“Machine Gun” by Jimi Hendrix

"Machine Gun" is Jimi Hendrix's long, loose-limbed protest against the Vietnam War, a song he wrote and first cut for Band of Gypsys in 1970 with Billy Cox and Buddy Miles. That 12-minute performance gets hailed as his greatest, and it's easy to hear why: the long solos, the percussive riffing and the feedback, held on a tight leash, conjure a whole battlefield, from helicopters and falling bombs to gunfire and the cries of the wounded and the grieving. At one Berkeley show he dedicated it to the soldiers fighting in Berkeley, to those in Vietnam, and to anybody fighting a war inside themselves.

The version on Midnight Lightning, from November 1975, lists Lance Quinn alongside Hendrix on guitar, Bob Babbitt on bass and Allan Schwartzberg on drums, with Alan Douglas and Tony Bongiovi producing.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.