#The Jimi Hendrix Experience #hard rock #psychedelic rock #blues rock
#R&B #heavy metal #British psychedelia #acid rock #1960s #power
trio #Mitch Mitchell #Noel Redding
Jimi Hendrix’s debut album, Are You Experienced, was pieced together in London in between dazzling live gigs that left the competition reeling. But the end results are still a revelation. Revered music writer Dave Marsh spoke for many when he called Are You Experienced, “The greatest, most influential debut album ever released” but, truth to tell, it was never really conceived as an album at all. Released on May 12, 1967, Are You Experienced ushered in a new and exciting era where albums, not 45s, dominated rock music. Just three weeks after its release, The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band confirmed the album’s position. It had now become the definitive statement of a rock artist’s worth. However, when Jimi Hendrix went into London’s De Lane Lea studios with producer Chas Chandler in October 1966, hit singles were still very much the goal, and the album, which would change it all, would eventually come together via a sequence of higgledy-piggledy recording sessions, strung out between live commitments. The influences that Hendrix melded together to create the revelatory guitar and songwriting style on the album are many and include his early exposure to the blues, his years on the road as a guitar slinger for hire with Little Richard, the Isley Brothers et al and his fascination with Bob Dylan. One song, however, would bring all those strands together, spark the world’s love affair with Hendrix and establish the template for his earth-shattering debut album. In the summer of 1966, when Hendrix was between jobs and low on cash, he could be found contemplating his options over a coffee at the Cock’n’Bull café on MacDougal Street in New York’s Greenwich Village. He would stroll over to the café’s jukebox again and again and select Hey Joe by folkie Tim Rose. Copyrighted in 1962 by songwriter Billy Roberts, it was already one of the most recorded songs of the mid 1960s, but whereas most bands treated it as an uptempo rock cut, Rose had slowed it down and introduced a distinctive walking bass line. About a month later, Chas Chandler, bassist of The Animals, caught Hendrix’s set at Café Wha? in the Village, and heard him perform his version of Hey Joe. By happy coincidence, The Animals’ career was winding down and Chandler was looking to move into management and record production. He saw his golden opportunity in Hendrix, signed him up and flew him to London to launch a new career. But no one could predict the tumult that would follow Hendrix’s arrival in the UK on September 24, 1966. After touchdown at Heathrow, he got straight to it, jamming at the Scotch Of St James club. Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, The Who’s managers were in the audience and, so impressed, stumped up a £1,000 advance to tie Hendrix to their fledgling record company, Track Records. Soon he was also jamming with London based band The VIPS and Eric Burdon and The New Animals. “He just grabbed hold of Vic Briggs’ guitar and said, ‘Do you mind if I have a jam?’,” remembers Eric Burdon, The Animals’ singer. “Barry Jenkins and Danny McCulloch from my band just leapt in and chased him on this incredible jam, and the sounds just rocketed around the room, like, ricocheted around the room. I was totally stunned.” Before the month was out, he was performing with keyboard virtuoso Brian Auger at Blaises’ club, when guitarist Andy Summers, later of The Police, then in Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band walked in. “He had a white Strat and as I walked in he had it in his mouth,” recalls Summers. “It was intense and it was really great. It kind of turned all the guitarists in London upside down at the time.” Then on October 1, Chandler arranged for Jimi to jam with Cream at the Polytechnic of Central London. “He did Killing Floor, a Howlin’ Wolf number I’ve always wanted to play, but which I’ve never really had the complete technique to do,” admitted guitarist Eric Clapton. “Ginger didn’t like it and Jack didn’t like it. They’d never heard the song before. It was just, well, he just stole the show.” By this time, Noel Redding, attracted by a small ad in Melody Maker, had also jammed with Hendrix on a handful of instrumentals and found himself hired as bassist for the newly named Jimi Hendrix Experience. The arrival of drummer Mitch Mitchell came next. On October 1, he was fired by R&B hitmaker Georgie Fame and five days later he auditioned for Hendrix. They meshed well but at the end, Hendrix simply said, “Okay. I’ll see you around.” Before Mitchell could leave, though, Chas Chandler mentioned a potential gig in the middle of the month, supporting French pop idol Johnny Hallyday in Paris. Mitchell recalled: “I said ‘Okay’ and spent three days rehearsing. Then off we went and that was how it started.” From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/rocks-big-bang-theory-jimi-hendrix-and-the-most-influential-debut-album-ever
