Jimi Hendrix - Rainbow Bridge [FLAC] - Orig. US Robert Ludwig Vinyl - Best Sounding Ever

Jimi Hendrix - Rainbow Bridge - Orig. US Robert Ludwig Cut

16bit/44.1kHz (Redbook Audio for CDR Burning)



01 - Dolly Dagger

02 - Earth Blues

03 - Pali Gap

04 - Room Full Of Mirrors

05 - The Star Sprangled Banner

06 - Look Over Yonder

07 - Hear My Train a-Coming (Live)

08 - Hey Babe (The Land Of The New Rising Sun)



All songs by Hendrix except 5 Trad. adapted by Hendrix



Produced by Jimi Hendrix, Mitch Mitchell, Eddie Kramer & John Jansen

Engineered by Eddie Kramer, John Jansen, Dave Palmer, Kim King & Abe Jacobs



Source: (Side 1: MS 2040 A 31260 - 1A / Side 2: MS 2040 B 31261 - 1A

Sterling RL on both sides)



Technics 1210mk2 w/ AT-150 MLX stylus -> Yamaha CA-1010 (1979 Solid State Amp)

->RME ADI-2 A/D Interface (conversion to 24 bit, 96kHz) -> Click Repair (Cl: 20, Cr: 0)

-> Adobe Audition 1.5 -> Izotope RX 1.06 -> CueListTool v1.7 -> CueSplitter -> TLH (Flac 8)



(NB: Audition 1.5 was used for adjusting DC bias, editing, (incl. manual removal of clicks

and pops), adding gain, sample rate conversion to 44.1 and making the cue points.

Izotope RX 1.06 was used for dithering to 16 bit using MBIT+ noise shaping)



Vinyl Transfer & Restoration by Prof. Stoned

Artwork by Jellycat



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Prof. sez:



This is another breathtaking 'RL cut', done by vinyl cutting/mastering genius Robert Ludwig,

who has done no less than five original US Hendrix pressings.

For some reason, this album never got an official CD reissue but in 1997 'Experience Hendrix'

finally did release 6 of the 8 tracks in their original mixes on the CD's

"First rays of the new rising sun" and "South saturn delta".

The remaining two tracks appeared respectively on the 4CD boxset from 2000 and

Voodoo chile: The Jimi Hendrix Collection from 2001.



I'm sorry to bash Eddie Kramer/George Marino's mastering work yet again but this pressing is

hands down the best sounding source for all these tracks, unless you prefer the IN YO FACE

mastering of the CD releases (FROTNRS being the worst offender by far, the boxset is well tolerable).

This LP rip brings you back to the original sound and it is quite a huge upgrade from the previous one

I have done two years ago in 16/44.1 only.

The soundstage is far more neutral this time, and there is significantly less distortion and vinyl noise.



This was transferred from an EX+ copy.

You *may* hear some noise on some intro's and outro's (if you listen on headphones)

but overall the result is very clean.

The record was professionally and carefully cleaned in three steps using Audio Intelligent’s

Enzymantic formula, Super Cleaner Formula, and Ultra pure water on a VPI 16.5

(using VPI brushes) and Nitty Gritty mini-pro 2.

I spent a lot of time manually declicking the wave file (after Click Repair had already been

applied with a medium setting) to make sure the cleanest and most natural sounding result

possible was achieved.



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The Making of..

(written by PS)



The story behind this album starts in late 1969 when Michael Jeffrey -Hendrix manager-

had a vision about a road movie which would equal the success & cult-status of 'Easy Rider'.

Jeffrey had been impressed by both the scenario and commercial success of said

film, and was determined to come up with something even better.



Michael Jeffery was a man with many faces.

Legend holds him as the bold & untrustworthy manager who had made Hendrix a star

but who -in the end- relentlessly milked his artist's fame.

But there are two sides to every story.

Jeffrey was a very sly businessman, who had mastered the art of manipulation like no one else.

But there was also a deeply insecure side to his personality.

Jeffrey was scared of getting older and was very sensitive for the current hippie trends of the times.



In 1969 the relationship between Jeffrey and Hendrix had severely deteriorated.

During the first years, Hendrix had been deeply grateful for everything that Michael &

Chas Chandler had achieved for him.

But Jimi had started to get more and more frustrated with the relentless tour schedule,

the pressure to record new albums, and the lack of privacy that comes with being a superstar.

He blamed Michael for all this but failed to acknowledge that this was the life that he had always

wanted and that his own excessive lifestyle was taking its toll on his mental and physical health.



