Third Stone From The Sun Little Wing Jimi Hendrix

Third Stone From The Sun and Little Wing Jimi Hendrix
On December 15, 1966, finishing touches were made on the four rhythm tracks that were recorded the previous session including Third Stone From The Sun. Although Chandler enjoyed working at CBS and he appreciated the high quality of the recordings they made there, he ended his professional connection with the studio after a disagreement between him and owner Jake Levy over his failure to make payment. Chandler had planned to pay Levy for the sessions after the album was completed, but Levy demanded payment upfront. Chandler viewed this as an unreasonable expectation, and he vowed that he would never again do business with CBS.

Third Stone From The Sun's 6:45 largely instrumental piece has a garbled sound all throughout the song. It is actually a conversation Hendrix had with a producer, which was cut up into pieces and slowed down to create the noise. At times, it is difficult to distinguish the slowed-down conversation from Hendrix' loud guitar wails during the speedy final four minutes of the song.

In the longer version you can hear Jimi talk to Chas Chandler in the control room. They were fans of Star Trek, and wanted to create something based on the TV show. The slowed down speech is what you hear them talking about amid the laughter and goof ups.

The "Third Stone from the Sun" is the Earth. Hendrix seemed to like the word "stone." Other songs he released include "Stone Free" and "Stepping Stone."

The Right Said Fred hit "I'm Too Sexy" interpolates the guitar riff on this song. Since the band's frontmen weren't familiar with "Third Stone," they didn't know the riff was lifted until the Hendrix estate threatened legal action. Their guitarist, Rob Manzoli, is the one who put it in.

Little Wing was inspired by the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, a concert held during three days of the "Summer of Love" (1967) featuring The Who, The Byrds, Janis Joplin, and many others. Attended by about 200,000 music fans, it happened two years before Woodstock. Jimi wrote about the atmosphere at the festival as if it was a girl. He described the feeling as "Everybody really flying and in a nice mood." He named it "Little Wing" because he thought it could just fly away.

The guitar on the song is played in a very unique style. Jimi frets the roots of chords with his thumb, and then elaborates on them. It often involves shifts of quartile to tertian harmony and vice versa. In theory it is quite similar to the jazz style of chord melody.

The song is particularly revered among guitar players. Tom Morello wrote in this 2011 tribute to Hendrix in Rolling Stone: "It's just this gorgeous song that, as a guitar player, you can study your whole life and not get down, never get inside it the way that he does. He seamlessly weaves chords and single-note runs together and uses chord voicings that don't appear in any music books."

The percussion instrument that sounds like a xylophone is a glockenspiel, an instrument popular in marching bands containing steel bars that are stuck with hammers to produce notes.

Jimi ran his guitar through a Leslie speaker to create an unusual sound. The Leslie speaker was designed for organs and contains a rotating paddle that distorts the sound.

In 1963 Jimi recorded a song that may have been a precursor to this. The song "Fox," which was one of his first recordings was played with sax player Lonnie Youngblood and sounded very similar to this.
This is one of the songs that had to be remixed just before the album was released when one of the master tapes went missing. No one ever found out what happened to the original tape but its been speculated that Jimi either accidentally left the tape in a taxi or purposely disposed of the tape because he wasn't satisfied with its sound.

This song, along with "Spanish Castle Magic," are the only songs Hendrix ever performed in concert from his Axis: Bold as Love album. He played this live only 8 times.

Hendrix has described this as being one of the few he likes from this album. He said "Little Wing" is "like one of those beautiful girls that come around sometimes." Hendrix enjoyed writing slow songs because it was easier to put emotion into them.

The same day they recorded "Layla," Eric Clapton and Duane Allman recorded this as a tribute to Jimi, who was one of their guitar heroes. Hendrix died 9 days later. He never heard their version of his song, which was released in 1970 on the Derek and the Dominos album, Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs.

Irish band The Corrs covered this on their Live Unplugged album.

Little Wing
Writer Jimi Hendrix

Well she's walking through the clouds
With a circus mind
That's running wild
Butterflies and zebras and moonbeams
And-a fairly tales

That's all she ever thinks about

Riding the wind

When I'm sad she comes to me
With a thousand smiles
She gives to me free

It's alright, she says
It's alright
Take anything you want from me
(Take anything)
Anything

Fly on, little wing