup of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and despite the cover photo and subtitle Original Motion Picture Sound Track, it does not contain any songs recorded during his concert appearance for the extremely bad 1971 hippy exploitation film ‘Rainbow Bridge’! Continuing in the vein of The Cry of Love, the first official posthumous Hendrix album, Rainbow Bridge explores new guitar styles and textures. All the songs, except for a solo studio version of “The Star Spangled Banner”, are written by Hendrix.
The songs on ‘Rainbow Bridge’ represent material in various stages of development and were never finalized or approved for release by Hendrix. Four of the songs on the album, along with the ten songs from ‘The Cry of Love’ and three from ‘War Heroes’ were planned for Hendrix’s follow-up album to the live ‘Band of Gypsys’ released in March 1970. These songs were later included on ‘Voodoo Soup’ in 1995 and ‘First Rays of the Rising Sun’ in 1997, which were attempts at completing the double album Hendrix was working on at the time of his death.
Even though almost all the songs were unfinished at the time of Jimi’s death, so there’s really no way to know what they would have sounded like in his actual finished versions, they are still some amazing pieces. Probably the best are ‘Look Over Yonder’, his studio version of the ‘Star Spangled Banner’, ‘Pali Gap’, and the extraordinary ‘Hear My Train A-Coming’. Other songs such as ‘Room Full Of Mirrors’, ‘Dolly Dagger’, ‘Earth Blues’ and ‘Hey Baby’ represent the more “Sky Church,” element that Jimi was going for, and so they have a glossy big production sound more akin to those psychedelic rhythm and blues tracks.
There is a lot of unfinished sounding work still on the album (such as talking to the engineers ‘is the mic on?’ etc. during a couple of songs) but there’s a lot of great, powerful songs that greatly deserved to be released, and become part of Jimi’s legend.
AllMusic Review by Sean Westergaard
Back when Rainbow Bridge was originally released, it was actually among the best of the posthumous Hendrix releases. Billed as “the original motion picture soundtrack” (it wasn’t, really), it was a mix of excellent, finished studio tracks and a couple of live tracks. Despite this, it’s understandable why it didn’t appeared in the digital realm until 2014 (officially, at least).
Once the estate went back to the Hendrix family in the ‘90s, three of the tracks from Rainbow Bridge were used on the album First Rays of the New Rising Sun, which had previously only existed as Jimi’s hand-written track listing. The remaining tracks were orphaned out on various box sets and compilations. So while all the tracks on Rainbow Bridge have been made available elsewhere, it’s nice to finally have it assembled the way the original LP was, with excellent remastered sound (not just for the old-timers who had the LP the first time around, but for others who don’t necessarily want to shell out for the box set needed to gather these tracks). Highlights include overlooked gems like “Pali Gap” and Jimi’s rarely heard studio version of “The Star Spangled Banner,” which is made of multi-tracked guitars and basses.