Wild Thing

The Troggs' 1966 original was already loose and sexually direct, but Hendrix's 1967 Monterey performance transformed it into something that operates almost as pure sonic event — a demonstration of what an electric guitar in the right hands could do to a song's emotional content. In studio form the track retains that transformation: the chord structure is almost aggressively simple, the rhythm section laying down something barely more sophisticated than a garage practice session, and this is the point. The simplicity is the frame that makes the guitar playing legible as excess — the riff returning each time as if it's never quite satisfied, the fills escalating, the whole arrangement suggesting appetite that the basic song structure can barely contain. Morrison's vocal approach on the Doors' version of this song is noted elsewhere, but Hendrix makes it a statement about guitar as voice, desire made literal through sound. The cultural context is the moment when rock stopped being polite, when amplification became argument. It plays at high volume in spaces where spectacle is the point, or as the moment in a set when a band decides to stop being careful.