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The wah-wah guitar pedal was a relatively new invention in 1968, when Jimi Hendrix used it to devastating effect on the unforgettable introduction of Voodoo Child (Slight Return), and while that intro is the song’s most memorable feature, Hendrix treats the entire composition as a vehicle for expression.

He alternates between rhythm and lead playing at the blink of an eye, and both riffs and solos frequently pan from left to right to add to the swaying, hypnotic nature of the performance. His guitar parts are backed up by the solid, unwavering playing of bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, who allow him the breathing space he needs to take the dynamics down and up.

“If you listen to Voodoo Child, you can hear the way the room just resonates,” engineer Eddie Kramer told The Recording Engineer’s Handbook. “That’s because I had mics everywhere, and the fact that Jimi was singing live too! I wasn’t afraid of recording an artist in the room live as he was cutting. To me, anything that was in the room was fair game to be recorded. Don’t forget that I had an artist who was an absolute genius, so it made life a lot simpler.”

Released in a format somewhere between a single and an EP – Voodoo Child (Slight Return) was backed with Hey Joe and Hendrix’s immortal cover of Bob Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower – the song remains another reason for Hendrix’s reputation as a man for whom a guitar was not simply an instrument.

As his devotees believe, his iconic Fender Stratocaster was a vehicle for the expression of his essential soul. Which legendary guitarist hasn’t played at least part of this song at some point or other in their career? It has been hailed as an all-time classic by Joe Satriani among many others, who praised it as the very peak of guitar creativity, and has been covered by players as varied as Yngwie Malmsteen, Stevie Ray Vaughan – who employed it to quell a bottle-throwing crowd at the Reading Festival in 1982 – and Mick Mars of Mötley Crüe.

Other bands who have taken a shot at the track include Extreme, Pearl Jam, Earth, Wind & Fire, Neal Schon, Tom Morello and Pride And Glory, the last of whom featured Hendrix devotee Zakk Wylde. In the world of hip-hop, it’s been sampled by a plethora of A-listers including Mos Def, 2 Live Crew, the Beastie Boys, Schoolly D, Ice-T and Del the Funky Homosapien.

Note that this song is not to be confused with Voodoo Chile, a much longer and more freeform blues workout played alongside the great Steve Winwood. Both songs are found on Electric Ladyland (1968), the third and final album recorded by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Indeed, …Child was based on …Chile, as a shorter, more succinct song that grew from the longer original, with the addition of several key parts such as that heavily wah-wah’ed introduction.

Just to add to the complexities, Voodoo Child was actually released as a single after Hendrix’s death in 1970 under the title Voodoo Chile, without the distinguishing (Slight Return). As the man himself said, was this love or just confusion?

Fittingly, Voodoo Child (Slight Return) was the last song Hendrix sang, at the Love + Peace Festival on the Isle of Fehmarn, off the coast of northern Germany in the Baltic Sea. Ironically, the final lines of the song – the final lines that Hendrix would ever sing in public – almost preshadowed his death: ‘If I don’t see you no more in this world/I’ll meet you in the next one and don’t be late, don’t be late.’

A dimly lit club in Spain. Mark Kozelek stands alone with an acoustic guitar and begins playing What’s Next To The Moon. The audience hears a melancholy folk ballad. Nobody hears AC/DC. Nobody hears hard rock. One listener later swears it’s a Leonard Cohen song. Only afterwards comes the reveal: the songwriter they’re admiring is Bon Scott.

When we caught up with Kozelek at his hotel, he played haunting acoustic arrangements of Rock ‘N’ Roll Singer and Riff Raff. But the songs became something altogether different. Reflective. Fragile. Almost haunted. Yet somehow they lost none of their power.

Best known as the founder of Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon, and recognisable from his appearance as bassist Larry Fellows in the film Almost Famous, Kozelek built a career mining heartbreak, isolation and the darker corners of the human condition. A gifted and often polarising figure whose own life and career have not been without controversy, he heard something in Bon Scott that many others failed to see: not a frontman, a writer.

“There was just something sinister and dark,” he said. “There was just something so ragged and raw about it. Honestly, the Bon Scott era is only the era of AC/DC that I’m really familiar with. For me, Highway To Hell and Powerage were the best records.”

Kozelek was listening for storytelling. Years later, he found himself returning to Bon’s songs with nothing more than an acoustic guitar. What began as an experiment quickly became a revelation. The songs didn’t resist the transformation; they welcomed it. “I found that the Bon Scott lyrics were just so conducive to folk-style playing. The lyrics just sort of fall out and fall into this place for me that’s just very comfortable to sing them.”

Song after song underwent the same strange metamorphosis. Take away Angus Young’s guitar. Take away the amplifiers. Take away the high volume. What remained were vivid characters, detailed observations and complete stories. “They’re very poetic and very descriptive. He tells an interesting story in all of his songs.”

The more Kozelek played them, the more he realised he wasn’t reinventing the songs so much as uncovering another side of them. “The Bon Scott songs translated naturally to what I do. I always connected with the storytelling. The lyrics stand on their own. It’s as if they’re my songs.”

Perhaps the greatest validation came when those recordings eventually found their way back to AC/DC’s inner circle. “Malcolm Young heard the record and liked it. Brian Johnson was supportive of it as well.”

A songwriter known for intimate folk confessionals had taken some of the loudest music ever recorded, stripped away nearly everything that made it recognisable, and earned the approval of the men who knew those songs best and had played them hundreds of times.

The remarkable thing wasn’t that Mark Kozelek could make AC/DC songs sound like folk music, it was that Bon Scott’s songs were strong enough to survive the transformation.

Mark Kozelek’s album of AC/DC covers, What’s Next To The Moon, was released in 2001.