The underrated brilliance of the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s ‘Axis: Bold as Love’
It starts with an alien abduction. Or, at the very least, an alien transmission. After a brief comedic bit featuring one “Mr. Paul Caruso”, a wave of feedback, overdrive, and distortion washes over the speakers and sucks the listener into a world of heavy rock and even headier psychedelia. That’s how Jimi Hendrix welcomes you to his second album, Axis: Bold as Love.
His notable preoccupation with sci-fi notwithstanding, Hendrix had every reason to feel like an alien in 1967. He was a black American making his name in the white British rock scene, one that was enamoured with black blues but not always welcoming to the people who made it. Hendrix was undeniable: a walking, talking piece of art that wielded a guitar like a machine gun and stacked his amps higher than Tower Bridge.
Hendrix found a particular niche in the British rock scene. While his contemporaries were getting more concerned with psychedelic artiness and fanciful arrangements, Hendrix released Are You Experienced?, the high-impact and full-volume mission statement that proved R&B and fuzz could be just as mind-altering as any substance that could be put into your body.
Not that Hendrix was abstaining from drugs. Far from it – he was combining the no-nonsense roots of blues music with the trippy fantasia of psychedelic rock. At the same time, he was pioneering hard rock through the sheer brute force of his playing. By his side were two partners in crime who were more than willing to bring that blend to life: jazz drummer Mitch Mitchell and singer/guitarist (turned bassist) Noel Redding.
With his sophomore album, Axis: Bold as Love, Hendrix looked to establish a new dominion. Psychedelia was still in full flight when the Experience entered the studio in mid-1967, and so revolutionary techniques like studio panning, backwards recording, and overdubbing of instruments like recorder and harpsichord were embraced fully. The results were Hendrix’s most hallucinogenic album, a product both squarely rooted in 1967 and directly broadcast from another world entirely.
The familiar mix of blues, distortion, and manic guitar theatrics doesn’t come in until song number three. ‘Spanish Castle Magic’ includes all the raunchy power that listeners had come to expect from Hendrix, but to get there, they had to go through the cocktail jazz of ‘Up From the Skies’ first. Then, ‘Wait Until Tomorrow’ seemingly invents power pop the same year that Pete Townshend originally coined the term.
After the hyperspeed pop dreamscape of ‘Ain’t No Telling’, Hendrix drops back in with one of his most iconic tracks, ‘Little Wing’. Up to this point, Hendrix seemed much less concerned with defending his position as the world’s greatest guitarist. That all goes away with ‘Little Wing’: with a Leslie speaker and his unmatched dexterity pushing him on, Hendrix explores the sonic outer reaches of his sound while honing his melodic songwriting into its most potent package.
Not willing to waste any time, the Experience then drop into the album’s centrepiece. The two-part epic ‘If 6 Was 9’ features stop-start rhythms and palpable menace as Hendrix takes on the the conflicts between hippiedom, conservatives, and those who just want to wave their freak flags. ‘If 6 Was 9’ is the most inherently “Summer of Love” track on Axis: Bold as Love, compressing all of the changing culture of the time into one potent blast of rock and roll.
The second half of Axis: Bold as Love buzzes to life with the insistent thump of ‘You Got Me Floatin’. Throughout the rest of the album, various guitar hums and sound effects hover around the songs. The soundscapes help solidify the songs as part of a bigger piece – one long fever dream. With a brief stop off in the calming ‘Castles Made of Sand’, Redding takes over for his spotlight lead vocal, ‘She’s So Fine’.
The tension between Redding and Hendrix was already present from the sessions for Are You Experienced? Redding wanted more autonomy, and while Hendrix was willing to indulge him, manager Chas Chandler simply wanted Hendrix to be the star and for his bandmates to stay in the background. Through sheer force of will, Redding was able to land exactly one song on both Axis: Bold as Love and its follow-up, Electric Ladyland. By the time the latter was being recorded, Redding was already on the outs with Hendrix.
Embracing the raga tones that were swirling around music at the time, Hendrix unfurls one of his most beautiful and underrated ballads, ‘One Rainy Wish’. The same tones that gave ‘Little Wing’ its gentle push and pull show up on ‘One Rainy Wish’, but Hendrix puts a more muscular bridge and a hazy outro to add new dimensions to his established sonic identity.
Before there’s even time to think, Mitchell is already unleashing one of his most iconic drum tracks. ‘Little Miss Lover’ will surely be familiar to any Frank Ocean fans who have keyed into the sample used for ‘Crack Rock’. Mitchell doesn’t get a lot of spotlight moments on Axis: Bold as Love – certainly not anything as notable as ‘Fire’ or ‘Manic Depression’ from Are You Experienced? – but his rock-solid rhythms help keep Hendrix’s kaleidoscopic visions rooted in reality.
Before he leaves, Hendrix drops one more impassioned plea with ‘Bold as Love’. The entirely of Axis: Bold as Love is contained in its title finale, with one final innovation bubbling to the surface as the song crashes to an end: the first phasing effect ever captured on record. Through it all, Hendrix drops one of his most inspired solos ever recorded, pushing Axis: Bold as Love to its trippy outer reaches.
Axis: Bold as Love doesn’t have the same immediate impact as Are You Experienced? or the mind-bending guitar fireworks of Electric Ladyland. What it has instead is the most psychedelic and conceptual music that Hendrix ever created. Because Hendrix only made three albums during his short life, Axis: Bold as Love usually gets the bronze medal in his catalogue. But make no mistake: Axis: Bold as Love is as innovative and revolutionary as anything that Hendrix ever put his name on.
