The Jimi Hendrix Experience Are You Experienced by: Justin Pearsall Mon:08-Oct-07 Label: MCA Year: 1967 WB rating 93 out of 100

A decade on, Jimi Hendrix’s debut album still sounds like a futuristic slap to the face. Its sound, a squalling, sprawling brew of distortion-soaked psychedelic rock, is saturated with a vitality and energy that transcends the limitations of a three-piece band and the expectations of what ‘rock music’ is supposedly able to achieve. Unequivocally, this album established Hendrix as a star, and the most important figure to ever play the electric guitar. And while walls in ‘67 may have been littered with Clapton’s name, Hendrix truly was the God of this instrument, revolutionising not only how it sounded at the time, but future perceptions and performances as well.

While libraries have been written about Jimi Hendrix the guitarist, and the virtuosity of his backing band (bassist Noel Redding and drummer extraordinaire Mitch Mitchell), Hendrix’s talent as a songwriter is often underemphasised. Even on his more riff-orientated tracks, such as ‘Foxy Lady’, ‘Fire’ and ‘Manic Depression’, Hendrix’s vocal melodies are not only memorable, they are unique, powered by his deep tone and that’s-how-it-is fervour. While many current artists attempt to woo the listener with catch cries of ‘yeah’, ‘babe’ and ‘c’mon’, Hendrix has that rare ability (a quality shared with artists such as James Brown) to sell this as a meaningful lyric. In fact, words that read banally on paper are integral to Hendrix’s success, and to the band’s electric performances: “Oh, dig it” and “You know what I’m talking about” forming an essential part of the Hendrix lexicon and the group’s Alpha Male attraction.

In performance and composition, Are You Experienced sounds thoroughly convincing. And while Hendrix may lag behind his contemporaries in terms of lyrical scope, lacking the poetic flair of Dylan and The Beatles and the revelatory appeal of Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys, the album’s message is delivered with a commanding intensity – the wail of guitar and frenetic drumming of Mitchell as powerful as any lyric.

These talents are expanded on by noted Hendrix writer Dave Marsh who describes Are You Experienced as a concept album; one that achieves its higher ambitions while sacrificing none of its rock ‘n’ roll roots – something which cannot be said of Pet Sounds or Sgt Pepper. While Marsh’s analysis of Hendrix’s innovation is word perfect, the idea of Are You Experienced as a concept album is flawed, seemingly designed more to fit the mould of other classic late 60’s albums than the reality of Hendrix’s actual accomplishment. Instead of the thematic continuity that defines concept records, Marsh most probably alludes to the distinct, and to this date unheard, psychedelic rock sound that fills this record, allowing tracks that are actually disparate stylistically, thematically and sonically, to have an important unity.

The other aspect contributing to this unity is the infectious and natural energy of the recording. The performances are engrained with a looseness more reminiscent of the live realm. This freedom works to the band’s advantage as its anything-goes rawness keeps listeners guessing, even on repeat listens – a quality rarely found in rock music and more typically associated with acid jazz and records like Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew. On Are You Experienced, Hendrix, Mitchell and Redding use this energy, the chemistry between them, to create a mythical aura – one only heightened since Hendrix’s death in 1970.

That Marsh confuses, or perhaps generalises, the importance of this with the higher aims of a concept album is not surprising. Yet the lack of lyrical themes or pre-planned synchronicity may actually be more beneficial to his own championing of the Hendrix legacy, as on Are You Experienced The Jimi Hendrix Experience prove that the prevailing high-art intricacy of the latter ‘60s and the birth of the studio artiste could be met artistically by the virtuosity, energy and passion of three musicians with minimal gadgetry and maximum talent.