"One night we sat down and did the entire thing on a cassette set-up – it was magnificent!": How a set of unfinished, acid-fried songs about a mythical superhero could have been Jimi Hendrix’s last album

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Jimi Hendrix’s posthumous discography is built on unfinished tracks and studio outtakes. Since his death in September 1970 there has been a stream of releases – some official, others less so. But there’s one set of songs that remains unreleased: Black Gold, an unfinished, autobiographical suite that may have provided the foundation for his fifth studio album. 

Following the release of Electric Ladyland in 1968, Hendrix was besieged by personal and business problems. Despite this, he continued to write and record, keeping the tapes rolling as he hammered and honed tracks through different incarnations of songs at various studios, with a view to knuckling down and starting work on his next album as soon as he finished touring.