Today in Music (1967): The Jimi Hendrix Experience released Axis: Bold As Love

Axis: Bold As Love The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Recorded: 5/9/67 to 10/30/67 Released: December 1, 1967 Peak: 3 US, 5 UK, -- CN, -- AU Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 1.0 US, 0.1 UK, 1.10 world (includes US and UK), 10.54 EAS Genre: classic guitar rock

Tracks: Click on a song title for more details. EXP [1:55] Up from the Skies [2:55] Spanish Castle Magic [3:00] Wait Until Tomorrow [3:00] Ain’t No Telling [1:46] Little Wing [2:24] If 6 Was 9 [5:32] You Got Me Floatin’ [2:45] Castles Made of Sand [2:46] She’s So Fine [2:37] One Rainy Wish [3:40] Little Miss Lover [2:20] Bold As Love [4:09] Total Running Time: 38:49 Other Songs Recorded in This Era (7/9/67 to 10/30/67): Burning of the Midnight Lamp The Stars That Play with Laughing Sam’s Dice Catfish Blues The Players: Jimi Hendrix (vocals, guitar) Noel Redding (bass, backing vocals) Mitch Mitchell (drums, percussion)

Rating: 4.495 out of 5.00 (average of 20 ratings) Quotable: “A giant step forward for the band who were perfecting the concept of the ‘power trio.’” – VH1 Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

The Second Outing “Hendrix’s star had risen dramatically in the seven months since he’d enquired Are You Experienced.“ ES-43 That “groundbreaking debut effort” AM from the Jimi Hendrix Experience “remade rock & roll with guitar magic that no one had ever even dreamed of before.” RS500 Their second album, Axis: Bold As Love, “was just plain magic.” RS500 “Like its cover image, it looks to both the past and future.” ES-43 “All over the album, Hendrix was inventing new ways to make the electric guitar roar, sing, talk, shriek, flutter, and fly.” RS500 “It’s tempting to say that the refinement offered by Axis was even more rewarding.” VH1 It was “a solid collection of great tunes and great interactive playing between himself, Noel Redding, Mitch Mitchell, and the recording studio itself.” AM It “represented a giant step forward for the band who were perfecting the concept of the ‘power trio.’” VH1 The are “debatably the world’s finest ever power trio.” RD It “was a multifaceted gem that brought many different exotic styles and musical substances together into a dazzling package.” VH1 The Most Important Hendrix Recording? “The constant pressure to tour and record that hung over them after the impact of…Are You Experienced meant that Axis: Bold As Love was rushed rather than solid. Nonetheless, there is no arguing…with he brash, scintillating songs, the grasp that Jimi and his cohorts had on the studio technology at their disposal, and the lyrical beauty of Hendrix’s guitar playing.” RD “If there is such a thing as the ‘most important' Jimi Hendrix recording, Axis, one of the four studio LPs, gets the most points – it has the most focused and compositionally mature material. For all his wildness and (some say) arbitrary mastery of feedback, this is the most sonically controlled of all. And it exemplifies a group that function as a unit – Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell are the perfect foils to the axeman's waywardness; neither superfluous nor overpowering. It’s rock’s most complete statement – it has tenderness, aggression, beauty and dirt. No-one before or since has touched that plane.” WR Musical and Lyrical Growth “The production on Axis is superb. Jimi never sounded as vulnerable and accessible, vocally and instrumentally, while the analog thud of Mitch Mitchell and the solid basslines of Redding were the ultimate rhythm section of the day.” RD “Wisely choosing manager Chas Chandler to record the album, since he was in the midst of a creative hot streak, Hendrix stretched further musically than the first album” AM with “jazzy drumming, funky balladry, liquid guitar solos, dragonfly heavy metal, and the immortal stoner’s maxim from ‘If Six Was Nine’: ’I’m the one who’s got to die when it’s time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.’” RS500 However, he stretched “even more so as a songwriter. He was still quite capable of coming up with spacy rockers like You Got Me Floating, Up from the Skies, and Little Miss Lover, radio-ready to follow on the commercial heels of ‘Foxey Lady’ and ‘Purple Haze.’” AM “But the beautiful, wistful ballads Little Wing, Castles Made of Sand, One Rainy Wish, and the title track set closer show remarkable growth and depth as a tunesmith, harnessing Curtis Mayfield soul guitar to Dylanesque lyrical imagery and Fuzz Face hyperactivity to produce yet another side to his grand psychedelic musical vision. These are tempered with Jimi's most avant-garde tracks yet, EXP and the proto-fusion jazz blowout of If 6 Was 9.” AM Mastering How to Use the Recording Studio “Hendrix really learned how to harness the modern recording studio as an instrument into and of itself – for a guitarist who’d pointed the way toward infinite possibilities of the guitar and amplification, it was the third prong int eh crown that made him one of the most important musical innovators of the era.” VH1 “Tricks with stereo panning and other audiophile traits mix with the band’s raw emotion to create one of the true psychedelic masterpieces.” VH1 The Songs Below is a breakdown of songs recorded by Hendrix from 5/5/67 to 11/10/67. This includes all songs from Axis: Bold As Love as well as the single “Burning of the Midnight Lamp” (which was release on Electric Ladyland) and its B side, “The Stars That Play with Laughing Sam’s Dice,” which was first released on Smash Hits.

