Rocks In The Attic #150: The Jimi Hendrix Experience - ‘Axis: Bold As Love’ (1967)

Ten reasons why I love this album:

1. The Songs

Of the three studio albums released by Hendrix before his death, this comes across as the most personal. Are You Experienced is hook-driven and full of perfect three-minute pop songs, Electric Ladyland finds Hendrix immersed in the New York scene of barflies and hangers-on, but Axis catches him in full songwriter mode.

Hendrix’s lyrics are often overlooked, but he can really paint a picture with words. Axis showcases his love of science-fiction and his vivid imagination on tracks such as Spanish Castle Magic and Little Wing. Other songwriters can sound banal when they tell a story with lyrics - Paul McCartney commonly makes this mistake - but Hendrix seems to effortlessly get you on his side. His lyrics for Wait Until Tomorrow and Castles Made Of Sand are heartbreaking, and far from the sort of expectations set by the simplistic tone of Fire and Foxy Lady only a matter of months prior.

2. The Guitar Sound

I love the fuzz on Hendrix’s guitar throughout Are You Experienced.  The fade-in to Foxy Lady has to be one of the best sounds captured on a rock album - but Hendrix playing a clean tone on his guitar is even better. Thankfully this album is full of it.

The introduction to Little Wing is stunningly beautiful, and wouldn’t be quite the same if there was any overdrive involved. There’s a big difference between playing a guitar to chug away on some barre chords, and using it as a virtuoso instrument. It’s a really delicate piece, complimented perfectly by the addition of a glockenspiel - something that would usually be very much out of place on a rock album.

When I started learning to play the guitar, the first music book I bought was Electric Ladyland - there’s nothing like throwing yourself into the deep end. I didn’t last long with the book - I think I sold it to a friend as it was far too advanced for my skill level at the time. It always rankled me though, and eventually learning to play Little Wing gave me the confidence to go back and learn some of his other songs. I can play Hendrix’s stuff on the guitar reasonably well, but there are always a million subtleties that I overlook.

3. The Cover

If there’s one thing I hate about the late-‘60s, it’s the look associated with psychedelia. When The Beatles jumped on the bandwagon with Sgt. Pepper’s, they brought that look to a worldwide commercial level. People rave on about how timeless the Sgt. Pepper’s sleeve is, but I can’t stand it. It’s garish and like most record sleeves of that time, it dates it to a period when designers could get away with murder - as long as they painted their criminal efforts with as many colours as they had available to them.

The Sgt. Peppers sleeve is probably to blame for opening the doors of possibility for a number of visual crimes - The Rolling Stones’ terrible Their Satanic Majesties Request and Cream’s vomit-inducing Disraeli Gears immediately spring to mind. One other album sleeve to be thrown into that mix is Axis: Bold As Love. Quite simply though, I love it.

Rumour has it that the record company found out about Hendrix’s Cherokee ancestry. This got lost somewhere in translation, and the subsequent cover featured Hendrix amidst the wrong kind of Indians.

I’m sure most people would argue that the cover is just as offensive, wild and garish as anything produced around those times, but I truly see it as a piece of art - one of the nicest gafefold sleeves in my collection.

4. The Drum Intro To Little Miss Lover

Mitch Mitchell is oft-overlooked for his contribution to rock music. John Bonham and Keith Moon are always seen as the best drummers from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, but Mitchell is a master player. He just suffers from having his parts overshadowed by Hendrix - and what a problem to have.

One of his standout moments across all three Hendrix studio albums is this funk-driven introduction to Little Miss Lover. Unfortunately, it’s so good that somewhere along the way it caught the ears of the Master of Mediocrity, Noel Gallagher - who used the sample as the basis for Fuckin’ In The Bushes from their Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants album.

This meant that for a distinct period of time, Oasis fans claimed themselves a bit of credibility because of the Hendrix connection. I already despised Oasis and their legion of numbskull fans; I loathed them even more now.

5. Walking Down The Aisle

When I got married in 2011, my wife walked down the aisle to Little Wing.

In the weeks running up the wedding, she couldn’t decide between that and Led Zeppelin’s Over The Hills And Far Away. She wanted both played at the wedding - one to walk down the aisle to, and the other to walk back up the aisle to, as a married couple.

I convinced her that Little Wing worked much better as a down-the-aisle song, as the section in Over The Hills And Far Away where the bass and drums kick in, a minute and a half into the song, seemed more apt to mark a joyous occasion.

The beautiful Little Wing was used to soundtrack a beautiful moment.


6. Fulfilling The Record Contract

Hendrix was tied to a really bad record contract from day one, and never really made any money before he died. His estate now makes millions off his name, and it’s sad that his business affairs were always in such dire straits during his short tenure as a rock star.

