Jimi Hendrix' 'Are You Experienced' was a milestone for me and I bought it when it came out, so astonished was I that I took it to my local youth club and played it on the system there in it's entirety.... twice ......and during the second play to the assembled folk, open mouthed as I recall at the 'experience', I was set upon by the club bully and battered into a submissive cowering foetal position, crunched down between the benches and the rough stone wall having the top of my head battered until a friend of my older brother's lifted the bully off me by the scruff of his neck and seat of his pants, having determined I had received 'quite enough'. I never understood this reaction and such extraordinary critical comment from one of the older boys except in retrospect perhaps he felt threatened by the 'strangeness' of the sounds..........it still means a lot to me and 'Third Stone from The Sun' one of my favourite all time pieces of music of the era.

Though substantially 'different' it wasn't until 'Electric Ladyland' came out that anything similar happened (happily without any similar physical reaction)....I still have an almost photographic and auditory memory of the afternoon my friends, Leon and Leo, playing the album when their parent's were out, on their Dad's state-of-the-art Hi-Fi at full volume. Gobsmacked doesn't quite cover the experience but it will have to do. To say I had never heard anything like it, is, of course, shared now by so many true Hendrix fans that we have shared across the years since. Nothing that I can recall had quite the same effect then or since. As contemporary music went it was peerless, sublime and a wonderment of nature, art & music culture. I should point out perhaps that while both brothers were fine guitarists it was Leo who had the exceptional talent to be able to learn all of Hendrix's work as it appeared and to be able to play anything pretty much. Now I know there are people out there who THINK they can play like Hendrix but Leo stood as the only person I have ever met who could play as Jimi played note for note. He got it! He could play other stuff too and was a wonderful guitarist and simply the best I have ever heard then or since. An abiding memory is of he and his wife Michelle singing Nick Drake's 'Time  Has Told Me' finger style and lovely too.  We went through an awful lot of stuff together. So it is to Leo's memory I dedicate these bootlegs today to his then wife, Michelle and their fantastic children and of course to his brother Leon who is still a friend somehow since we were about ten years old, this is for him too................. see over on the my back pages page..........