Crash Landing is a posthumous compilation album by American guitarist Jimi Hendrix.[3] It was released in March and August 1975 in the US and the UK respectively. It was the first Hendrix album to be produced by Alan Douglas.
Before Hendrix died in 1970, he was in the final stages of preparing what he intended to be a double studio LP, which was given various titles such as 'First Rays of the New Rising Sun', 'People, Hell & Angels', and 'Strate Ahead' [sic]. Most of the tracks intended for this album were spread out over three posthumous single LP releases: The Cry of Love (1971), Rainbow Bridge (1971), and War Heroes (1972). In the case of the last two of these LPs, a demo track, a live track, and unreleased studio tracks were used to fill out the releases. In late 1973, his international label prepared to issue an LP titled Loose Ends which contained eight tracks, six of which were generally regarded as incomplete or substandard (the only two "finished" tracks on this release were "The Stars That Play with Laughing Sam's Dice", a heavily re-mixed stereo version of the B-side which had been released in the original mono mix on the 1968 European and Japanese versions of the Smash Hits, and a cover of Bob Dylan's "The Drifter's Escape", both of which would ultimately be re-released on the South Saturn Delta CD in 1997). Loose Ends was not released in the USA by Reprise because they considered the quality of the tracks to be subpar.
Hendrix had amassed a great deal of time in the studio in 1969 and 1970, resulting in a substantial number of songs, some close to completion, that were available for potential release. After the death of Hendrix, his manager in 1973, Alan Douglas was hired to evaluate hundreds of hours of remaining material that was not used on earlier posthumous albums. "Peace in Mississippi", "Somewhere", and "Stone Free" were recorded with the original Jimi Hendrix Experience line up, while the rest of the material used on Crash Landing consisted of recordings Hendrix originally made with Billy Cox on bass and either Mitch Mitchell or Buddy Miles on drums and on one occasion by Rocky Isaacs.
Controversies
Crash Landing was the first release produced by Douglas, and immediately caused controversy. The liner notes of the album indicated that Douglas used several session musicians, none of whom had ever even met Hendrix, to re-record or overdub guitar, bass, drums, and percussion on the album, erasing the contributions of the original musicians and changing the feel of the songs (Hendrix' vocals and guitar contributions were retained). This was evidently done to give a finish to songs that were works in progress or may have been recorded as demos. Douglas also added female backing vocals to the title track. The album peaked at numbers five in the US and 35 in the UK,[citation needed] the highest chart positions since The Cry of Love. The album reached number 5 in Canada,[4] and was number 38 in the year-end chart.[5]
It's worth noting that Alan Douglas made a serious and very embarrassing mistake during the production of the album, as John McDermott reveals: when Alan Douglas and engineer Les Kahn came across a box labeled "M.L.K." containing a two-track tape featuring a mixdown of a long instrumental, they assumed it was a Hendrix tribute to Martin Luther King, but they were wrong. Jimi was due to play in Newark on April 5th 1968, but the show was canceled due to the assassination, so Jimi played a live instrumental improvisation to the memory of the minister, before walking offstage quietly. However, he never recorded a studio tribute to the civil rights activist. So, oblivious that the tape had nothing to do with Martin Luther King, they gave it to Tony Bongiovi without verifying its origin, presenting it as authentic Hendrix material, even though they couldn't find the masters, and for good reason: there never were such masters. In fact, this tape was a collage and moreover not at all the work of Jimi Hendrix, but of a mysterious and unknown Alex Korda — actually an unassuming John Jansen who had produced the three-part collage in 1971 by assembling unrelated musical takes from Hendrix tapes, trying to create musical score for scenes of the upcoming Chuck Wein's experimental film Rainbow Bridge. When Eddie Kramer realized what Jansen was doing, he put an end to the process, considering it disrespectful, but the tape was never erased and, during the overdubbing process of 1974, Bongiovi transferred the two tracks to a new tape, added a drum track by Alan Scwhartzberg and a "slinky" track by Jimmy Maeulen (sic) and the resulting mix became the closing track of "Crash Landing". As for "M.L.K.", Jansen is categorical: those three letters had nothing to do with Martin Luther King, although he can't say what they meant, as they were just marks left on the tape box by an unknown operator at the Hit Factory studios[6]. Strangely enough, Alan Douglas renamed the segment "Captain Coconut" thinking "M.L.K." was indeed a reference to Martin Luther King, probably knowing what the slur Coconut meant in American culture, unless it's a mere coincidence. So the public is left to guess what it reveals on Alan Douglas' opinions about the slain Martin Luther King. That being noted, Alan Douglas died in 2014, so it's best not to speculate, let alone conclude it was a private racist joke. The most embarrassing, however, is on the liner notes: the instrumental is credited "Hendrix/Douglas", precising "Basic track by Alex Korda", so Alan Douglas was paid royalties for a loose collage which was meant to be erased, if not destroyed. The original complete 19:59 long "Ezy Ryder" and jam from which a segment was cut to become part of "Captain Coconut" later surfaced in 2006 on Burning Desire, labeled "Ezy Ryder/MLK", like on the original tape box.
Track listing
All tracks are written by Jimi Hendrix. Alan Douglas claimed co-writer credits on "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", "Crash Landing", "Come Down Hard on Me", "Peace in Mississippi", and "Captain Coconut" on the original release. Most post-1990 CD releases omit Douglas' co-writing credits.
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