Why did he rerecord his earlier songs like Fire, Red House and Stone Free?
There are different reasons for each. ‘Stone Free’ was a song which now we know to be one of the signature songs for Jimi, but at the time it was only a b-side to ‘Hey Joe’ outside the United States. By 1969, he was the most popular and profitable touring artist in rock and he was at the peak of his game, and it was a song he had put back into the set list. He felt that the original, which was the first song he ever wrote for the Experience, was recorded very quickly in 1966, and I think he felt he could do it justice by having more time and being able to develop and flesh out the song. He did it twice in ’69: once with the original Experience, and he wasn’t satisfied, and then he had Billy Cox do it and that’s the version that’s on this record. It didn’t come out, I surmise, because that summer Reprise put it out on the compilation, ‘Smash Hits.’ With ‘Fire’ and ‘Red House,’ we were lucky in that he used the studio as a place to refine his material. Those were the 1969 live arrangemen