The initial contract Hendrix signed with Track Records tied the Experience to release two LPs during 1967. Are You Experienced had already landed in May of that year, so surely another release would be of an inferior quality. Most bands would knock something out quickly, but Hendrix turns around and delivers a masterpiece.

7. Three Copies And Counting

Of all the albums in my vinyl collection, this is the one I own the most copies of. I bought two second hand copies while I was still living in Manchester - neither of which had a gatefold sleeve. About a year ago I bought brand new copy of the 2010 reissue from Real Groovy in Auckland. This is a heavyweight vinyl release, and also features the full gatefold sleeve, together with a booklet containing photos and an essay on the album.

You can say what you want about the Experience Hendrix releases - yes, they may be cashing in on Hendrix - but they’re supremely well packaged, and give his music the justice it deserves. If you don’t like the endless re-releasing of his albums, don’t buy them. It’s that simple.

8. The Production.

Electric Ladyland, would perfect the direction that Hendrix wanted to go but his first soundscapes came along on the title song of Are You Experienced, and were cemented here on Axis.

The wall of rolling feedback that symbolises the sound of a UFO taking off, on the album’s comedic opener EXP, leads the way into a set of songs where production really is as important as the songwriting. Axis would be the second and final album that Hendrix would record with Chas Chandler on production duties, and you definitely get a feeling that these sessions were fun. Electric Ladyland, on the other hand, can sound very serious at times and just a bit too heavy. Man.

9. The Font.

Hendrix’s handwriting is easily identifiable- his handwritten lyrics happily pop up all over the liner notes of the Experience Hendrix releases.

This font of his handwriting style cleverly takes the name of the album - Axis Bold.

10. Spanish Castle Magic.

Purple Haze, Foxy Lady and Fire always get their dues when it comes to their place in the rock riff canon. For some reason, Spanish Castle Magic gets lost in the dust.

It has a wealth of riffs - the stuttering overdrive of the intro, the main arpeggiated riff, and the descending, syncopated power-chords of the verses all combine to provide a really heavy guitar assault.

Hit: Little Wing

Hidden Gem: Bold As Love

Rocks In The Attic #142: AC/DC - ‘Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap’ (1976)

For me, and I’m talking about the international version of the Dirty Deeds album, this is where AC/DC really start sounding like AC/DC. The High Voltage album (again, to take the international release as gospel) sounds like a band searching for their sound, and I guess a few of the songs included here don’t really fit with the AC/DC template - or at least not as much as other songs on the album.

A lot of people don’t like it, but I really like the cover to this album. Designed by Hipgnosis, it’s essentially a stock photo of an American motel, with a range of random everyday people superimposed in the foreground. Those people, for no reason explained anywhere on the cover - or even in the title of the album - have their eyes blanked out with black bars. To make it even stranger, there is a Doberman amongst the crowd, and he doesn’t have a black bar across his eyes. Go figure.

The real gem of this album is Ride On - a slow blues, and for me a career highlight which they never came close to matching. I’d compare it to Since I’ve Been Loving You (from Led Zeppelin III) in that in both cases, the respective bands have endlessly tried to replicate these songs on subsequent releases without reaching those peaks again.

Hit: Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

Hidden Gem: Ride On

Rocks In The Attic #128: The Kinks - ‘Golden Hour Of The Kinks’ (1971)

Another compilation that exists solely in my record collection because it was handy to have in my record bag when DJing.

You have to love The Kinks though - they’re unfairly put to the side when ‘60s beat groups are mentioned. Usually, there’s The Beatles and The Stones, and nothing else. For me, The Kinks fit nicely in the middle between those two bands - they match the songwriting peaks of The Beatles (not as consistently as Lennon & McCartney, but certain songs are the arguably the equal of The Beatles’ singles), but they retain the rough edge (and murky production values) of The Stones.

This particular compilation is pretty poor, however. Their cover of Louie Louie is listed on the sleeve as ‘Lovie Lovie’, which makes you wonder what sort of moron put the sleeve together, when they can misspell one of rock and roll’s universal staples. Secondly, Lola is missing from the collection - even though this was put together a year after that single’s release. It is a budget release though, so Pye Records presumably only allowed the release of their older ‘60s output.

I think more than any other ‘60s band - The Beatles and The Stones included - the template for riff-driven guitar-based rock can be traced back to The Kinks. Dave Davies is a fantastic guitarist in this respect - coming up with short guitar hooks for his brother to write songs around.

During the formation of Led Zeppelin in 1968, Jimmy Page was undecided whether he should form a full-on heavy rock band, or a lighter folk rock band akin to Pentangle. Page played as a session musician on The Kinks’ debut album, and I don’t see it as a coincidence that he then went on to be the flag-bearer throughout the ‘70s for Dave Davies’ brand of riff-based heavy rock.

