Explore the mind-blowing backwards solo in Jimi Hendrix’s song ‘Are You Experienced?’
Of all the adventures in sound Jimi Hendrix released over the course of his career, one of the most intoxicating on a purely textural level has got to be ‘Are You Experienced?’, the title track from his explosive 1967 debut album. Here, you can watch studio engineers and colleagues break down the classic cut track by track, paying particular attention to what has to be one of the most mind-bending backwards guitar solos of all time.
What Hendrix achieved with Are You Experienced should never be understated. In 1966, he had only just relocated to London from America, where he’d worked as a backing guitarist for the likes of The Isley Brothers before deciding he’d be better off on his own. After a chance meeting with Chas Chandler, however, Jimi found himself with a recording contract and a new life in London.
Completed in 16 recording sessions across three separate London studios – De Lane Lea Studios, CBS Studios and Olympic Studios – Are You Experienced benefitted from the latest studio technology, allowing Hendrix and the band to push their sound to the very limits of what was capable. That being said, they were still working with a four-track recorder, so all the compression and EQ and reverb on each overdub had to be punched onto the tape and then bounced down.
Chandler’s budget was also very limited, meaning that he and Hendrix had to do as much pre-production work as possible from their shared apartment. Perhaps to save time in the studio, Hendrix developed a habit of rehearsing more complex takes prior to recording. While discussing the famous ‘Are You Experienced?’ backwards solo, the engineer working on the album recalled: “We would give him a tape every night – if he was gonna do a backwards solo he would require a tape – and he would take it home and rehearse to it, and he’d come in the next day and say: ‘look, I know exactly where I wanna be.’ And you’d rewind the tape and sure enough, bang, that’d be exactly where he was supposed to be. We’d drop in record, record it after the tape had been flipped over, and then flip it over the other way and it would be perfect.”
The solo was recorded at Olympic Sound Studios on April 3rd, 1967, the very last day of recording for Are You Experienced. The original idea was to record a loop, but that proved incredibly difficult for the engineers, who couldn’t pinpoint any sonic seams to splice the tape. Jimi quickly grew impatient and decided it would be better to just play it in with the whole band. As a result, you not only have Hendrix’s backwards guitar in the mix but backwards bass and backwards drums too. If you’re looking to find out more about Hendrix’s otherworldly solo, make sure you check out the footage below.
