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JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE: MUSIC, MONEY, MADNESS IN MAUI

BBC Two, 9pm

Among the many things that 1969 film Easy Rider has to answer for, the atrocious cinematic trip Rainbow Bridge is one of the most dismal. Aiming to do for surf culture what Dennis Hopper’s masterpiece did for the two-wheeled road trip, former Warhol acolyte Chuck Wein’s Hawaiianset folly was a limp counter-cultural diatribe only really notable for the involvement of Jimi Hendrix. Roped in to provide a soundtrack that would secure Wein the financial backing to make his movie, Hendrix ended up on camera wielding a guitar and, bizarrely, a rifle. This Grammynominated documentary gathers the survivors – Wein, Hendrix’s shady manager Michael Jeffery and bassist Billy Cox, alongside assorted hangers-on – to tell the whole peculiar story.

There is a fair amount of padding here – opaque business wrangling, some acid-fried hippies still marooned on their cosmic voyage – and plenty of entertaining scoresettling, but the real draw is of course Hendrix, whose performances with Cox and drummer Mitch Mitchell, from Foxy Lady and Dolly Dagger to Freedom and Voodoo Child are appropriately incendiary given they were played in the crater of a volcano. Gabriel Tate the standard is now intimidatingly high: only seven couples remain for the return to Elstree. That was until Kym Marsh, who was due to dance her Couple’s Choice, tested positive for Covid earlier this week – as a result she will receive a bye until the following Musicals Week.

Saturday 26 November Television

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2022-11-26T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-11-26T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://dailytelegraph.pressreader.com/article/282041921141271

Daily Telegraph