Looser, jazzier, and more polished than the earthshaking debut album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Axis: Bold As Love exceeded expectations as the burgeoning guitar god elegantly sidestepped the sophomore curse with its innovation, maturation, and focus.
Highlighted by the guitarist’s growing compositional prowess, arranging skills, and command of hard rock, psychedelic, funk, progressive, jazz, and pop, Axis reached rock’s outer limits.
Days after completing Are You Experienced, sessions commenced for Axis May 4 and 5, 1967, at London’s Olympic Studios with new eight-track machines under the supervision of producer Chas Chandler and engineer Eddie Kramer, aided by second engineer George Chkiantz. Redding’s “She’s So Fine” was first to be attempted and rough passes at “If 6 was 9” and “EXP.” The band, which also included bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, recorded seven tracks but only kept three; returning May 9 to begin “Burning of the Midnight Lamp,” which included experiments with harpsichord, 12-string, and wah. Recording was hastily scheduled and randomly scattered as the band also performed in England, Europe, and America that summer. On June 5, they recorded 17 takes of “Cat Talking to Me,” which wasn’t released until West Coast Seattle Boy in 2010. In mid June, they played the Monterey Pop Festival followed by shows at the Fillmore, then were booked June 28-30 at L.A.’s Houston Studios for what proved to be unproductive sessions. July 6-7 found them in Mayfair Studios, adding R&B group The Sweet Inspirations’ vocals to “Midnight Lamp.”
On September 27, they convened without Jimi at Rye Muse to continue “She’s So Fine.” October was busy at Olympic; Jimi became adept in the studio, but his perfectionism delayed production with numerous retakes of backing tracks, causing conflicts with an impatient Chandler. Moreover, sessions were frequently disrupted by a party atmosphere with friends and hangers-on. Nonetheless, recording progressed steadily; October 29 was particularly productive, as five songs were completed. Mixing began October 31 with remixing into early November. Wrapped in Hindu-meets-hippie artwork depicting the Experience as transcendent sonic demigods, Axis was released in England on December 1 (seven months after Experienced), America on January 15. It reached the Top 10 in both. Only their second album, it was the last to feature a cohesive JHE (its successor, Electric Ladyland, included more than a dozen guests and a sprawling soundscape).
In the closing solo on Jimi’s “Spanish Castle Magic” (2:37), he extracted the essence of iconic blues guitarists and stirred it into a hard-rock stew over a vamping C#7#9. The rolling repeated figures with idiomatic unison string bends and riff patterns of largely pentatonic content in measures 1-2 reach back to blues traditions of T-Bone Walker and Buddy Guy, while his exaggerated major and minor-third wide string bends and emphatic phrasing in 3-6 acknowledge the influence of Albert King. Jimi spikes the mixture with heavy distortion and a driving hard-rock attitude.
Axis captured Jimi in mid flight, hurtling toward greatness. The Strat-colored R&B chord style introduced on “Wind Cries Mary” crystallized in “Little Wing” and “Castles Made of Sand.” Redding claimed only “basic distortion” effects were used on the debut, but Axis signified a departure, showcasing new sounds from studio processing (ADT, phase, flange, echo, VSO) to Jimi’s unrestrained embrace of pedals (wah, fuzz, octave divider) and Leslie cabinets, tuning down a half step, and Hagstrom eight-string bass (played by Redding and Hendrix).
Axis opens with Jimi’s imaginative sound collage, “EXP,” which combines a spoken-word faux radio interview (Mitchell and Hendrix) documenting contact with extraterrestrial “Paul Corusoe” (Jimi), with electronic noise and harmonic/microphonic feedback plus open harmonics, processed guitar bits, and whammy-bar antics suggesting what David Crosby called “dinosaurs fighting nuclear war.” A vignette expounding on the sounds and imagery introduced in “Third Stone from the Sun,” it’s made more disconcerting through panning to scatter at least three guitar parts (some through a Marshall stack plus a separate six-foot horn) over the stereo picture, and segues directly into “Up from the Skies,” amplifying Jimi’s fascination with extraterrestrial themes. Mitchell’s triplet-feel stroll and brushwork convey soul-jazz sensibilities in the swinging vamp groove, a contrast to “EXP” and quite different from anything on Experienced. Jimi’s wah-colored guitar decorates and permeates the arrangement, supplying atypical chromatically-shifting dominant chords and bluesy triplet-dominated single-note lines. His feel change at the bridge, understated inner solo, and grooving outro solo provide intriguing points of contrast. Released as an American single, it reached #82.
