Is Are You Experienced the greatest debut rock album of all time?
Let me answer that question by putting Jimi Hendrix's maiden long player in proper perspective. To understand just how revolutionary Are You Experienced was when it was released in 1967, consider everything that came before it. Rock and roll had mostly been two-to-three-minute songs with carefully structured verses and choruses and arrangements that were conventionally concocted with limited re-imagination of instrumental variety and sonic quality. Sure, the Beatles would add backward tapes or double string quartets, as well as the odd non-Western instrument, and Brian Wilson would produce some sumptuous orchestrations, but rock was mostly carried by straightforward guitar riffs meant to dance to. Are You Experienced changed all that. Overnight, rock went from teenybopper love songs and what Phil Spector had once called "little symphonies for the kids" to free-form, blues-based, edgy chord progressions and improvisations that would form the foundation of the heavy-metal and hard rock to come - and it was all from this album. AOR radio as it existed in the 1970s couldn't have been possible without Hendrix and his unprecedented approach to guitar playing. Furthermore, he made it clear that the innovative rock guitar sounds that had come before would no longer do. Not only would Hendrix teach future legends like Eddie Van Halen and Saul "Slash" Hudson how to play guitar without ever meeting them, he re-educated peers like Stephen Stills and Johnny Winter.
Are You Experienced came out in two separate editions in the U.S. and the U.K. - the American edition opened with "Purple Haze" and the British version opened with "Foxy Lady" - but whether you were a Yank who first heard the menacing riff of the former song or a Brit who first heard the sexaully searing guitar riff of the latter, you knew this record offered something incredibly new. And Are You Experienced delivers - still - to younger generations not experienced with Hendrix, just as it stands up to repeated listenings for those who discovered him earlier. Charging riffs, rapid-fire solos and intricate note progressions come to the fore in songs like "Manic Depression," "Love or Confusion," "Fire" and the soldering blues cut "Hey Joe," all delivered with Hendrix's direct vocal style that is as piercing as his guitar. He proved himself adaptable at more low-key songs, inventing the modern rock ballad with "The Wind Cries Mary" and its evocative imagery and the gorgeous yet powerful "May This Be Love," both flowing with thoughtful solos and fills. Hendrix's visions are transformed into brilliant reality by the scattershot drums of Mitch Mitchell and the galloping bass of Noel Redding, anchoring Jimi's free-form improvisations and deep explorations of blues and soul with aplomb. The three of them go even deeper with the majestic soundscape "Third Rock From the Sun," in which Hendrix goes completely experimental and finds new ways to make music from his guitar that don't involve a fretboard.
The pièce de résistance of Are You Experienced is the title track, in which Hendrix encapsulates every innovation that mad him beyond great; feedback arranged with great complexity, lightning-speed fingerings on the backward guitar solo, heavy distortion, and an a persistent ringing sound that sounds like a department store chime - all done around one chord. It's fitting that the album ends with this song, because as it fades out - and comes back briefly to close Are You Experienced on a definitive note - you're in an altered state that you, like rock and roll fans and aspiring rock musicians in 1967 and beyond, never really leave.
Not necessarily stoned, but . . . beautiful.
(The 1997 reissues of Are You Experienced features the U.S. album plus three single-release songs, including the defiant "Stone Free", plus the three songs that made it on the original U.K. edition, including Hendrix's only (alas!) twelve-bar blues, "Red House.")
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