I don’t usually encounter writers’ block, but this particular album has been at the top of my review queue for several days now and not a single word has magically appeared on my blank sheet of paper. I’ve re-listened to the CD three times through and done my usual background research, reading about Jimi Hendrix’s all-too-short life and what others have to say about this CD, which was his landmark debut album when it first came out on vinyl in 1967. It is often described as the greatest and/or the most influential debut album in rock history. It is often listed among the top twenty, fifty, or one-hundred best rock albums of all time. Rolling Stone magazine, for example, ranked it number 15 in its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Nearly all of the reviews of this album virtually gush with enthusiastic praise for it.

This review is therefore a difficult one for me for several reasons. First, I can’t match the level of enthusiasm for Are You Experienced? that the vast majority of reviewers have for it. I don’t much like to “bad-mouth” works of art for which a large number of people have great respect and fondness. I generally work on the assumption that any genre or individual piece that many people cherish must have some intrinsic merit, especially if many of those folks are people with some intelligence and artistic sensitivity. By the way that the fans of this album express their enthusiasm, I have no reason to doubt that many of them have sophisticated musical tastes. In circumstances of that kind, I generally ask myself, “What am I missing?” I don’t subscribe to the viewpoint stated in this review’s title, but I imagine it provoked your interest and desire to punish the offending party for such an arrogant point of view. Hopefully, you won’t now feel the necessity to do so.

My second problem is that this album is for me a very worthwhile album, which should make writing a positive review for it an enjoyable and relatively easy experience. The problem, however, is that what most stands out for me about my response to this album is not the extent of my enjoyment of it, but that my response to it is clearly less enthusiastic than that of very nearly every other reviewer. I could justify simply adding my two cents worth of glowing accolades for the album, but readers can get that from any of the many other excellent reviews, here at Epinions or elsewhere. Assuming that there are other music lovers who might react to this album as do I, it seems like the more valuable contribution I could make to the discussion is to point out why I think this album is overrated (despite being very good and historically influential). That means, however, I’ll have to highlight some negatives for an album that many listeners adore, a process that is likely to raise the hackles of the album’s devotees. Furthermore, if my review is to have any value in guiding consumer thinking about purchasing this album, I’ll have to try to suggest reasons why a particular consumer might share my reaction to the album instead of being as enamored with it as are the majority of reviewers. I hope you now understand my problem. Regardless of how you respond to my review of this album, I urge you to read at least one or two others to get a balanced set of opinions.

Jimi Hendrix was born in November of 1942 in Seattle Washington. Once he picked up the guitar as a young lad, he almost never put it down, even carrying with him as he performed chores or went to the john. Hendrix was left-handed but played a right-handed Fender Stratocaster by stringing it backwards and turning it upside down! After dropping out of school, Hendrix went into the Army-Airborne, but was soon discharged because of injuries to his back and an ankle. Around 1962, he began wandering the South, supporting himself with his guitar. In Nashville, he joined a tour that included B.B. King and Sam Cooke for a while. Playing in various backing bands, he was able to refine his technique while gaining familiarity with blues, soul, and rhythms & blues. Frustrated with life in the South, Hendrix moved to Harlem in 1964, acquiring some steadfast friends, Fayne Pridgeon and the Allen twins, who helped his find shelter and work, while also keeping him out of trouble.

In 1965, The Isley Brothers heard him play and asked him to join their band. He decided that it beat the hell out of sleeping outside between tenements and among the cockroaches. Hendrix also toured for a while with Gorgeous George Odell. After missing a tour bus in Kansas City, Hendrix made his way to Atlanta, where he joined forces with Little Richard's tour group. When they reached New York, Hendrix joined up with Joey Dee and The Starliters. In August of 1966, Hendrix made the momentous decision to form his own band, which he called Jimmy James and The Blue Flames, playing small clubs in Greenwich Village for the grand sum of $15 a night. Around this time, Hendrix met Frank Zappa, who introduced Jimi to the wah-wah pedal. Later, Linda Keith, the girlfriend of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, befriended Hendrix, introducing him to a couple of record producers.

Although the first producer passed on the opportunity to sign Hendrix, the second, Chas Chandler (ex-bassist for "Animal") was sufficiently impressed with Hendrix to entice him to England, where Chandler signed Hendrix to a contract and helped him form the band composed of drummer Mitch Mitchell and Bass guitarist Noel Redding. The first recordings by the group were three singles, "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze', and "The Wind Cries Mary", all of which became top-10 hits in the U.K. That led to Hendrix's first album, Are You Experienced?, released in the U.K. on May 12th, 1967. Hendrix later died in London in 1970, after releasing only three albums.