“Spanish Castle Magic” is unabashed proto-metal, inspired by the Spanish Castle roadhouse near Seattle. Blending heavy rock with R&B, it was one of two Axis tunes played regularly in concert. The arrangement features dynamic parallel guitar/bass riffs, dramatic stop-time verse figures (a pre-Zep harbinger), and an omnipresent C#7#9 chord that places it squarely in the “Purple Haze”/“Foxey Lady” canon. Recorded October 27-28, it boasts Jimi’s overdubbed eight-string bass (through an Octavia), jazz chords on piano, and two strong solos merging blues, his most pervasive influence as soloist, with a heavily distorted hard-rock bent.
Recorded October 26, “Wait Until Tomorrow” presents more evidence of Jimi’s compositional advancement in one of his most enduring situation songs and greatest bits of storytelling. His R&B side surfaces immediately in the intro figures he labored over (recalled in interludes) via embellished triad riffs bristling with syncopation. Verses contain undisguised allusions to black dance rhythms and funky comping a la Steve Cropper and the “chitlin circuit” soul medium, with tightly placed yet loosely swinging partial chords, fills, and arpeggiations. Jimi doesn’t solo on the tune, but develops the motion and power of pure rhythm in his propulsive lead-rhythm approach.
Jimi’s synthesis of Curtis Mayfield’s rhythm guitar style with his own imaginative tangents yielded unforgettable chord-melody moments. Chief among them is “Little Wing,” a standard exemplifying his lead/rhythm approach. The intro is definitive. Here, Jimi demonstrates his harmonic acumen and highly ornamented approach that blends basic homophonic chord playing with contrapuntal elements emphasizing non-chord tones (9ths, 11ths, 13ths, suspensions) and ad-lib improvised melodies. Throughout, his patented thumb-fretting technique and legato phrasing of embellishments are on full display.
A lesser-known (but no less compelling) piece in the “Purple Haze” canon is “Ain’t No Telling,” which similarly exploits the distinctive 7#9 sonority in verses. Jimi’s core riffs (one-bar figures containing the altered chord) are repeated and developed within six-bar phrases characteristic of the unflagging funkiness he brought to hard rock. The powerful forward motion is maintained by Mitchell’s propulsive drumming and complemented by the trio’s accented wide-triplet patterns that momentarily suggest an unexpected waltz feel. Jimi overdubbed a second guitar to reinforce the vocal melody – a strategy that hints at blues traditions and underscores his arranger’s mindset. Another tune dominated by rhythm and groove, it contains minimal guitar soloing.
“Little Wing,” inspired by events at Monterey Pop, was completed in late October. Its origins harken to Jimi’s Greenwich Village days fronting Jimmy James & the Blue Flames. The initial JHE version was played faster with hard-rock trappings but was recast as a slow-rock/R&B ballad with lyric references to Native American mythology. Throughout, Jimi cultivates Curtis Mayfield lead/rhythm mannerisms, recalling guitar parts reminiscent of Lonnie Youngblood’s 1966 arrangement for The Icemen’s “She’s a Fox” (on which Jimi played guitar). He processed his Strat (neck and middle pickups) with rotating-speaker effects, added glockenspiel, and Kramer applied ADT to his vocals. A shorter arrangement (2:30), it was the second Axis song played in concert, and has been covered by Clapton, SRV, Sting, and Gil Evans.
Jimi said “If 6 Was 9” demonstrates “a great feeling of blues” despite its acid-fueled rock delivery, rife with hippie counterculture aphorisms, nods to Hopi lore, and spacey free-form jam. His Strat sound is colored with echo and fuzz, employs heavy reverb and extreme panning, and doubles his vocal with an overdubbed guitar in the blues tradition. Graham Nash and Gary Leeds provided the foot-stamping percussion effects. The song was developed over several months beginning with a May 4-5 studio jam recorded in two segments – “Section A” and “Section B” (retitled “Symphony of Experience”). Historic note: the Axis side-one master (ending with this piece) was lost when Jimi accidentally left the tape in a taxi. Seven songs had to be hurriedly remixed from Redding’s rough dub.
Back-tracked guitar, introduced on Experienced, opens “You Got Me Floatin’” and ushers in Jimi’s funky riff of simple double-stops and muted strings doubled by bass that might as well be called “R&B 101.” The chorus exploits a secondary tandem groove riff, also in the R&B tradition. The track’s unusual instrumentation includes eight-string bass parts acting as counterpoint to Jimi’s Octavia-tinged interlude solo and random backward-guitar snippets, blues licks, and lead/rhythm chord phrases laced into the ad-lib jam. Roy Wood and Trevor Burton (of Move) supplied background vocals.
