Jimi Hendrix Experience
Are You Experienced 2LP vinyl

Few debut albums have altered the course of rock to the extent that Are You Experienced, the full-length bow from the Jimi Hendrix Experience, did in the spring of 1967. Released 50 years ago today in the U.K. – a version with a different track selection and running order would be issued in the U.S. three months later – the LP not only showcased Hendrix’s remarkably inventive guitar playing, but also combined R&B, blues, psychedelia, pop, heavy rock and even jazz in a way that no one had ever done (or even imagined) before. Are You Experienced also revealed Hendrix (a veteran of the “chitlin’ circuit” who’d been all but unknown to rock fans a year earlier) as a songwriter with a uniquely whimsical and imaginative lyrical vision, one which could leap from earthy lust to futuristic fantasy with just a handful of words.

Featuring such immortal tracks as “Foxy Lady,” “Fire,” “Love or Confusion,” “Are You Experienced?” and “Manic Depression,” the album – especially the U.S. edition, which also included the U.K. singles “Hey Joe,” “Purple Haze,” and “The Wind Cries Mary” – is practically a greatest-hits record unto itself. Hendrix, however, was just getting started; on his next two albums, 1967’s Axis: Bold As Love and 1968’s Electric Ladyland, he would paint sonic canvases so colorful and detailed as to make Are You Experienced seem raw and primitive by comparison. “Are You Experienced was one of the most direct records we’ve done,” he told Hit Parader magazine in January 1969. “What it was saying was, ‘Let us through the wall, man, we want you to dig it.'” And dig it, they did: Are You Experienced went on to spend 106 weeks on the Billboard 200, eventually selling more than 5 million copies in the U.S. alone.

NEW / Released in 1967 / Reissue 2015

Tracklist:

A1 Foxy Lady

A2 Manic Depression

A3 Red House

A4 Can You See Me

A5 Love Or Confusion

A6 I Don't Live Today

B1 May This Be Love

B2 Fire

B3 Third Stone From The Sun

B4 Remember

B5 Are You Experienced

C1 Hey Joe

C2 Stone Free

C3 Purple Haze

D1 51st Anniversary

D2 The Wind Cries Mary

D3 Highway Chile