Jimi Hendrix - Are You Experienced - RARE ORIGINAL Tri-Color US Release

$

40

All my records have been cleaned and visually graded as accurately as possible.  If you’re not completely satisfied with your purchase, please contact me for a refund.  Will combine shipping on multiple purchases.  Thanks for looking!

*This is an ORIGINAL US pressing from 1967, NOT a re-issue. 

*Will ship in protective re-sealable polyurethane outer sleeve for safe storage.  This is a valuable collectors item, a must own for any vinyl enthusiast!

*The cover is in good condition, especially for it's age, showing the normal ring wear and beginning stages of seam split, but overall in very good condition. 

*The record is only in fair condition, however, the scratches are only surface scratches that will produce a pop or skip and some white noise.  There are a few larger surface scratches (shown in pic #5 above) that will cause a more prominent skip, but the record is STILL PLAYABLE and sounds good. 

By mid-1966, Hendrix was struggling to earn a living playing the R&B circuit as a backing guitarist. After being referred to Chas Chandler, who was leaving the Animals and interested in managing and producing artists, Hendrix was signed to a management and production contract with Chandler and ex-Animals manager Michael Jeffery. Chandler brought Hendrix to London and began recruiting members for a band designed to showcase the guitarist's talents, the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In late October, after having been rejected by Decca Records, the Experience signed with Track, a new label formed by the Who's managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp.

Recording

Are You Experienced and its preceding singles were recorded over a five-month period from late October 1966 through early April 1967. The album was completed in sixteen recording sessions at three London locations, including De Lane Lea Studios, CBS, and Olympic. Chandler booked many of the sessions at Olympic because the facility was acoustically superior and equipped with most of the latest technology, though it was still using four-track recorders, whereas American studios were using eight-track.

Chandler's budget was limited, so in an effort to reduce expenditures he and Hendrix completed much of the album's pre-production work at their shared apartment. From the start, Chandler intentionally minimized the creative input of Mitchell and Redding. He later explained: "I wasn't concerned that Mitch or Noel might feel that they weren't having enough—or any—say ... I had been touring and recording in a band for years, and I'd seen everything end as a compromise. Nobody ended up doing what they really wanted to do. I was not going to let that happen with Jimi." When the Experience began studio rehearsals, Hendrix already had the chord sequences and tempos worked-out for Mitchell, and Chandler would direct Redding's bass parts.

Release

Europe

The third Experience single, "The Wind Cries Mary" backed by "Highway Chile", was released in the UK on May 5, 1967, while "Purple Haze" occupied the number three spot in the charts. The management's decision to release the single while the previous one was still present in the UK charts was unorthodox, as was the choice of "The Wind Cries Mary", which differed greatly from "Purple Haze". Stamp recalled: "We did that on purpose ... We wanted musically to show who this person was." Egan wrote: "It alerted the public to the fact that the so-called Wild Man of Borneo was capable of songs of delicacy and sensitivity." "The Wind Cries Mary" reached number six in the UK in May.

Track Records released Are You Experienced in the UK on May 12, 1967. It entered the charts on May 27, where it spent 33 weeks, peaking at number two. It remained in the charts long enough that it was still present when the Experience released their second album, Axis: Bold as Love. The album, which was released in the UK without the first three singles, was prevented from reaching the top spot by the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

North America

Although popular in Europe at the time, the Experience's first US single, "Hey Joe", failed to reach the Billboard Hot 100 chart upon its release on May 1, 1967. The group's fortunes improved when Paul McCartney recommended them to the organizers of the Monterey Pop Festival. He insisted that the event would be incomplete without Hendrix, whom he called "an absolute ace on the guitar", and he agreed to join the board of organizers on the condition that the Experience perform at the festival in mid-June. During the climax of the festival, which was filmed by D. A. Pennebaker for the documentary Monterey Pop, Hendrix burned and smashed his guitar on stage for dramatic effect.

After the show-stealing performance, Reprise Records agreed to distribute Are You Experienced. However, despite the increased awareness that the Experience's performance at Monterey provided, the second Experience single, "Purple Haze"/"The Wind Cries Mary", released in the US on August 16, 1967, stalled at number 65 on the Billboard Hot 100. Although the single performed poorly in the US charts, its presence on underground FM radio stations, which were transitioning from easy listening and classical music formats to album cuts, significantly aiding sales of the LP. Reprise allocated a $20,000 promotional budget for the LP, which was an unprecedented amount for an unproven artist. Released in the US on August 23 by Reprise, Are You Experienced reached number five on the Billboard 200. The album remained on Billboard?'?s album chart for 106 weeks, 27 of those in the Top 40. The North American edition of Are You Experienced featured a new cover by Karl Ferris and a new track list, with Reprise omitting "Red House", "Remember", and "Can You See Me", and including the first three A-sides omitted from the UK release: "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze", and "The Wind Cries Mary".

Reception and legacy

Music critics widely regard Are You Experienced as one of the greatest debut albums in the history of rock and roll. An immediate commercial success, within seven months of its release it had sold more than one million copies. Melody Maker praised the work's artistic integrity and the Experience's varied use of tempo. NME?'?s Keith Altham said it is "a brave effort by Hendrix to produce a musical form which is original and exciting". However, not all contemporary writers gave the LP a favorable review; in November 1967, Rolling Stone?'?s Jon Landau wrote that although he considered Hendrix a "great guitarist and a brilliant arranger", he disapproved of his singing and songwriting. He criticized the quality of the material and described the lyrics as inane: "Above all this record is unrelentingly violent, and lyrically, inartistically violent at that."

Journalist Ritchie Unterberger described Are You Experienced as "one of the definitive albums of the psychedelic era." In the opinion of author Chris Smith, the release was "a landmark in a summer of landmark albums". Noe Goldwasser, the founding editor of Guitar World magazine, called it "a veritable textbook of what a musician can do with his instrument" and "the measure by which everything ... in rock and roll has been compared since." According to music journalist Charles Shaar Murray, the album "completely changed notions of what a guitar could sound like, or indeed, what music could sound like", while The Miami Herald credited Are You Experienced with introducing acid rock, classic rock, and the guitar aesthetic of heavy metal. Critic Robert Christgau said its songs were innovative for how they utilized three-minute pop structures as a medium for Hendrix's unprecedentedly heavy and turbulent guitar and loud, powerful hooks, which greatly appealed to young listeners.

Mojo magazine listed Are You Experienced as the greatest guitar album of all time. Rolling Stone called the double-platinum LP Hendrix's "epochal debut", and they ranked it number fifteen on their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, noting his "exploitation of amp howl", and characterizing his guitar playing as "incendiary ... historic in itself". They ranked it as the number three debut album of all time, crediting it as the LP "that established the transcendent promise of psychedelia", stating: "Every idea we have of the guitarist as groundbreaking individual artist comes from this record." They placed four songs from the album on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time: "Purple Haze" (17), "Foxy Lady" (153), "Hey Joe" (201), and "The Wind Cries Mary" (379). In 2005, Are You Experienced was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry, which selects recordings annually that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Writer and archivist Rueben Jackson of the Smithsonian Institution wrote: "it's still a landmark recording because it is of the rock, R&B, blues ... musical tradition. It altered the syntax of the music ... in a way I compare to James Joyce's Ulysses."

Track listing

Since the first release of Are You Experienced in 1967, there have been six distinct versions of the track listing. As of 1997, compact disc editions in the US and UK feature 17 tracks, including all songs that appeared on either the original UK/international edition of the album, or the original North American edition, or the Experience's first three singles.

Original North American edition

All songs written and composed by Jimi Hendrix except where noted.