In “Castles Made of Sand,” Jimi’s amalgam of soul, Dylanesque poetics, and psychedelia evokes a dreamlike story line chronicling his childhood. Emerging from the October 29 session, the loose psychedelic ballad reveals more sophistication and develops a gentle mid-tempo groove punctuated with abrupt 2/4 bars and rubato sections. Ubiquitous backward guitar underscores subconscious imagery in the intro, verses, choruses, and most conspicuously in the solo, flown-in to accompany Jimi’s lead/rhythm chord-melody. The latter is made more striking by chains of modernistic sus2 (5add2) sonorities in the intro and outro.
Inspired by Jimi’s compositions, Redding offered an original for the first time. The 23rd pass on May 5 yielded the master take of “She’s So Fine,” his hippie paean reconciling British Invasion pop with San Francisco psychedelic rock. It features Redding singing lead with Jimi and Mitchell providing background vocals. He introduces the catchy chorus riff on bass over Mitchell’s rock beat and is joined by Jimi’s doubling part and short lead break. The characteristic Mixolydian progression of hippie-rock coaxes a melodic blues-tinged approach from Jimi, explicit in his very structured solo and modal sitar-ish lines in the outro.
In “Bold as Love,” Jimi crafted a memorable, tuneful solo that epitomizes melodic blues improvisation (1:46). Use of melodic and rhythmic sequences, imitation, thematic development, and call-and-response phrase structure indicate his solos were not just loose instrumental breaks (though he excelled at those, too) but mini-compositions in themselves. His sensitivity to the harmony is reflected in the deliberate lines played over F#m-G, an uncommon chord change in blues and rock. Jimi’s ability to infuse a ballad or pop song with soulful bluesy feel and melodic string bending made him a model for legions of guitarists to follow.
Hendrix aficionado Eric Johnson cited “One Rainy Wish” as a personal favorite, and Mike Stern upped the ante by claiming Jimi attained the lyric feeling and fatter tone of a hollowbody (a la Jim Hall and Wes Montgomery) on his Strat. The B-side of “Up From Skies,” Jimi’s moderato ballad pursued otherworldly themes and sound-as-colors notions (developed fully in “Bold as Love”) based on his dream of a “sky filled with a thousand stars” and “eleven moons played across the rainbows.” He mixes meters for strong contrast in the arrangement, using 3/4 for gentle, ballad-like verses in E major and 4/4 for heavier rock-oriented choruses in C# major. Layering interwoven lead/rhythm guitars throughout, Jimi builds to a canonic imitative section with two dialoguing guitars over C-C#m changes in the outro. Recorded in mid October, it was completed late that month.
“Little Miss Lover” epitomizes the intuitive connection between Mitchell and Hendrix. Its drum part foreshadows, complements, and mirrors Jimi’s funky guitar riffing, which is clearly rhythmic in nature and performed percussively using abundant muted string scrapes, partial chords, and occasional single notes, colored with fuzz and wah. Eight-string bass completes the sonic picture. Jimi plays his space-conscious blues-based lead break with Octavia and reprises the sound with an insistent repeated lick in the outro.
Jimi explored sounds as colors in the closing title track “Bold As Love,” attributing moods and personalities to varied hues. He united incongruous shades/characters with an overarching theme, “Just ask the Axis.” Superficially, the song represents psychedelia, but on examination, it exemplifies Jimi’s deeper spiritual side and increasing lyrical and musical sophistication. He marries tone to tints in the narrative and fashions colorful guitar orchestration combining loose semi-clean R&B chording with simple clean-tone accompaniment – arpeggios, drones, and tremoloed dyads (choruses) – along with distorted fills and fuzzed lyrical blues-rock solo and outro improvisations. The coda contains the first official recording of stereo phasing (two tape decks running simultaneously, one flanged/manipulated and one normal) in the melodious ride-out guitar solo. JHE began recording the rock ballad on October 4. It was composited from instrumental takes 21 and 27 the next day and completed late that month.
Wolf Marshall is the founder and original Editor-In-Chief of GuitarOne magazine. A respected author and columnist, he has been influential in contemporary music education since the early 1980s. His latest book is Jazz Guitar Course: Mastering the Jazz Language. Others include 101 Must-Know Rock Licks, B.B. King: the Definitive Collection, and Best of Jazz Guitar. A list credits can be found at wolfmarshall.com.
This article originally appeared in VG’s November 2025 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.