Jimi Hendrix and the Making of Are You Experienced (The Vinyl Frontier series)

The story of how the Jimi Hendrix Experience's first album, Are You Experienced, was made is even more astonishing than the record itself, and this book tells it all. With its finely crafted songwriting, breathtaking guitar playing, and the sheer power of the group, Are You Experienced was unlike anything heard before and paved the way for generations of rock to come. But rather than the result of a concentrated period of hard work, the album was recorded in short sessions between gigs, in radically different studios; moreover, Hendrix first showed most of the songs to the other band members on the day of recording, with no prior rehearsals. Here is the whole story, based on extensive interviews, along with accounts of all the album's influences-Jimi's love affair with Kathy Etchingham, the band's perennially penniless state, the gigs they had to perform to keep themselves afloat, and the growing awareness among British musicians that Jimi Hendrix was perhaps rock's greatest guitarist.

Sean Egan is a freelance journalist specializing in music. In addition to composing a number of liner notes, he has written Star Sail, about The Verve, and Animal Tracks, about The Animals. He lives in London, England.