Unseen Hendrix Art Graces New Rec Sleeve

Guitar god goes back to high school for inspiration!

By Blurt Staff

With the recently-announced news of a previously unreleased Jimi Hendrix Experience album due soon still fresh - March 9 brings Valleys of Neptune; details here - we now learn that the sleeve art combines a 1968 photo of the guitar god taken by Linda McCartney (at the time, Linda Eastman) and an original watercolor drawing that Hendrix did back in 1957 when he was in school.

According to the Hendrix camp, Experience Hendrix CEO Janie Hendrix commented, "Before he became a musician, Jimi wanted to be an artist.  He went through a phase doing watercolors at school and this was one of the 110 drawings of his that our father kept. When I saw this one from 1957, it screamed 'Valleys of Neptune' so we just knew we'd use it for this project."

MSN "Reverb" blogger Mark Brown elaborated in a recent posting, noting that sleeve art to the first single (the title track) from the album, released this week, resembled a known Hendrix painting. He checked with Janie Hendrix, and she indicated it is in fact "a new, unseen" painting he did in high school, adding that the Valleys of Neptune CD art will incorporate the painting and the McCartney photo. The full-length art is above; the other two images are reproduced below: