Gypsy Eyes

Infobox Song
Name = Gypsy Eyes


Artist = Jimi Hendrix
Album = Electric Ladyland
Released = October 16, 1968
track_no = 8 (4 on side 2)
Recorded = Record Plant Studios, December 1967
Genre = Funk rock
Length = 3:47
Writer = Jimi Hendrix
Label = MCA
Producer = Jimi Hendrix

"Gypsy Eyes" is a song by Jimi Hendrix, performed by The Jimi Hendrix Experience on their 1968 album "Electric Ladyland", and based on the field holler [ [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=33:induak1k5mgx Review of "Gypsy Eyes"] , "AllMusic".] .

Lyrics

This song, one of many, is about Jimi's mother. Jimi had major issues with his mother abandoning him as a child. He has almost romanticized her as being a good mom...and he seems to continually want to know if she loves him. The true story is that of a messed up woman who died young. While Jimi's mother was pregnant, his father was fighting in WWII. Jimi's mom had an affair with a guy named Johnny. Hence, when Jimi was born and his dad Al was fighting in the war, Jimi was named Johnny Allen Hendrix. Jimi's mother basically abandoned Jimi as a baby with relatives. When Al came back from the war, he went searching for his boy. He found him named after himself and his wife's boyfriend. So, he changed his name to James Marshall Hendrix. Jimi spent his entire life not knowing his mother and she died when he was a child. So as typical with a child, he created a fictional belief of her.

The telling verse is as follows:
I remember the first time I saw you
The tears in your eyes look like they're tryin' to say
Oh little boy you know I could love you
But first I must make my get away
Two strange men fightin' to the death over me today

This describes when Jimi's mom left him with relatives and describes the issue with Jimi's Dad and her boyfriend.

Music

The song features guitar themes that float between left and right channels.

Richard Middleton [Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). "Studying Popular Music", p.137. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335152759.] notes that licks in rock music are often used through a formula and variations technique and that "Gypsy Eyes" "is put together from variants of five stock ideas...familiar from other recordings in the same style."
#"Drum lick A"
#"Drum lick B"
#"A complex of riffs on guitar and bass guitar"
#"A basic melodic falling pattern, using the notes of the pentatonic scale"
#"A characteristic guitar effecty, the attacked single note with long decay and glissando fall"He concludes that "the combination and variations of these formulae are many and highly imaganitve. But the basic formulae are so simple that the recording could well have been worked out 'in performance.'"

References