Are You Experienced by The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Are You Experienced, the debut from the Jimi Hendrix Experience, first hit British shops on May 12, 1967, and rock guitar has been trying to catch its breath ever since. Chas Chandler, the former Animals bassist turned manager, brought Hendrix to London, built a band around him with Noel Redding on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums, and produced the sessions himself: 16 of them, between late October 1966 and early April 1967, at De Lane Lea, CBS and Olympic Studios. Track, the label the Who's managers had just started, put it out in the UK, and Reprise followed in America that August.

The songwriting is as wild as the playing, blues and R&B bent into strange new shapes by feedback and volume. The American edition added the first three singles, "Purple Haze", "Hey Joe" and "The Wind Cries Mary", and got a more psychedelic cover shot by Karl Ferris. The acclaim never let up: Rolling Stone ranked it 15th among the greatest albums in 2003, and in 2005 the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.