The Mojo Collection. Various Mojo Magazine
especially if you’ve a decent growth of beard like I have. Dreadful things, satin sheets.’
Jimi Hendrix Experience
Axis Bold As Love
Hendrix gets trippier.
Record label: Track (UK) MCA (US)
Produced: Chas Chandler
Recorded: Olympic Studios, London; May–October 1967
Released: December 1, 1967 (UK) January 15, 1968 (US)
Chart peaks: 5 (UK) 3 (US)
Personnel: Jimi Hendrix (v, g); Noel Redding (b, bv); Mitch Mitchell (d); Terry Brown (e);
Track listing: EXP; Up From The Skies; Spanish Castle Magic; Wait Until Tomorrow; Ain’t No Telling; Little Wing; If 6 Was 9; You Got Me Floatin’; Castles Made Of Sand; She’s So Fine; One Rainy Wish; Little Miss Lover; Bold As Love
Running time: 39.35
Current CD: Island MCD11601
Further listening: The Jimi Hendrix Experience (2000) contains fascinating outtakes from the Axis sessions.
Further reading: Electric Gypsy (Harry Shapiro and Caesar Glebbeek, 1991); www.jimi-hendrix.com
Download: iTunes; HMV Digital
Given that he had to hit the UK for his talents to be appreciated, Jimi Hendrix relied heavily on English boffins; British Marshall and Sound City amps were an integral part of his sound, and when he felt the need to customise his electronic armoury, he called on Roger Meyer, a London electronics guru who modified Jimi’s fuzzboxes and wah wahs, and invented entirely new effects pedals for him.
George Chkiantz, an employee at London’s Olympic Studio, was another crucial influence: ‘George was a tape op who would hang around in the maintenance department,’ remembered Jimi’s producer and co-manager, Chas Chandler. ‘He was very hung up on sound, and would work out new ways to bastardise the equipment.’ This spirit of experiment pervaded Jimi’s second album, recorded on the run between live engagements. Material, such as opener EXP, with its then-fashionable UFO references, sounds dated in hindsight, despite the still-thrilling guitar exploration. The ostensibly simple songs would prove more durable, notably Little Wing, which opened with a gorgeously simple guitar intro, heavily influenced by Curtis Mayfield. Castles Made Of Sand also employed subtle soul guitar styles; indeed for many guitarists Hendrix’s fluent use of guitar voicings, sliding fourths and other techniques make Axis Bold As Love the album that most rewards constant listening.
Bassist Noel Redding points out that the album’s finest moments see the band working at the limits of their powers: ‘On the last track, Bold As Love, there’s one point where we’re playing three different rhythms at the same time. Most of those things were worked out in the studio.’
Ironically, given the intense work that had gone into the rushed recording, Jimi ended up losing the master reel for half of the album – possibly on purpose, because he was unhappy with the sound. Chandler and engineer Eddie Kramer heroically remixed the entire side in one night, with the exception of If 6 Was 9. The two couldn’t match their lost first mix, ‘But in the end we found that Noel had taken a copy on 7½ ips to play at home on his domestic machine,’ remembered Chandler. ‘His machine had chewed the tape up, so we had to iron it flat. Then we mastered from that copy.’
Jefferson Airplane
After Bathing At Baxter’s
A defiant statement of the possibilities of acid rock.
Record label: RCA Victor
Produced: Al Schmitt
Recorded: RCA Studios, Hollywood; June–October 1967
Released: November 30, 1967
Chart peaks: None (UK) 17 (US)
Personnel: Grace Slick (v, k, recorder); Paul Kantner (g, v); Marty Balin (v, tambourine); Jorma Kaukonen (g); Jack Casady (s); Spencer Dryden (d, v); Richie Schmitt (e)
Track listing: Streetmasse: i. The Ballad Of You and Me and Pooneil; ii. A Small Package Of Value Will Come To You, Shortly; iii. Young Girl Sunday Blues. The War Is Over: i. Martha; ii. Wild Tyme. Hymn To An Older Generation: i. The Last Wall Of The Castle; ii. Rejoyce. How Suite It Is: i. Watch Her Ride; ii. Spare Chaynge. Schizoforest Love Suite: i. Two Heads; ii. Won’t You Try/Saturday Afternoon
Running time: 43.55
Current CD: 0786366798-2
Further listening: Surrealistic Pillow (1967); Crown Of Creation (1968) replaces ’67’s heady vibe with more apocalyptic visions
Further reading: Jefferson Airplane And The San Francisco Sound (Ralph J Gleason, 1969); Got A Revolution: The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane (Paul Kantner, 2003); www.jeffersonairplane.com
Download: iTunes
The surprise success of Surrealistic Pillow and its two singles had transformed Jefferson Airplane into a Top 10 act. After Bathing At Baxter’s, its title a euphemism for psychedelic drug-taking, hastily reaffirmed their underground credentials. Uprooted from their communal home in Haight-Ashbury, the band rented a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, complete with pool and underground bowling alley, where they held ‘parties, strange parties, and then weird parties’. With rookie producer Al Schmitt manning the mixing desk, the highjinks continued in the studio.
‘We took over the soundboard,’ remembered Kantner. ‘We had motorcycles in the studio, nitrous oxide tanks, marijuana everywhere. Smoke rose out of the boards with Jack’s bass parts overloading. (We) experimented with every button.’
‘The material was being written as we were in the studio,’ remembered Grace Slick. Few bands had hitherto enjoyed such freedom. At the time, Marty Balin, the band’s erstwhile leader and frontman, described Baxter’s as ‘a whole new and different thing for the group’. With Slick and Kantner emerging as the group’s leading writers, and instrumentalists Kaukonen and Casady hellbent on undermining pop song convention, it also marked the end of his influence, Balin by now reduced to one writer’s co-credit and a single lead vocal.
Baxter’s was single-mindedly dedicated to the pursuit of high art via hallucinogenics. Songs were grouped together as ‘suites’, the mix was unprecedentedly ‘open’, with the instrumental balance often throwing strange sounds to the fore, and the range of the material was huge. At its extremes were a silly stoned sound collage (A Small Package Of Value Will Come To You, Shortly) and an inspired power-trio jam (Spare Chaynge). Central to the album were Kantner’s robust, harmony-drenched anthems (The Ballad Of You And Me And Pooneil; Wild Tyme; Watch Her Ride; Won’t You Try). Meanwhile, Slick’s Rejoyce (a sharp-witted anti-war lament inspired by Joyce’s Ulysses) and Two Heads were the album’s brilliant, baffling, idiosyncratic wild cards. ‘It was sort of a progress report on how things were going,’ concluded Kantner.
Traffic
Mr Fantasy
Pastoral debut from the crushed velvet heart of hippy England.
Record label: Island
Produced: Jimmy Miller
Recorded: Olympic Sound Studios; April–November 1967
Released: December 1967
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