10 Perfect Hard Rock Songs That Are Ridiculously Long

As the love and peace movements started in earnest at the beginning of the Summer of Love, there was a bit of a different story going on overseas. In between the sense of Flower Power going on, the Vietnam War was still raging on half the world away, with carnage happening left and right. The world was far from the peaceful utopia that we had thought of, and it took one of the leaders of the peace movement to help open our eyes.

While Jimi Hendrix has been put up on a pedestal as one of the greatest ambassadors for the hippy idealism, his live record gave us a look at something a lot more bleak with Machine Gun, giving a bit more of a personal touch to the men that are sent overseas and only have their firearms to bring them peace. Though Hendrix is known for some of the most fiery guitar licks in the business, the most intense parts of the song come from what he's able to do with only his effects pedals, playing a bunch of dead notes with his wah pedal to recreate the sound of a machine gun reloading with ammo.

When he does eventually go for a solo though, it's not a happy one by any stretch, as if you can hear his guitar crying out in pain, either epitomizing the soldiers dying on the battlefield or weeping for all of the blood that has been shed in the process. It's nice to have the idea for peace back then, but there's too much blood on the world's hands to really go back.