ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?

Well I certainly wasn't but yes of course I bought this album when it came out in the UK and at 14 years of age it blew me away and I walked around with it under my arm for days. I took it to the local youth club in a converted farm building by what was soon to become Thames Valley Police HQ (sic!) if only to share the brain expanding experience. A new Jimi zealot on the scene. For my troubles one of the older boys took a sudden explosive dislike to this challenging journey into psychedelia and set about giving me one of the worse beatings I have ever had. Punches rained down upon me and battered my skull, my face and ears and as I slipped into a foetal position knocked backward off my chair, accompanied by the sounds of 'Third Stone From The Sun', it took my brothers friends to lift him literally by the scruff of his neck and the seat of his pants to get him off me still kicking and raining blows about my head ribs and body . . . . . . . I loved that album

On this day in music history: May 12, 1967 - “Are You Experienced?”, the debut album by The Jimi Hendrix Experience is released (US release is on August 23, 1967). Produced by Chas Chandler, it is recorded at De Lane Lea, CBS and Olympic Studios in London from December 13, 1966 - April 3, 1967. Fusing the blues and R&B with psychedelic imagery and distorted, feedback laden guitar, the first album from the American guitar virtuoso makes an immediate impact in the UK where it is recorded. Hendrix goes largely unnoticed in the US until his showstopping performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in June. The US release of “Experienced” differs noticeably from its UK counterpart. Most notably it US version features completely different cover artwork, designed by Warner Bros art director Ed Thrasher, and a now iconic cover photo taken by photographer Karl Ferris with a fish eye lens. The domestic release, though featuring eleven songs like the British release, US version shifts the track sequence dramatically. It removes the original UK tracks “Red House” and “Can You See Me”, replacing them with the UK singles “Hey Joe” and “The Wind Cries Mary”. The album features some of his best known material including “Purple Haze”, “Fire”, “Foxy Lady”, “Manic Depression” and the title track. In time it is regarded as one of the greatest rock albums of all time, being selected for preservation by the National Recording Registry at the Library Of Congress in 2005, and is inducted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame in 1999. “Are You Experienced?” peaks at number five on the Billboard Top 200, number ten on the R&B album chart, number two on the UK album chart, and is certified 4x Platinum in the US by the RIAA.