The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Voodoo Child (Slight Return)

Lord Knows I'm a Voodoo Child

1. I was a 14-year-old boy, wire-thin with a head full of kinky hair, standing shirtless in my damp basement bedroom, sweating and hyperventilating from the onslaught of noise coming from my cheap speakers when I first took in Voodoo Child in its full cacophonous electric blizzard. That was the thing about Hendrix - his sound felt like a full-body experience full, out-of-body experience (Have you ever been experienced? Well, I have). The guitar didn't just play at me; it played through me, and Hendrix as it would seem, rattling my bones and shaking the cobwebs out of places in my head I didn’t know were there.

   When Jimi hit that iconic opening riff — distorted, fuzzed, and wah-wahed to oblivion — I knew I was in far over my head. Hendrix pulled you into his chaotic, psychedelic whirlwind, and before you knew it, you were lost, chasing the metaphysical visions he was conjuring with every bend of the string and every howl of feedback. Voodoo Child remains an incantation, and me, a sweaty, hormonal teenager with no idea what the hell I was hearing, was suddenly initiated into the Church of Sky Church Electric Blues.

   Fast forward thirty years, and now I’m 44, looking back at that moment and understanding it in ways I couldn’t as a kid. Back then, the sound was powerfully unhinged, something that felt like it had been forged in a primal fire. Now, I see the precision in that chaos. Hendrix wasn’t just slamming notes together in a lysergic haze; he was meticulously building something. Voodoo Child (Slight Return) is nothing short of metaphysical poetry, and its imagery was a revelation — something bigger, something uncontainable.

2. Say this lyric to yourself, out loud, to yourself. It’s crucial to say it out loud.

   Well, I stand up next to a mountain

   And I chop it down with the edge of my hand

   That’s the kind of power Hendrix was summoning. The metaphor isn’t about physical strength or even defiance; it’s about the god-like capacity to reshape reality with a simple motion. The mountain, an immovable object, becomes malleable in the hands of a person who understands their own potential. It’s audacity incarnate. A 14-year-old hears that and it’s pure fantasy, a superhero flexing his muscles. But at 44, one sees the undercurrent of it. Hendrix wasn’t talking about conquering obstacles; he was talking about the existential idea of being able to tear down the very structures that confine us — society, expectation, even life itself.

   It’s fitting, too, that Hendrix would pair that line with some of the most explosive guitar work in the history of rock music. It’s not loud for the sake of being loud. Hendrix takes the guitar, something most musicians treat with reverence, and makes it scream. He shreds it, bends it, and warps it into something unholy. He’s summoning demons, Ghanaian high priestesses, and John the Conquerer, unleashing potent, electric energy, and then channeling it into something almost too powerful to handle. I remember that moment in that basement, the air thick with the heat from the amplifier, feeling like the room was about to explode around me as I pinballed off the corners of the room, emulsified brain matter dripping out of my ears. Jimi was ripping through dimensions - a real-life Doctor Strange - and here I was a scrawny teenager, thinking I could somehow survive the ride.

   Voodoo Child’s guitar pyrotechnics is something else entirely. It’s watching an artist paint with fire. It doesn’t make sense that all of that sound could come from a single guitar, but Hendrix knew the magic trick. The wah-wah pedal, the fuzz, the distortion — they weren’t just tools; they were conduits. He turned the guitar into an extension of himself, and the result was this cacophony that felt like it could swallow the world. And yet, there was always clarity within the chaos, a method to the madness. You can hear it when he cuts through the noise with those sharp, precise runs up and down the fretboard. It’s a dialogue between destruction and creation, and it leaves you hanging somewhere in the balance, unsure whether you’re witnessing the birth of something new or the collapse of everything you thought you understood.

3. I didn’t have the vocabulary for that when I was 14. Back then, it was just the coolest, loudest thing I’d ever heard. Hendrix had taken all the frustration, confusion, and hormonal rage that was bubbling inside me and turned it into a sound I could latch onto. But now, after years of living, struggling, and — hell, let’s be honest — aging, I get it. That song, like so much of Hendrix’s work, wasn’t only about rebellion. It was about transcendence. It was about staring down everything that tried to keep you in place and chopping it down with the edge of your hand.

   The brilliance of Voodoo Child lies in its contradictions. It’s aggressive yet spiritual. It’s grounded in the blues, but it soars into outer space. It’s the sound of Hendrix, the trickster god, standing at the crossroads of tradition and revolution, and it dares you to follow him. And we did, for as long as we could. The song doesn’t have a chorus. It doesn’t need one. It builds and builds as if Hendrix himself is standing on the edge of something bigger than even he can control. There’s no resolution, no catharsis, because there isn’t supposed to be. Life, like that song, is a constant push and pull between what we can control and what we can’t.

   At 14, I couldn’t see that. At 44, I know it’s the only truth that matters. Jimi Hendrix didn’t play guitar; he wielded it like a weapon, a tool for tearing down reality and building something new. That’s what Voodoo Child (Slight Return) was — and still is. Thirty years later, for me at least, the song hasn’t lost any of its power. If anything, it’s only grown more profound. I get it now. Hendrix wasn’t standing next to that mountain; he was showing the rest of us how to break free from the ones we build ourselves. Chop it down with the edge of your hand.