Before proceeding further, let’s review the content of this album:

Track Listing:

1. Purple Haze 2:50
2. Manic Depression 3:42
3. Hey Joe 3;30
4. Love or Confusion 3:12
5. May This Be Love 3:10
6. I Don't Live Today 3:54
7. The Wind Cries Mary 3:20
8. Fire 2:43
9. Third Stone From the Sun 6:44
10. Foxey Lady 3:18
11. Are You Experienced? 4:14
12. Stone Free 3:36
13. 51st Anniversary 3:15
14. Highway Chile 3:32
15. Can You See Me 2:33
16. Remember 2:48
17. Red House 3:50

When Are You Experienced? was released in the U.S., both the selection of songs and the order of the songs was altered from the U.K. release. The U.S. vinyl album consisted of the first eleven songs on the present CD. When the album was first released as a CD in 1993, the CD version was expanded to include all seventeen songs that had appeared on either the U.K. or the U.S. vinyl albums, but the order of the songs was seemingly random. The CD version reviewed here dates from 1997 and includes all seventeen tracks, but the order of the first eleven has been realigned to that of the U.S. vinyl album. There's another CD version available in the U.K. that aligns the order of the opening songs to the original U.K. vinyl version. So, now you have the best of all worlds: the full selection of songs but also an opportunity to relive your earlier experience with the vinyl album with the first eleven songs. The 1997 CD release also hews closely to the original album artwork and includes a splendid 22-page booklet with previously unreleased vintage pictures of Jimi and his band.

Track Analysis:

The album opens right up with one of Hendrix's signature tracks, Purple Haze. The opening guitar riffs sound like a pulsing heart beat. This obviously drug-inspired piece became something of an anthem of psychedelic rock. This was one of the pieces that highlighted Hendrix's appearance as the headliner at the iconic Woodstock Concert in 1969.

Purple Haze was in my brain,
lately things don't seem the same,
actin' funny but I don't know why
'scuse me while I kiss the sky.

Right off, we get one of Hendrix great solos with his signature rapid finger work and electronic distortions. Then, Manic Depression introduces driving Afro-Cuban polyrhythms highlighted by Mitchell's drums and Hendrix's rapid guitar riffs, in what sounds almost like a showdown between the two.

Hey Joe, one of the few cover songs on the album, was Hendrix's first hit. The lyrics concern a jealous husband who murders his wife before fleeing to Mexico. Hendrix gives this song bluesy guitar riffs while the other band members serve as a background chorus. Part of the credit for the success of this song has to go to producer Chas Chandler, who had Hendrix re-craft the song from a straight rocker to a slower blues-oriented piece, following a revision that had already been introduced by folk-singer Tim Rose. In any case, the resulting piece is packed with immense feeling.

By contrast, Love or Confusion could pass for a song by The Rolling Stones. Hendrix's vocal line for this piece lacks clarity, but most of the interest for this piece lies elsewhere anyway – in the swirling cadenzas from Hendrix's guitar. May This Be Love returns to the Blues style, ambling along at a somewhat disjointed, plodding pace. Hendrix introduces exaggerated stereo effects but keeps his guitar riffs grounded in plaintive strains.

Hendrix continues to show off the diversity of his influences in I Don't Live Today, which is built over an African rhythm from Mitchell's drums. The guitar licks are cacophonous and increasingly so as the piece wends towards its depressing conclusion. Then, in another sharp turn, The Wind Cries Mary offers a sentimental bluesy ballad accented by pulsing rhythms and tricky finger work during the guitar interlude.

Immediately, however, Fire completely squashes the preceding song's sentimentality with lyrics about loveless sex: "you don't care for me, I don't care about that", just "let me stand next to your fire." This piece features a manic rhythm in the style of Little Richard.

Third Stone from the Sun might be referred to as "space rock." Hendrix shows off all of his guitar acrobatics to produce some magnificently eerie sci-fi sounds and then throws in some distorted voice sounds to lead us on a space-jam excursion to that mysterious third stone from the sun.

Foxey Lady (don't blame me for the spelling of "foxey") is one of those libido-driven songs with funky rhythmic changes as if the instruments themselves were copulating fitfully with the microphones. Then, the title song, Are You Experienced?, completes the set as it appeared on the original vinyl release with some oriental motifs, funky rhythms, raspy sound effects, and timely grunts, all serving to accent suggestive lyrics.

