Jimi Hendrix was a sci-fi nerd

Some might credit him as the best guitarist of all time.

I never go that far, and I can argue for several guitarists from different genres over the last 100 years or so, but Jimi always makes the short list.

Jimi himself was very self-conscious and self-effacing about his own talents.

There is an unconfirmed account of a reporter asking him "How does it feel to be the world's greatest guitar player" to which he reportedly answered "I don't know, you'd have to ask Rory Gallagher"

During an appearance on the Dick Cavett show where Cavett asked him much the same thing and nearly interrupting his question, he bows his head and said "How about the greatest guitar player sitting in this chair?"

He left us with only three studio albums (one of them a double), a handful of singles, and a backlog of material he was working on and live performances. His fourth album had nearly been finished, and over the decades since his death released in one form or another from different producers tinkering with the material.

Jimi was reported to be a perfectionist over his studio work, so we just can't be sure how his fourth album might have sounded once finished the way Jimi intended.

But at his foundation, he was a bluesman. But he was a bluesman from outer space! 

He loved Sci-Fi and made it the theme of a number of his songs.

From his first album:

3rd Stone From the Sun.

In short, space aliens view the Earth, enjoy it's beauty, and decide the destroy humanity. It's for their own good, really. So they'll 'never have to hear surf music again.' 

His second album opens with "EXP" a mock interview about aliens followed by interstellar sound effects. This is followed by "Up From the Skies", another song about aliens having a hard time understanding humanity. 

Early on his third album, there is a late night studio jam that went on to be included on "Electric Ladyland". After the clubs closed, Jimi and about 20 people popped by the studio. He, Steve Winwood, Jefferson Airplane bassist Jack Cassidy, and Mitch Mitchell jammed a new song Jimi was working on and by 7:30 in the morning they recorded it.

Most folks know Voodoo Child (Slight Return), either Jimi's original, or the cover by Stevie Ray Vaughn. and it is an up tempo banger.

But the earlier studio jam "Voodoo Chile" starts as a slow blues groove but with mythic dimension. Blues songs reference voodoo and hoodoo in lyrics back to the 1920s, and this one also has the blues iconic trope of a son born during auspicious conditions. 

But Jimi takes his voodoo powers beyond outer space and dimensional space. 

Later on the album is another epic track nearly as long as Voodoo Chile called "1983 ... A Merman I should Turn to Be" where he and his love escape the implied nuclear war by transforming themselves into merpeople through a machine they've constructed. In spite of being condemned for it being 'impossible' and 'beyond the will of god' to transform themselves in such a way, they make love one last time on dry land, and then successfully start a new life in the sea. 

He makes a few references to sci-fi themes in other songs, like "Valleys of Neptune" or perhaps a few fantasy references as well like "It takes about a day to get there if you travel by dragonfly"

Love this man. Can't even imagine where his music might have gone had he been with us longer through the decades.

But it wasn't to be. On Sept. 18th, 1970, he joined the ill-fated "27 Club"