92. The Jimi Hendrix Experience, "Axis: Bold as Love"

 


This absolute masterpiece of psychedelic rock has probably seen more acid trips than Owsley Stanley and still sounds like nothing else out there.  Over a tight 39 minutes, you get the full sweep of what Hendrix could so, from the loose, gangly jam of "If Six Was Nine" to the compact jewelbox "Little Wing," a song with a guitar part so evocative and beautiful it haunts me to this day.  And I don't even own this album!

This was recorded in Olympic Studios, in London, before the Jimi Hendrix Experience even played their first US gig (which, as it turns out, was the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, when Jimi set his guitar on fire, a now-legendary moment).  Some of Hendrix's best-known songs are on here, like "Castles Made of Sand," "Spanish Castle Magic" and other songs that do not have the word castle in the title.  My favorite is and will always be "Little Wing," but the centerpiece is really "If Six Was Nine," a five-plus-minute freakout at the end of side one.  It's clearly about the hippie movement and rejecting cultural norms:

Now, if a six turned out to be nine
I don't mind, oh, I don't mind (well alright)
If all the hippies cut off all their hair
I don't care, I don't care
Dig, 'cause I got my own world to live through, and ah
And I ain't gonna copy you
White-collar conservative flashing down the streets
Pointing their plastic finger at me
They're hoping soon my kind'll drop and die
But I'm, I'm gonna wave my freak flag high, high, wow!

But people have read so much more into it.  Maybe "If the mountains fell in the sea/Let it be, it ain't me" really is a reference to the Hopi creation myth, who knows, Hendrix was into all kinds of shit.

By the middle of side two, we've got "She's So Fine," a song written and sung by bassist Noel Redding, which at first seems kind of like letting a position player pitch when Max Scherzer is still warmed up, but Noel's song turns out to be a bright shot of poppiness that helps break up all of the guitar pyrotechnics.

But don't get me wrong, the star of this album is Jimi Hendrix's guitar.  He was never a gifted singer, and his vocals here are just OK, but of course, everyone's coming to see what kinds of wild-ass fucking sounds he can wring out of that Stratocaster.  

About that cover: Jimi was apparently displeased with it, as he had not been consulted on it, and did not like the appropriation of Hindu religious iconography.  Referring to his Native American heritage, he reportedly said, "I'm not that kind of Indian."  Hendrix died in 1970, joining the famous "27 Club."  I have wondered sometime what Hendrix would have done if he had lived.  He'd be 80 years old now (in 2022) if he'd lived, the same age as Paul McCartney and Carole King (and, surprisingly, Andy Summers of the Police).  I like to think he'd have settled into a nice retirement and come out and play shows once a year or something, but who knows.

Is this album in my personal Top 500? Hell yeah.

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