Song of the Week - "Castles Made of Sand" by Jimi Hendrix

Song of the Week is, for now, the only feature on Stetson’s Garden. I absolutely love listening to music, and more than that, I love sharing the music I love with other people. So, I plan on showcasing one song at the end of each week and writing about why I love it, why I felt the need to share it, why I think it is a special song worth sharing.

On the calendar of modern music, the year zero would be recalibrated to fall somewhere in the year 1967, when Jimi Hendrix’s album Are You Experienced? debuted. Hendrix, I contend, was one of the greatest musicians of all time, one of the best songwriters, lyricists, guitarists. He could do it all. His unfortunately short career served as a revolution. He incorporated distortion, syncopation and other psychedelic elements into mainstream music. By doing so, he defined rock and roll from then on.

“Castles Made of Sand,” from the second Hendrix album, is one of those revolutionary, genre-defining songs. It still sounds fresh and modern, but it doubles as a time machine to bring us back to its contemporary period. It begins with a riff meant to induce hypnosis; the song carries listeners gently to a place where no 60’s drug can. Lyrics about the beauty and tragedy of life epitomize the message of the decade.

But then that guitar solo starts up: that flouncing, lazily, bouncing guitar solo. Dripping with syncopated intrigue, Hendrix’ guitar sounds like nothing to have come before it. The clean, furious sounds of Chuck Berry, the upbeat strumming of the Beatles and the bad-boy Stones all pale in comparison to this originality. Somehow, in playing the guitar, Jimi manages to, at the same time twang out the necessary bass notes to keep rhythm and the melodies needed to keep the song interesting. While most rock bands differentiated between rhythm guitar, lead guitar and bass guitar, he managed to do it all by himself. Hendrix revolutionized the use of an instrument, the sound of an instrument; with these changes he revolutionized the sound of an entire genre of music.