Are You Experienced?

Everyone knows Hendrix's story: that of a chitlin-circuit pro who moved to England for his big chance, grew his hair, and turned up the volume on everything from his Marshall stack to his sartorial choices. Paired with a British rhythm section, Hendrix quickly announced a new breed of hard rock with a slowed-down, mysterious cover of the garage-band murder ballad "Hey Joe." Soon, Are You Experienced arrived, displaying a visionary approach that combined flights of lyrical fancy ("The Wind Cries Mary"), avant-jazz rhythms (the bridge of "Love or Confusion"), and two-ton feathers of post-blues noise ("I Don't Live Today"). When Hendrix turned the title cut's guitar solo into a backward-tape reverie of sustained notes and swoops, he echoed his hero Bob Dylan's famous quote "It used to go like that; now it goes like this." But he wasn't just talking about one song.