Hit: You Really Got Me

Hidden Gem: Victoria

Rocks In The Attic #114: Led Zeppelin - ‘Led Zeppelin II’ (1969)

This album to me sounds like summer. I remember listening to this vinyl copy - one of my Dad’s - putting it onto tape, and then buying it on CD not long after. I always think Zeppelin’s brand of rock is quite rich - in that in most cases it’s a high level of musicianship and substance, over catchiness and pop hooks - but their second album is instantly listenable. I’d recommend it as a way-in to Zeppelin, over anything else they recorded, including their arguably superior fourth album.

I must have bought the record on CD during school holidays, as I have a really clear memory of walking up the hospital every day (I think to see my Dad who was in there for an operation), and I would listen to this on my Technics portable CD player all the way up to the hospital, and all the way back home. I think it sounds like summer to me because of this very association. That couple of weeks must have come in the middle of a hot spell - a rarity in an English summer.

It’s incredible that this record was released in 1969. It has 70s rock written all over it, but it comes from the tail end of that earlier decade. It’s also fantastic proof that a great album can be produced out of pressure, and on the road, with the band stealing studio time whenever and wherever they could to put this together.

Hit: Whole Lotta Love

Hidden Gem: The Lemon Song

Rocks In The Attic #84: Led Zeppelin - ‘Led Zeppelin’ (1969)

Although this is only (only!) the 84^th entry in the Rocks In The Attic blog, this is actually the 100^th disc I’ve reviewed, taking into account all the double- and triple-albums that I’ve wrote about so far.

A few weeks ago I covered the Truth album by Jeff Beck - released prior to this debut by Led Zeppelin, and an album Jimmy Page must have had at the front of his mind when planning and arranging this.

This was a very cheap album to make. Zeppelin’s manager Peter Grant paid for the 36 hours of studio time himself, and then sold the tapes to Atlantic Records. A studio cost of just £1,782 led to the record grossing more than £3.5 million. Not a bad return for a record company.

If I had to choose one album over the other, I’d go with Zeppelin’s debut, only because the songs fit together that little bit better. Led Zeppelin and Truth are very similar though. They even share a cover - You Shook Me - but the majority of the songs could be interchangeable. Both albums have soulful vocals, by Robert Plant and Rod Stewart respectively. The guitar work on each album (both players are ex-Yardbirds) is of a higher quality than most players at the time (and more in line with the likes of Hendrix and Clapton); and the bass is top-notch (by John Paul Jones on Led Zeppelin, and future Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood on Truth).

The real point of differentiation is the percussion. There’s nothing wrong with the drums, by Mick Waller, on Jeff Beck’s album. They keep time, as they should. But they’re not a patch on Bonzo’s debut. The opening track on Led Zeppelin - Good Times Bad Times - could almost be renamed How To Play Drums by John Henry Bonham. You can ignore everything else about that song and just concentrate on the drums - they are the very definition of a perfect drum track.

Hit: Dazed And Confused

Hidden Gem: Black Mountain Side

Rocks In The Attic #70: Led Zeppelin - ‘Coda’ (1982)

This album goes a long way to confirm that when bands choose not release material when they record it, there’s usually a good reason. That’s not to say this is a bad album - it’s nowhere as near as bad as the atrocious In Through The Out Door - but for a Led Zeppelin album, it’s pretty poor.

Released two years after the death of John Bonham, this is Page’s way to get out of a contractual agreement (they owed Atlantic Records a fifth album from when they started the Swan Song label to release their own work). The songs are mostly left-over pieces that didn’t quite make the albums they were originally recorded for, together with a couple of live tracks (where they’ve removed any audience noise, to make them sound like they were recorded in a studio).

The real issue is that the album is very disjointed, which you would expect from an album that collects songs from across their entire career, from 1969 through to 1978. There are also a few notable omissions - Baby Come On Home and Travelling Riverside Blues, which would eventually surface on Boxed Set in 1990 and Boxed Set 2 in 1993, and are better than anything included here.

Hit: We’re Gonna Groove

Hidden Gem: Bonzo’s Montreaux



Rocks In The Attic #61: Jeff Beck - ‘Truth’ (1968)

It took me a long time to track this down on vinyl. If Led Zeppelin albums are numbered, this could almost be titled Led Zeppelin 0.

Released a couple of months before Led Zeppelin (I) was recorded, this also features heavy blues arrangements by an ex-Yardbird (Jeff Beck), and a soulful white singer (Rod Stewart) providing vocals. It also features a reworking of the Willie Dixon song You Shook Me, which would also grace the first Zeppelin album.

Apparently Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page fell out over that one - with Beck claiming that Page stole his idea to do a heavy blues version of You Shook Me. You can understand this - even if Jimmy Page did come up with that idea first, Beck beat him to the punch and Page simply shouldn’t have put it on the first Zeppelin album.

