There are records that arrive and simply end the conversation about what a guitar can do, and this is the first one.
Jimi Hendrix walked into De Lane Lea Studios in London in October 1966 with Noel Redding on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums, a band assembled in a matter of days after Hendrix had been plucked from the Greenwich Village circuit by Chas Chandler. Chandler, the former Animals bassist who had seen enough of the music business to know when something was genuinely different, co-produced the sessions alongside Eddie Kramer, a South African-born engineer who had already worked at Olympic Studios and understood how to capture a room. Kramer would later say that Hendrix heard finished records in his head before a note was tracked — the engineer’s job was just to get out of the way.
The Sound of the Sessions
The British pressing, released in May 1967 on Track Records, actually differs from what most Americans grew up hearing. The US version on Reprise dropped “Red House” and swapped in three singles. Both versions have their defenders, but the UK original is the one to find — it runs in the sequence Hendrix and Chandler intended, and it holds together as a coherent argument.
Mitch Mitchell deserves more credit than he typically receives. He came from a jazz background, had auditioned for the Monkees, and played with a looseness that kept Hendrix from ever sounding like a hard rock record. Listen to the way Mitchell moves under “Manic Depression” — that waltz-time feel, the brushwork that turns on a dime into something almost violent. He isn’t accompanying a guitarist. He is having a conversation with one.
Noel Redding, for his part, had been hired as a guitarist and handed a bass. He adapted. His tone sits in the mix with a presence that a lot of more celebrated bassists never found.
What the Record Actually Sounds Like
“Purple Haze” opens the US sequence, which is fine, but the UK record opens with “Foxy Lady,” and that one-two-three of the riff coming in — Kramer said they ran the guitar through a Fuzz Face and then miked the amp from the side rather than straight-on, which was unusual — lands differently when you’ve been waiting for it.
“The Wind Cries Mary” is where I’d send anyone who thought this was just about volume. It is a quiet song. Hendrix barely strains. The chord voicings are strange and open and the melody floats above them like he’s not quite sure where it’s going to resolve, except he always knows. Chandler pushed for it as a single and he was right.
“Are You Experienced” closes the album — both pressings agree on that much — and it runs backwards in places, the cymbals blooming in reverse, Mitchell’s drums flipped in the tape machine. It sounds like a question you can’t quite make out but feel you should know the answer to.
There are records I have returned to across every season of my life and found something different each time. This is one of them. The first time it’s a lightning strike. Later it’s a technical education. Later still it’s just a man who had three years and knew it, playing like he meant every second.