E ddie Kramer knows it sounds silly, but whenever he’s asked what’s so special about Electric Lady, the recording studio Jimi Hendrix commissioned him to build in 1968, he gives the same answer: “It’s the vibes. Any time I walk in here, I feel them,” he said as he sat inside the studio’s control room. “It’s in the walls.
It’s in the hallway. The spirit of Jimi is everywhere.” “If you want to believe it’s the vibes, fine,” said John Storyk, the architect who created the studio’s design, who sat next to Kramer as they spoke.
“But there’s more to it. There’s also science involved.” Add to that elements of luck, chaos and vision and you have an alchemy that, together, created a place that still draws music’s imperial tier, including Taylor Swift, Adele, Beyoncé and Lady Gaga.
The complex history of the studio’s birth, as well as the trends in sound and design that it helped introduce, are thoroughly explored in the new documentary, Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision. The movie, currently in theatres, will also be included in a forthcoming box set that features 38 previously unreleased tracks Hendrix cut in the studio between June and August of 1970. The timeline of those recordings torpedoes the first of several myths about Electric Lady.
Because the studio didn’t officially open until August of 1970, it has often been reported that Hendrix only spent 10 weeks recording here before his tragic death that September. In fact, he .