Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 83

Record label: Track (UK) MCA (US)

Produced: Chas Chandler

Recorded: De Lane Lea, London; January–March 1967; Olympic Studios, London; February–April 1967

Released: May 12, 1967 (UK) August 23, 1967 (US)

Chart peaks: 2 (UK) 5 (US)

Personnel: Jimi Hendrix (v, g); Noel Redding (b, v); Mitch Mitchell (d)

Track listing: Foxy Lady (S/US); Manic Depression; Red House (UK only); Hey Joe (US only) (S); Can You See Me? (UK only); Love Or Confusion; I Don’t Live Today; May This Be Love; Wind Cries Mary (US only) (S, UK only); Fire; Third Stone From The Sun; Remember (UK only); Purple Haze (S, US only); Are You Experienced?

Running time: 38.38 (US) 40.12 (UK)

Current CD: MCA MCD11608 adds: Stone Free; 51st Anniversary; Highway Chile

Further listening: Axis Bold As Love (1967); Electric Ladyland (1968)

Further reading: Are You Experienced? (Noel Redding and Carol Appleby, 1990); Room Full Of Mirrors: A Biography Of Jimi Hendrix (Charles R Cross, 2005); www.jimihendrix.com

Download: iTunes; HMV Digital

Are You Experienced? is best experienced in mono. With rock’s involvement with stereo still confined to spacey panning and scattering vocals around either speaker – and period psychedelia only adding to the confusion – even the best-realised record was a plague of distracting gimmickry. In mono, however, the full majesty of Hendrix’s vision shatters the speakers, proof that this boy didn’t need technology to make him ricochet round the room. He was doing it quite successfully already – as engineer Eddie Kramer remembers: ‘He would come up with some kind of crazy sound, I would catch it on tape, then try and twist it around and make it even sillier.’ The freakish Third Stone From The Sun and the title track are the epics which paint Hendrix’s future in screaming colours, but the title track is the brightest of the bite-sized rockers – Foxy Lady, Manic Depression, Fire – tracks whose success, Kramer insists, came down to manager/producer Chandler. ‘If you look at the first record, most of the tracks are three and a half, four minutes long, and that was Chas’s influence. He came from that whole pop vibe, keeping it to three and a half minutes, which was a bit frustrating for Jimi. But I think it was a good thing because it kept the improvising very intense and very compact.’

It was this intensity which ensured the album’s immortality. Dave Marsh has called Are You Experienced? ‘the greatest, most influential debut album ever released.’ Keith Altham described Hendrix as ‘a new dimension in electrical guitar music … a one-man assault upon the nerve cells.’ But Noel Redding laughs at the much-vaunted perfection of the album. ‘There’s mistakes on the Experience albums … I remember, I’d call over to Chas, “Hey, I hit a wrong note,” and he’d go, “Don’t worry, no one will fucking notice,” in that wonderful Geordie accent of his. Then Hendrix used to drop a couple of notes here or there, or miss a slight lyric, and Chas would say “Don’t worry, mate.” It was great, we paid a lot of attention to what we were doing, but it was the feel we were after, more than technical perfection.’ And that is what they got. An album which feels great and sounds just fine. Especially in mono.