I am an amateur guitarist. I have studied classical, jazz and rock/blues, played trumpet, French horn in the band orchestra in high school and played in several rock bands of various styles for the kicks (using mostly Les Paul, Strat and ES-series Gibson's as my choice in guitars). I was only serious about guitar in the sense that I paid attention to serious song-writers and musicians, played and practiced long enough to get blisters on three of the fingers on my left hand numbing the tips forever and avoided pop or fads like the plague. One of my neighborhood friends (Audie Desbrow) went off to become the drummer of Great White (pre Station Fire, thank God). I have lost touch with him so fans please don't ask for autographs or tickets. I wrote a some number of song lyrics some with music some without. I have mostly kept them to myself. The death of ELPs Greg Lake got me to thinkin' and I went back in to my files and found some lyrics to a song I was working on that I had forgotten about. I remember I wrote it when I heard about Hendrix speaking in an interview about possibly collaborating with ELP. That was what I had in mind when I wrote the following:
Working Title: Uphill Climb
See my mind
Reflected in the eyes of a woman-of-the-world
Paradise don’t feel like it’s my world.
Runnin’ free ain’t nuthin’
Nuthin' like it used to be
No friends found no friends when I’m risin’!!
I can’t relate at all (can you dig why)
Someone tell me why tell me lies!!
Tell me everything!!
Why does it feel so unreal, baby
Why does the uphill climb
Feel like I’m fallin’ straight down !?!
(Chorus)
Give me everything
Tell me why
The uphill climb feels like I’m fallin’ down
Tell me Tell me Tell me
Why you never compromise in the middle of a dream?
Why does the uphill climb feel like it’s all
Falling down
Down Down Hit the ground
(lead guitar break backed by organ/syth)
Everybody knows they know they know comin’ down
Is not the same now!
Tell me why
We never compromise
In the middle of a dream!
Spoken: I saw myself from high above
In the temple of the highest love
My lover she said,
“Maybe we’re better off dead”!
(Chorus)
I know I know that
Uphill climbing feels like feels like fallin’ down
Oh my love it feels like I’m gonna hit hit hit the ground
Hey!
(Chorus)
Feels like (improvise organ/synth)
Fallin’ is risen and risen up
Feels like I’m fallin!
Only to drown (risin’ feels like)
Fallin’ Fallin’ Fallin’ down!
(Repeat) END
I imagined Hendrix in the lead vocal (with plenty of distortion/Leslie effect) of course, with backing bass/vocal Greg Lake and Keith Emerson trading off licks with Hendrix in the arrangement. I have other production ideas and was going to record a demo and send it to Hendrix as a suggestion but of course he died and that was that.
Since it was written with Jimi's unique vocal in mind, and Emerson's and Lake's musical prowess in support, I guess I will have to wait until I get to Heaven to hear what it would have sounded like. I can almost hear them now...God, what a group that would have been...
