Are You Experienced

When Jimi Hendrix sat in with Eric Clapton at a Cream show in London in late 1966 and launched into a version of Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor," Clapton walked offstage and found manager Chas Chandler in the crowd. "You didn't tell me he was this fucking good," Clapton said. Chandler had brought Hendrix over from New York specifically to make this happen, to introduce a guitarist from the chitlin circuit to London's rock scene and watch the explosion. Are You Experienced was the document of that explosion.

Hendrix had spent years as a sideman on the road, backing Wilson Pickett, Little Richard, and the Isley Brothers, absorbing everything and developing a technique that nobody who saw it could fully explain. In London he formed a trio with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, and they recorded the debut album across several London studios over roughly six months on a shoestring budget, with Hendrix and Chandler doing much of the pre-production from the apartment they shared. The band was so loud during sessions that engineers reportedly could not stand in the room.

What comes out of your speakers when you play this record is not what music sounded like before it existed. "Purple Haze" opens with a riff built on a tritone interval that Western music had historically avoided for its dissonant tension. "Manic Depression" runs in an unusual waltz time that no rock song had used before. The title track closes the album with reversed tape playing backwards under Hendrix's guitar, creating something that sounds genuinely otherworldly. Three years after this record came out, Hendrix was gone. In those three years he changed everything that came after him.