It was in this period that Jeffery realized that his contract with Hendrix wasn't going to

last forever and that he needed to bet on more than one horse.

Jeffrey -who always had always been fascinated by the film industry- met Chuck Wein and together

they envisioned 'Rainbow bridge'; a movie that would throw the world of conventional

filmmaking upside down and which would become a blistering artistic and commercial success.

Wein (a former Yale student and former Warhol protégé) would be the director, Jeffrey would take

care of the business side.

'Rainbow bridge' was a vain-project for both men and was destined to become a failure

but Wein had considerably less to lose than Jeffrey.



Jeffrey managed to convince Warner Brothers to finance the project.

Back in 1967, when Jeffrey had set up a record deal with Warner Brothers for the

American market, he had also managed to include a special clause into the contract.

If Hendrix was to record a soundtrack album, Warner would not have the rights to release it,

but they would be given the first option to buy the rights.

It didn't seem important at the time, but when Jeffrey told the Warner executives (who were

already desperate for new Hendrix product) in early 1970 that the next Hendrix album was going

to be the soundtrack to the film and asked if they wanted to buy it, they exploded with rage.

Needless to say, they were forced to come to an agreement with him.

Meanwhile, Hendrix had no idea what his manager was up to and wished to steer

clear from the whole 'Rainbow bridge' project.



With a budget for the film secured, Chuck Wein started filming the movie on Hawaii in the

spring of 1970, without a script...

To him and his crew, the vibrations of the environment he was filming were far more important

than an actual story or plot.

After a while, Jeffrey started to realize that the film was flushing thousands and thousands of

his dollars through the drain, and left him without a satisfying result.

So in an attempt to save the project, he managed to convince Hendrix to do open-air concert

on the Maui crater which would be filmed.



After Hendrix' sudden death in September 1970, Jeffrey and Wein decided to change the

accent of their film from a 'documentary about a spiritual journey' to 'a tribute to Jimi hendrix'.

Jeffrey could no longer deny that the project had become a failure and by upgrading it with

all the film footage of Hendrix that he owned, he hoped to make the most out of it.

At the end of 1970, the film had been more or less completed and was previewed at

a small cinema in New York.

However, the full 123 minute version was edited down to 75 minutes on instigation of the

Warner executives, to great frustration of Chuck Wein, who blamed the flopping of the

film on the fact that the edit "lacked any coherence".



Meanwhile, engineer Eddie Kramer & drummer Mitch Mitchell (with help from

assistant-engineer John Jansen) had completed the first posthumous Hendrix album.

It had been quite a struggle to complete Cry of love, but Jeffrey was quick to send

them off to work again on the second posthumous studio album, which would be the

soundtrack to Rainbow bridge.

However, Kramer & Mitchell soon found they didn't have enough quality material to work

with and told Jeffrey to convince Warner to send them the many multitrack reels that

they still held in their archives.

These included the sessions that Experience had done at the TTG studio's

in Oct. 1968 and many of the Record Plant sessions from the spring and autumn of

1969 with the Band of Gypsys.

Both Mitchell or Kramer had little idea what to expect from these recordings, but when

Warner executive Mo' Ostin finally ordered the tapes to be sent to the Electric lady

studio's in February 1971, they turned out to offer surprisingly little useable material.

Only 'Look over yonder' and 'Star Sprangled banner' were selected for inclusion.



After being released in October 1971, the album proved to be far less successful than its predecessor.

The reason for that lies clearly in the content itself, despite the smooth presentation and good sound.

The album sounds unfinished and some of the material is just plain weak.

Hendrix would never have approved this album in a million years.

That being said, there is enough to enjoy here and it is still better than the next studio album

'War heroes', although the difference in quality between those two and the first two is less big.



Together with 'War Heroes' & "In the West, 'Rainbow bridge' was deleted from Warner's catalogue

in 1975, after WB's chief Mo' Ostin decided that Alan Douglas was far more capable of

maintaining the quality of Hendrix's posthumous discography than Jeffrey and Kramer had been.

History has proven him wrong but the fact that nearly all Warner executives at the time hated Michael

Jeffery (who died in a plane crash in 1973) probably played a role in this decision.

As the 'Rainbow bridge' album had been exclusively licensed to WB, it has stayed

out-of-print in the states ever since, although the German division of Reprise started

re-pressing the album on vinyl during the 80's.

'Rainbow bridge' never got a re-issue on CD, although at some stage

pre-productions for a CD release were done and it even got a catalogue number.



Additional info about the songs is included.

These are jpegs scanned from the CD sleeves of above mentioned EH's releases.



Enjoy!