By Jason M. Rubin

If this film accomplishes anything, it’s to remind us of how much we lost when Jimi Hendrix died.

Music. Money. Madness. Jimi Hendrix Live in Maui, directed by John McDermott.

Exclusive Massachusetts screenings on Thursday and Friday, February 10 and 11, 7:30 p.m. at the Regent Theatre, Arlington

Jimi Hendrix in a scene from Music. Money. Madness. Jimi Hendrix Live In Maui.

Get Back is an exciting documentary because it shows the behind-the-scenes workings of four immensely talented musicians working together to create great music. By contrast, Music. Money. Madness. Jimi Hendrix Live In Maui shows how a bunch of whacked-out hippies clusterfucked their way into making a laughably terrible movie — 1970’s counter-culture flop Rainbow Bridge — in which a musical giant, Jimi Hendrix, was cast as an unwitting pawn. This film could have gone about cleansing Hendrix’s legacy of this unfortunate stain; instead, it becomes prey to the same stink that sunk the original effort.

The story is as follows. Michael Jeffery, Hendrix’s manager, a man whose ambition exceeded his abilities, wanted to build a studio and ultimately get into the movie business. But he found himself in a big financial hole. Through uninteresting twists and turns, he comes into the orbit of Chuck Wein, a filmmaker who had been part of Andy Warhol’s Factory and who shared with Jeffery an inflated sense of what he was capable of. Some of the film’s talking heads — those involved in the production of Rainbow Bridge — call Wein “The Wizard.” One person in Hendrix’s camp tags him “a ’60s cosmic bullshitter.”

Wein and Jeffery join forces, the former as director and the latter as producer. Jeffery managed to wrangle nearly half a million dollars from Warner Brothers in a quid pro quo arrangement by which the half-baked impresarios would get to make the film and Warner Brothers would get a soundtrack album featuring a score composed by Hendrix.

Unfortunately, Hendrix never agreed to this deal, nor did he wish to be part of a movie. What he did want was to take a two-week vacation in Hawaii, which he did with his band, drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Billy Cox. Wein and Jeffery decided to film there, and cajoled Hendrix into giving a free concert, which they filmed. Excerpts from the performance — staged at the dormant lower crater of a volcano — were woven into the ridiculous, scriptless film that purported to be cinema verité with a cosmic consciousness but ended up virtually unwatchable except for Hendrix. And there was the problem: the marketing of the movie made it appear that it was a Jimi Hendrix concert film, but it wasn’t. In fact, there’s only 17 minutes of live footage, no complete songs, and the band doesn’t come on until late in the film.

To make matters worse, Hendrix died less than three weeks later and never composed a score. Though it was never the filmmakers’ intention to use the live recordings on their own, they had no choice. A major catch: the concert took place on a very windy day and the sound wasn’t great. In fact, according to engineer Eddie Kramer, “There were no usable drums.” Mitch Mitchell had to recreate his parts in the studio while watching the footage. Thus, a movie and an album were released to a confused and unimpressed public.

The fact that Rainbow Bridge is a uniquely terrible movie should not rub off on Music. Money. Madness. Yet it does. Wein and his motley crew of aged hippies are as rubber-room wacko today as they were then. At first they are somewhat fascinating, but their complete lack of irony quickly makes them as disturbing (in a way) as an interview with the late Charles Manson. Likewise, the Keystone Kops-type shenanigans generated by Jeffery and Wein, two people whose failure is almost a relief to the viewer, are nowhere near as compelling as the live footage. Which means that Music. Money. Madness. suffers in much the same way that Rainbow Bridge did. This writer found himself impatient with the talking and wondering how much longer until he got to see more Hendrix.

Blame Hendrix if you want because he was so damn good. Though purportedly in a bad way drug-wise, he seemed in good spirits and great form in Maui. The concert clips are nothing less than brilliant. In fact, though Wein’s crew did not accompany him there, Hendrix played in Honolulu the very next night. Cox claims it was an even better show. Though not professionally shot, the clips we see from that evening are indeed impressive. If this film accomplishes anything, it’s to remind us of how much we lost when Hendrix died. And that’s no small thing. So if you have a hankering for some live Hendrix — and you should — better to watch this than suffer through Rainbow Bridge.

Jason M. Rubin has been a professional writer for more than 35 years, the last 20 as senior creative associate at Libretto Inc., a Boston-based strategic communications agency where he has won awards for his copywriting. He has written for Arts Fuse since 2012. Jason’s first novel, The Grave & The Gay, based on a 17th-century English folk ballad, was published in September 2012. His current book, Ancient Tales Newly Told, released in March 2019, includes an updated version of his first novel along with a new work of historical fiction, King of Kings, about King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Jason is a member of the New England Indie Authors Collective and holds a BA in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.