EXP The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: 5/5/67 at Olympic Studios in London Released: Axis: Bold As Love (1967) Peak: 38 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 4.87 streaming About the Song: “Leading off with spaceship sounds” VH1 and “musings on extraterrestrial life” RS500 “on…EXP – Axis was a bold step toward audio refinement meant to blow minds on the new multichannel speaker systems.” VH1 Hendrix said, “We’ve tried to get most of the freak tracks right into another dimension so you get that sky effect like they’re coming down from the heavens.” ES-44

If 6 Was 9 The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: 5/9/67 at Olympic Studios in London Released: Axis: Bold As Love (1967), Experience Hendrix (compilation, 1997) Peak: 7 CL, 15 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 33.17 streaming About the Song: “Numerologically speaking, six represents domesticity, family, and stability whilst nine symbolizes diversity, compassion and insight. Little wonder that Hendrix seems to be favoring its inversion.” ES-51 “He was said to have also been inspired by the I Ching which links six to conflict and nine to gentleness.” ES-51 “Unsurprisingly, the cut was included on the soundtrack of 1969’s Easy Rider: a film Hendrix admired. The opening of the track spins as the riders travel through developed and rural areas, showing the split between those who’ve dropped out, and those who compete in the rat race.” ES-51 “Hendrix developed a fruitful working relationship with engineer Eddie Kramer that resulted in bold sound experiments like the multilayered overdubs in ‘If 6 Was 9,’ where Mitchell’s almost martial drumming and Redding’s railroading bass merged with Hendrix’s madly fluctuating guitar leads brilliantly.” VH1

Burning of the Midnight Lamp The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: 6/28/67 to 6/30/67 at Houston Studios in Los Angeles; 7/6/67 at Mayfair Studios in New York Released: 8/19/67 (single), Smash Hits (UK version, 1968), Electric Ladyland (1968), Ultimate Hendrix (compilation, 1992) B Side: “The Stars That Play with Laughing Sam’s Dice” Peak: 16 CL, 18 UK, 21 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 11.71 streaming About the Song: This was released as a single long before the album came out. However, it works on the album “with its dense production (reminiscent of Phil Spector), unusual voicings (Hendrix on harpsichord and mellotron) and evocative imagery. ‘They said that was the worst record we’d done,’ Jimi said in 1968, ‘but to me that was the best one we ever made.’” CC

