JIMI HENDRIX (1942-1970) US rock musician on 28 February 1967

Credit: Alamy

How The Jimi Hendrix Experience created their debut album cover

Tue 23 August 2022 7:00, UK

There are few names in rock ‘n’ roll more iconic than Jimi Hendrix. The jaw-dropping virtuoso shaped rock music from the 1950s and early ’60s rhythm and blues sound, championed by Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley, into his own heavier and more psychedelic style. Not only was Hendrix a true pioneer, but he is widely accepted as the greatest guitarist ever to live.

His journey to success gained traction in 1965 when he met The Animals bassist Chas Chandler in the US. Chandler encouraged Hendrix to travel back to London with him, where he could fold himself into the burgeoning British invasion rock scene. Heeding the advice, Hendrix moved East, and within weeks, he had acquainted bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, with whom he formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience with chandler as their manager.

With his mesmeric abilities on the fretboard, Hendrix was soon to amaze the likes of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and The Who. After such an emphatic introduction to the London scene, Hendrix knew his debut album with the Experience would need to turn twice as many heads as his live performances.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s debut album, Are You Experienced, was released in the UK in May 1967. It was an immediate critical and commercial success thanks to its wealth of guitar-heavy psychedelic hits like ‘Foxy Lady’, ‘Manic Depression’ and ‘Are you Experienced’. However, as a psychedelic outfit, the visual aspect was nearly as vital as the music and Hendrix, for one, wasn’t particularly thrilled with the UK album sleeve.

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The UK covers were fronted with a fairly standard photograph of the trio with bold curving calligraphy naming the album. Not long after the UK release of Are You Experienced, Hendrix saw photographer Karl Ferris’ brightly coloured and intensely psychedelic album cover for The Hollies’ Evolution.

In a bid to attain a more hippie-friendly visual aspect for the US release in August 1967, Hendrix asked Chandler to arrange a meeting with the experimental photographer. In an interview published in Music Dish e-Journal, Ferris remembered his early dealings with Hendrix.

“The first time saw I Jimi Hendrix was at his debut showcase of The Experience at The Bag O’Nails club in London in January 1967. This was where I saw members of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Animals, Graham Nash, Eric Clapton and many others in the ‘rock elite’ watching awestruck as Jimi unleashed his powerful music on them. They were thunderstruck and completely blown away, as evidenced by the awesome silence after he finished, followed by thunderous applause, with all those jaded ‘rock stars’ going crazy over his performance. Pete Townsend turned to Clapton and said, “We might as well go and work for the Post Office now.” Jimi was the talk of London after that…

“Later, in May 1967, apparently Jimi saw my Hollies Evolution cover, which had recently been released and said to his manager Chas Chandler that he wanted something similar – “something psychedelic” – on his Are You Experienced album when it was to be released in the USA. We set up an appointment to meet at Jimi’s flat in London, and I took my portfolio along.

“He loved my work – especially the psychedelic shots – and asked me if I would create a new album cover design for the Reprise Records release in the US I said ‘yes’ and that I would have to absorb his music for inspiration. He said that I should accompany him to Olympic studios, were he was recording his next LP, titled Axis Bold As Love. I was totally mind-blown by what I heard there. The shear power of his psychedelic experimentation was awe-inspiring, but when taking a break from playing he was a very nice, unaffected and a shy kind of a guy.

“At 4am the next morning, I went home with some tapes of the session and the music from the UK Are You Experienced record to use for inspiration for the album design. I played the music all day and raved about the music to my girlfriend Anke, saying that it sounded so “far out” that it seemed to come from outer space. This gave me the idea of the group travelling through space in a biosphere on their way to bring their unworldly space music to Earth, and so I then set about sketching some designs of this.

“For the cover, I decided to use my new ‘infrared’ technique which I had invented, which combines the photographic colour reversal image with the heat signature to create the spherical photo I decided to use a giant ‘fisheye’ lens invented by Nikon (which was much bigger than my Nikon F camera). I decided to shoot in Kew Botanical Gardens in London, where they had the kind of foliage that would react well to my “Infrared” technique.

“When I got the shots back from Kodak, I was amazed and pleased with the spherical fisheye picture and the colours that had been created in it. When I took them over to Jimi’s house, he was very pleased and excited and said that the shot was really psychedelic and truly represented his music. ‘You are the only photographer that is doing with photography what I am doing with music – knocking down the barriers and going far out beyond the limits’. He said that he wanted this image for the covers of his US and international releases of his debut album and that I should design the whole album cover for submission to Warner/ Reprise Records.”

The US release of Are you Experienced sported the brightly coloured album artwork with a yellow background, wobbly purple calligraphy and the iconic circular photograph of Hendrix, Redding and Mitchell. The photo is warped with a fisheye effect and doctored to give an acid-washed effect.

The US release was also met with high commercial and critical acclaim, and as well as the superior album artwork, it contained three of Hendrix’s biggest hits, ‘Purple Haze’, ‘Hey Joe’ and ‘The Wind Cries Mary’, which weren’t included in the original UK issue.