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.
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.
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