The Stars That Play with Laughing Sam’s Dice The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: 6/28/67 to 6/30/67 at Houston Studios in Los Angeles; 7/19/67 at Mayfair Studios in New York Released: 8/19/67 (B side of “Burning of the Midnight Lamp”), Smash Hits (UK version, 1968), Loose Ends (1974), South Saturn Delta (1997) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 0.82 streaming About the Song: “An unfortunately murky sound plagues this wonderfully idiosyncratic track. It recalls ‘Third Stone from the Sun’ in its unselfconscious delirious imaginings.” ES-113 The song opens “like a conventional rocker before taking off into space and becoming an interstellar ‘Magical Mystery Tour’” ES-113 with Hendrix serving as “our tour guide around the galaxy.” ES-113 “The raucous passengers who provide sound effects and backing vocals are rumored to include Frank Zappa.” ES-113 “It’s not just the lyrics that create a cosmic ether. Hendrix uses an Octavia, which has his guitar howling like the rushing of asteroids, invoking a purple haze in the atmosphere. The journey ends with a passenger slipping through the rocket’s doors – possibly an apposite metaphor for drug casualties, which the title initials also hint at: STP and LSD.” ES-113

You Got Me Floatin’ The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: 10/3/67 at Olympic Studios in London Released: Axis: Bold As Love (1967) Peak: 23 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 7.38 streaming About the Song: “The emphasis [on this album] wasn’t as much on heaviness this time, as it had been with the group’s debut; a lot of the songs were ethereal, like You Got Me Floatin’.” VH1 It “is an ebullient number augmented by The Move’s Roy Wood and Trevor Burton…and The Hollies’ Graham Nash…on backing vocals in the chorus.” ES-52 “The track begins with an echo of the otherworld sounds of ‘EXP,’ before Hendrix explains that love is a natural high…The freedom theme is varied as love gives him buoyancy, but the arrangement is earthy and tight.” ES-52 “The backwards guitar is fun, and the rhythm guitar behind it a nice little ear treat, but the song is a tad long and would’ve worked better bursting like a bubble much sooner.” ES-52

One Rainy Wish The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: 10/3/67 at Olympic Studios in London Released: 2/26/68 (B side of “Up from the Skies”), Axis: Bold As Love (1967) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 29.43 streaming About the Song: “This plaintive song recounts meeting a peaceful lover in a prismatic idyll.” ES-54 “Inspired by dreaming of rainbows, ‘One Rainy Wish’ employs a 3/4 time in the verse to embellish its wistful mood but has a shift to a more prosaic 4/4 to signify the intrusion of reality as he knows his heart is gone forever.” ES-54 “The exuberant bridge…explodes into one of Hendrix’s most impassioned – and soulful – vocal moments.” VH1

Little Miss Lover The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: 10/5/67 Released: Axis: Bold As Love (1967) Peak: 33 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 7.09 streaming About the Song: “The track was mooted as a single to follow ‘The Wind Cries Mary.’ As an album cut, it changes the tone from reverent to assertive but would’ve made a rather one-dimensional single. Nevertheless it’s an exciting performance overall.” ES-55 “This heavy rocker brings us back down to earth with Hendrix wondering…if ‘Little Miss Lover’ would ‘like to tag along’ on his wanderings. There’s an almost wolf-whistling trilling in the fade-out.” ES-55

Wait Until Tomorrow The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: 10/25/67 at Olympic Studios in London Released: Axis: Bold As Love (1967), Ultimate Hendrix (compilation, 1992) Peak: 14 CL, 35 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 12.87 streaming About the Song: “This is another song of escape, but with some twists on old themes. Hendrix wants to flee with his procrastinating lover, but is eventually a victim of ‘daddy’s gun’ instead.” ES-48 “Musically, there’s a breeziness that’s undercut by the lyrics.” ES-48 “This is one of the few tracks that keep Axis grinding in a rut rather than taking flight.” ES-48