The bonus material opens with Stone Free, which had been the B-side for Hendrix's first single ("Hey Joe") and also his first song-writing effort. The lyrics are quite evidently rooted in the psychedelic generation, but the music features a funky reggae beat. 51st Anniversary, also a B-side single, is a satire on marriage with more than a little hint of the Beatles, but combined with Hendrix's own Blues experience. Highway Chile, the third B-side song, integrates mainly rock vocals with some bluesy guitar licks.

Can You See Me, one of the album's weaker tracks, finds Hendrix reaching back into his early days traveling through the south with various blues singers. There're some catchy rhythms, sound effects from the guitar, and stereophonic effects, but not much tonal interest. Remember has lyrics reminiscent of a fifty's song, but more of a sixties kind of beat. The vocals from Hendrix and his guitar work receive roughly equal emphasis. Red House then concludes the CD. For this basic Blues number, Hendrix pours out his heart, both in the sultry vocal line and the wailing guitar riffs.

Hendrix was certainly one of the most influential guitarists in the popular music domain. In fact, Rolling Stone ranked him as the number one greatest guitarist of all time. I doubt fair consideration was given to Segovia, Manitas de Plata, Julian Bream, Narciso Yepes, or John Williams in constructing that list. Nevertheless, Hendrix was the first guitarist to use feedback and overdriven amplifiers as a regular part of his sonic arsenal and can therefore justifiably be considered the progenitor of the "heavy metal" sound. Hendrix also demonstrated decisively that the guitar could be a sound source in more than just the conventional manner of working the strings and fret. He exploited every part of the instrument's body as well. He also extended the use of fuzz sound and the wah-wah pedal, in his all too brief recording career. Hendrix often engaged in stage acrobatics that included playing the guitar behind his back, between his legs, or with his teeth.

Hendrix was not, however, merely a showman. His musical vision, as he described it, combined "earth" and "space." The "earth" component was the blues, funk, and jazzy elements rooted in the emotional experiences of his Black American heritage. The "space" element consisted of the often high-pitched electronic sounds of his guitar, modulated and modified by studio and amplifier gimmicks. Hendrix's unique contribution was to blend together those two disparate elements.

Evaluation: Now, after acknowledging the pleasing quality of most of this album's tracks as well as Hendrix's importance as a guitar innovator and virtuoso, I have to bite the bullet and fess us to the fact that this is not an album that I will go back to again and again as I do for those that I truly love. One limitation of this album for me is that this is musical performance that gives far more emphasis to performance than to composition. The album exists primarily to exhibit the technical proficiency of Hendrix, rather than primarily to give realization to intrinsic values of the music. No doubt, Hendrix's complete command of his instrument is stunning to behold, but one's attention is drawn almost exclusively to his technical wizardry and away from the music itself. That's just as well in one sense, because the music has only limited intrinsic value. I personally prefer musical performances that subordinate performance values to musical values, not the other way around.

Hendrix so fully overshadows his band members, Mitchell and Redding, in most of the tracks, that one sometimes loses sight of their presence. Mitchell occasionally holds his own and sometimes even gives Hendrix a bit of a run for his money, but not often. This is not high quality ensemble performance or musicians skillfully playing off one another. This is a virtuoso backed by two competent but minor players. I usually prefer ensemble work to solo virtuoso performance.

My last reservation about this album is that the music is relatively lacking in tonal and harmonic interest. Mitchell obviously couldn't contribute much tonally from his position as drummer. Redding's role in the group was mostly limited to maintaining the backbeat while the other two engaged in flights of improvisation. Hendrix is obviously the one with the main opportunity to generate some tonal quality to the music, but his virtuosity was more effectively highlighted by rapid finger work, complex polyrhythms, and dense sound clusters, rather than soaring melodic fragments or harmonic experimentation. In short, this is music of high rhythmic interest but relatively little tonal interest, which is again not especially to my liking.

Music lovers who are themselves amateur or professional guitarists and those with a special love for acrobatic guitar work will certainly be wowed by this album. I suspect that most folks who review this album do so because of that kind of love for the guitar as an instrument. I personally greatly prefer the guitar solos of Frank Zappa to those of Hendrix, because Zappa always kept the emphasis squarely on musical values and composition, rather than primarily on performance technique. Hendrix certainly ranks as one of the kings of guitar performance, so I imagine I'll be skewered for suggesting that this particular king is only partly dressed. And I'll probably deserve it! Thanks for reading.

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You may want to check out my list of all the Top-50 albums from the sixties:

Metalluk's Top-Fifty Albums from the Sixties Part I (Nos. 1-25)
Metalluk's Top-Fifty Albums from the Sixties Part II (Nos. 26-50)


Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Listening