The 1967 song that Jimi Hendrix always wanted to recreate: “I want that on everything”
Rendering the psychedelic god, Jimi Hendrix, awe-struck was a tall order back in the 1960s. The guitarist had, after all, seen it all during his tragically short life, from his R&B days on the chitlin’ circuit to being at the forefront of London’s countercultural push years later. There was, however, one song that completely blew his mind.
Typically, Hendrix was the one in the business of blowing minds. Now that the guitarist’s influence is so ubiquitous within the world of rock and roll, it is easy to forget just what a revelation he was when he first emerged onto the scene. Uncovered from the obscurity of a New York club by The Animals’ Chas Chandler, Hendrix’s expansive, acid-dripped playing style was unlike anything else filling the airwaves of London during that period, and not even the psychedelic stylings of Eric Clapton could compete.
Throughout his revolutionary recording career, though, Hendrix wasn’t always a lone wolf. Although their contributions were often minimised, spare a thought for Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, whose crucial influence on The Jimi Hendrix Experience were deserving of much more credit than the trio’s band name suggested; The Noel Redding Experience doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
Even outside of the group’s core line-up, the influence of recording engineers like Eddie Kramer helped to provide records like Axis: Bold as Love with their otherworldly power. So much so, in fact, that when Kramer first demonstrated his impact on the title track of that 1967 LP, Hendrix could not comprehend what he was hearing.
Reflecting on the recording process of that earth-shattering album, Kramer told Ultimate Classic Rock, “We’d just finished that track, ‘Bold as Love,’ and I said, ‘Jimi, come in and check this out. We’ve got something to play you.’” Despite Hendrix having already laid down the backbone of the track, he wasn’t prepared for the sheer power of it all.
“He gets to that moment where the drums [have] that big break where the phasing first kicks in,” Kramer continued. “Jimi was sitting on the couch behind me, and I turn around. He is just dumbstruck, and he grabs his head in his hands.” A familiar reaction for anybody who can remember their first time hearing that track, perhaps, but Hendrix’s reaction was far more visceral than most artists when confronted with their own work.
“He fell on the floor, and he was like, in a fetal position,” Kramer went on, recalling the rather bizarre situation in London’s Olympic Studios. “He said, ‘Oh, man, that was unbelievable. How did you do that? It was like something from my dream! Play it again! Play it again!’ OK, so we play it again. ‘Oh, man, I want that shit on everything.’”
True to those words, ‘Bold As Love’ ended up defining the sound of The Jimi Hendrix Experience from that point onwards, with its bombastic, psychedelic power becoming a weapon of choice for the guitarist’s countercultural rock and roll mission.
It is worth remembering, though, that it was the influence of Kramer, along with Chas Chandler on production and both Redding and Mitchell in the studio, that ironed out that life-changing sound, even if Jimi Hendrix is often cited as a one-man band.