Ain’t No Telling The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: 10/26/67 at Olympic Studios in London Released: Axis: Bold As Love (1967) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 8.12 streaming About the Song: This is “a song of compelling tempo changes but little else. The track introduces the motif of dawn…but is lyrically generic, with Hendrix wanting to escape yet another constraining relationship.” ES-49 “Junior Walker’s ‘Shotgun’ is said to have inspired the track and the galloping rhythm with guitar stabs to mimic Walker’s saxophone punch is evident.” ES-49

Spanish Castle Magic The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: 10/27/67 and 10/28/67 at Olympic Studios in London Released: Axis: Bold As Love (1967) Peak: 16 CL, 21 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 27.31 streaming About the Song: This “is one of the best songs in Hendrix’s oeuvre, and one of the best from The Experience as a power trio.” ES-46 “Mitchell’s dry technique is very much in evidence with clean beats and no leakage, lending a confidence to his tone and the ability provide a backbone to the intertwining of Hendrix and Redding’s flourishes.” ES-46 “The unique bass (a Swedish invention that only Redding and Hendrix owned at the time) lends a battering-ram thickness, as if pounding on the castle stones.” ES-46 “Hendrix also overdubbed the bass, shadowing Redding’s rumble and making the song as stolid as a castle itself.” ES-46 “Intensely hot guitar lines…close out the embryonic Spanish Castle Magic.” VH1 “Hendrix is telling us to build castles in the air; to experience escape in the vein of The Beatles ‘There’s a Place.’” ES-46 It is “the idea of club, a castle and an escape with a sympathetic confidante.” ES-48 The title is “said to refer to a club Hendrix previously frequented: The Spanish Castle.” ES-46 “The Wailers played a legendary gig there, which Hendrix might’ve equated with a type of magic.” ES-46 “However, some other writers have disputed that it inspired the song.” ES-46

Little Wing The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: 10/25/67 and 10/28/67 at Olympic Studios in London Released: Axis: Bold As Love (1967), South Saturn Delta (1997), Ultimate Hendrix (compilation, 1992), Experience Hendrix (compilation, 1997) Peak: 5 CL, 1 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 353.41 streaming

Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Song: Some of the songs on Axis “were downright sublime in their passionate embrace of the world around them” VH1 like with “the delicate,” RS “exquisite,” ES-49 and “awe-inspiring” Little Wing” RD has become “the most lasting…for many…With its perfect blend of lead and rhythm guitar the song’s introductory phrases blurred the line forever between the two…The tune is a pure, simple thing of beauty.” RD It is also “one of rock’s most cryptic and bewitching love songs.” RS “A lot of this was probably due to LSD, and in lesser hands such mystical notions might have been a disaster.” VH1 “Hendrix was shaped by women and readily acknowledged their generosity. Although that’s not to say he wasn’t guilty of careless and even dismissive or abusive behaviour towards them as well. But ‘Little Wing’ is an acknowledgement of the elevation that woman helped him achieve.” ES-50 More specifically, “Hendrix’s mother Lucille is thought to be the inspiration for the ascending ‘Little Wing’ and it’s interesting that a similar tone is used on The Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’…another paean to a missed mother. Both use sky imagery to suggest distance and elevation…The songs share a secular spirituality; a gospel to both the earthly but elevated.” ES-49 Artists who’ve covered the song include Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Def Leppard, Pearl Jam, Paul Rodgers, Santana with Joe Cocker, Sting, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. WS

Up from the Skies The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: 10/29/67 at Olympic Studios in London Released: 2/26/68 (single), Axis: Bold As Love (1967) B Side: “One Rainy Wish” Peak: 82 BB, 92 HR, 15 CL, 5 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 9.40 streaming About the Song: This song seems “to be pointing the way towards the more relaxed moments of [Electric Ladyland,] the album that would follow it.” ES-44 “There is a dissonance between the pensive lyrics and the bouncy melody: something that would be repeated on Electric Ladyland’s ‘Long Hot Summer.’” ES-45 “The mismatch between music and lyric is…powerful, as if the ideology is invading, camouflaged by a hook that would satisfy the Tin Pan Alley old grey whistle test.” ES-45 “Musically, this soul shuffle has elements of Curits Mayfield (Hendrix briefly backed Mayfield in his early days) and is almost a duologue between Hendrix and his guitar.

