Synopsis

A rapid-fire collage set to Jimi Hendrix's version of "Wild Thing," this experimental video turns the song into a feverish journey through the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Images of youthful desire, nightlife, bodies, fashion, and urban energy flash past in layered, heavily processed compositions. The exuberance gradually gives way to a more sober sense of aftermath, suggesting that liberation and excess carry consequences. Rather than documenting Hendrix, the video uses his music as the soundtrack for a compressed, psychedelic memory of an era.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was made in 1982 by video artists Kit Fitzgerald and John Sanborn as part of their experimental music-video work.

• The piece was shot at Danceteria, the influential New York nightclub associated with the city's early-1980s downtown music and art scene.

• It runs for approximately three and a half minutes and uses fast editing, layered images, color manipulation, and video effects instead of a conventional performance narrative.

• Fitzgerald later described the clip as deliberately "trashy," while also emphasizing that it was tightly storyboarded and designed to reveal new details on repeated viewings.

• The video was presented through television arts programming, including the PBS series "Alive From Off Center," placing Hendrix's music within an avant-garde video-art context rather than a standard rock promotional format.

• "Wild Thing" is part of the Fitzgerald and Sanborn body of work that fused nonlinear storytelling, emerging video technology, and popular music.