Originally Performed By | Jimi Hendrix Experience |
Original Album | Rainbow Bridge (1971) |
Appears On | |
Music/Lyrics | Hendrix |
Vocals | Trey |
Phish Debut | 1997-06-13 |
Last Played | 2024-08-18 |
Current Gap | 4 |
Historian | Chris Bertolet (bertoletdown) |
Last Update | 2015-06-05 |
1971’s Rainbow Bridge was the first of two Hendrix albums compiled by MCA Records after Jimi’s untimely death. In 1997, after winning a legal battle with MCA over rights to the iconic guitarist’s works, his family released their own posthumous favorites under the title First Rays of the New Rising Sun. It’s a tribute to “Izabella” that the song made the cut for both. The song’s narrator is a soldier longing to return home to his love, the tune’s namesake, so he can hold her instead of his rifle.
Though her name is spelled with an “s” instead of a “z,” conventional Phish lore suggests that Trey chose the cover as a fatherly nod to his infant daughter. He and Mike road-tested the song on 5/21/97 at Club Toast with New York! (a one-off collaboration with several Burlington musicians), but Phish debuted “Izabella” before an intimate crowd at Bradstock. Soon thereafter – on 6/13/97 – it saw its first public performance in Ireland, one of the few Western European countries where Hendrix never performed. To the obvious delight of the Dublin crowd, “Izabella” arose from the jammed-out “Stand” encore.
While Phish’s instrumental reading of this propulsive tune is pretty faithful to the original, Trey’s vocals typically consist of the same verse sung twice or thrice with a varying degree of accuracy. Check out the volcanic version that erupts from “Tweezer” in the 12/6/97 jam-a-thon at Auburn Hills, MI.
Phish.net is a non-commercial project run by Phish fans and for Phish fans under the auspices of the all-volunteer, non-profit Mockingbird Foundation.
This project serves to compile, preserve, and protect encyclopedic information about Phish and their music.
Credits | Terms Of Use | Legal | DMCA
The Mockingbird Foundation is a non-profit organization founded by Phish fans in 1996 to generate charitable proceeds from the Phish community.
And since we're entirely volunteer – with no office, salaries, or paid staff – administrative costs are less than 2% of revenues! So far, we've distributed over $2 million to support music education for children – hundreds of grants in all 50 states, with more on the way.