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

Axis: Bold As Love The Jimi Hendrix Experience

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 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 The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “groundbreaking debut effort” AM “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 “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 Here’s a breakdown of each of the individual songs.

EXP The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: ? 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

Up from the Skies The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: ? 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: A

Spanish Castle Magic The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: ? 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: “Intensely hot guitar lines…close out the embryonic Spanish Castle Magic.” VH1

Wait Until Tomorrow The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: ? Released: Axis: Bold As Love (1967) 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: A

Ain’t No Telling The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: ? 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: A

Little Wing The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: ? Released: Axis: Bold As Love (1967) 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 Little Wing… 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 The “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 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

If 6 Was 9 The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: ? Released: Axis: Bold As Love (1967) 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: “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

You Got Me Floatin’ The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: ? 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 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

Castles Made of Sand The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: ? Released: Axis: Bold As Love (1967) 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: A

She’s So Fine The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Noel Redding Recorded: ? 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: A

One Rainy Wish The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: ? 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: “The exuberant bridge of One Rainy Wish…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: ? 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: A

Bold As Love The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Writer(s): Jimi Hendrix Recorded: ? Released: Axis: Bold As Love (1967) 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: A

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. 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 7/23/2026.