Castles Made of Sand The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: 10/29/67 at Olympic Studios in London Released: Axis: Bold As Love (1967), Ultimate Hendrix (compilation, 1992), Experience Hendrix (compilation, 1997) Peak: 9 CL, 9 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 98.81 streaming About the Song: “Here Hendrix laments the crumbling of daydreams in a series of vignettes – relationships break down, hopes are ambushed and desire forsaken.” ES-52 It is “a whip-sharp portrait of suburban oppression” ES-53 although “lyrically a little thick in places, the thickets of words tripping up the reflective melody, it nevertheless does lend a sense of something tumbling, falling, being overcome.” ES-53 The song is “accentuated by an emphatic and dogmatic bass line.” ES-53 with “the cymbal crash at the end sounding like a philosophical shrug of acceptance at the nature of circumstance reversal.” ES-53

Bold As Love The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: 10/29/67 at Olympic Studios in London Released: Axis: Bold As Love (1967), Experience Hendrix (compilation, 1997) Peak: 22 CL, 22 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 47.93 streaming About the Song: Bold As Love is “the victorious YES! That the ending of Are You Experienced lacks.” ES-55 “The song explains that the axis is an oracle that can unify the myriad emotions and uncertainties of life, with Hendrix personifying these as royalty, armies, and ingenues symbolized by colors.” ES-55 “The guitar work is…kaleidoscopic, with bright licks and counter-riffs that shadow while the outro makes thrilling use of tremolo, keeping us whirring about the axis.” ES-55 “There is a technicolor and pyrotechnic brilliance to the finale’s two orbiting solos.” ES-55 The track captures Hendrix “chasing this fever dream…with its false ending, suspenseful drum solo and then the explosion of notes, trills and bends. Kramer’s inspired suggestion to add phrasing to the guitar enhances the euphoria, coming in waves or rotations, evoking a feeling of circularity.” ES-55

She’s So Fine The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Noel Redding Recorded: 5/4/67 and 10/30/67 at Olympic Studios in London Released: Axis: Bold As Love (1967) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 6.31 streaming About the Song: “With hints of The Who and The Kins, this is a bouncy track from Redding enhanced by a scribbled guitar solo. Often derided as inessential, it effectively changes the tone of the album.” ES-54 “Lyrically, it’s obscure and a little bizarre…Musically, the track has shades of The Who’s ‘Happy Jack,’ and Mitchell channels Keith Moon in a fun few minutes.” ES-54

Catfish Blues Jimi Hendrix

Writer(s): traditional, arranged by Jimi Hendrix Recorded: 11/10/67 live at Vitus Studios in Bussum, Netherlands Released: Blues (1994) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 11.46 streaming About the Song: This live recording came from the Dutch TV show Hoepla, recorded in November 1967.

Resources/References: AM AllMusic.com review by Cub Koda RD Robert Dimery (2006). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Quintet Publishing Limited: New York, NY. Page 128. JM John McDermott with Billy Cox and Eddie Kramer (1995). The Complete Studio Recording Sessions, 1963-1970. Little, Brown and Company: United States of America and Canada. RS500 Rolling Stone (12/21/2023). “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time” ES Emma Stott (2022). On Track…Every Album, Every Song. Sonic Bond Publishing: United Kingdom. VH1 VH1 (2003). 100 Greatest Albums. Edited by Jacob Hoye. Pocket Books: New York, NY. Page 174. WS WhoSampled.com WR The Wire (June 1992). “The 100 Most Important Records Ever Made” Related DMDB Pages: First posted 3/28/2010; last updated 8/8/2026.