Rounding out Beck’s  band are Ronnie Wood on bass, and noted blues explosion drummer Mick Waller.

You can’t help but compare the two albums - they’re very similar - but for me the first Zeppelin album is slightly more cohesive, but only just. Page even features on the Truth album, credited as the writer of Beck’s Bolero - an instrumental with Beck and Page on guitar, John Paul Jones on bass, Keith Moon on drums and Nicky Hopkins on piano.

At the end of the day, I’m not a huge fan of either album. There’s something very dirge-like about both albums, as though both architects are trying to outdo each other with a (very) heavy blues album, and without the adequate quantity of light (to balance out the shade), they can both be very hard to listen to.

Hit: Shapes Of Things

Hidden Gem: Beck’s Bolero

Rocks In The Attic #41: Aerosmith - ‘Done With Mirrors’ (1985)

This was supposedly Aerosmith’s comeback album - their first with Joe Perry and Brad Whitford back in the band, and their first on Geffen records - the glitzy record label that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere in the 1980s. Unfortunately for everybody involved, they would have to wait another two years to release their real comeback album - Permanent Vacation - an album that rightfully put them back at the top of the tree.

This isn’t a bad album, it’s just poorly produced (by Doobie Brothers and Van Halen producer Ted Templeman). It feels very flat - and while the sound is very clear, there’s nothing special to grab your attention. This would have been the first studio album that Aerosmith would have released on compact disc, and possibly they were so taken with the new technology that they forgot to actually make a decent album.

The other thing this album has to work against is the fact that some bright spark at the record label decided to get creative with the name of the album. On its release, all text on the sleeve including the name of the album - and even the name of the band - was printed in reverse, and could be read normally by holding up to a mirror. Now I like this, it’s something different, but I’m very aware that a large proportion of rock fans tend to be cerebrally challenged - so this surely would have been commercial suicide. It’s okay when you’re the biggest band in the world and you put out a record without your name on it (eg. Led Zeppelin IV), but if you’re on the comeback trail it might make a bit more sense to actually make it loud and clear who you are.

David Geffen really must have started rubbing his hands with glee during the 1980s. Not only did he have Aerosmith on his new record label by 1985 - but he’d very soon have Guns ‘N Roses joining them, and after that Nirvana. There used to be a time when I could quite happily pigeon-hole an Aerosmith album as good or questionable depending on which label the record was on. Records on their original label Columbia were mostly good, while the stuff on Geffen was always questionable. This no longer works however, as they went back to Columbia in 1997 and have released mainly rubbish ever since.

Hit: Let The Music Do The Talking

Hidden Gem: Shela

Rocks In The Attic #31: The Darkness - ‘Permission To Land’ (2003)

This album ticks all the right boxes. It’s got a naked lady on the cover. It has a Parental Advisory sticker. It’s on Atlantic Records - home of, amongst others, Led Zeppelin. The guitarist is a big fan of Thin Lizzy. It couldn’t get much better really.

Except the album isn’t actually that great. There’s some killer singles on there - Get Your Hands Off My Woman, Growing On Me,  I Believe In A Thing Called Love and Love Is Only A Feeling - but the rest of the album is just filler. Just like most average rock albums, the singles are good but they obviously didn’t spend as long on the other songs. In fact the second side of the album - the side without all the singles on it - is pretty forgetful.

I regret not seeing the band at Glastonbury. They were playing the Second Stage, just as they were breaking in the UK, and I remember my good friend Natalie saying I should go and watch them as I’d probably like them. I hadn’t heard about them by that point, but they really caught my attention when I finally heard about them. What’s not to like about a band playing classic rock riffs behind a screaming singer in a white lycra jumpsuit?

Hit: I Believe In A Thing Called Love

Hidden Gem: Friday Night

Rocks In The Attic #27: The White Stripes - ‘Elephant’ (2003)

I was much more impressed with this album, after White Blood Cells didn’t really live up to the hype that was surrounding the band at the time of that release. I thought White Blood Cells was a bit of a letdown, after the genius of De Stijl, but here on Elephant they seemed to get back on track.

I wasn’t a White Stripes fan from the very start, but I remember a lot of talk about them around the same time that The Strokes were being touted as the next big thing. My good friend Paul gave me a copy of De Stijl on CD that he’d won at some music festival, and not knowing anything about them, he’d offloaded it onto me. So from listening to that album (a lot!), I was very into them by the time White Blood Cells came around.

I love De Stijl - a lot of it sounds (to me) like Led Zeppelin, and I like that. White Blood Cells and Elephant are a bit heavier, but still retaining a melodic edge which saves them from the garage rock of their first album.

I don’t usually pay much attention to music videos - I find they can change how you perceive a song, both positively and negatively - but the videos for three of this album’s four singles are outstanding: the kaleidoscopic Seven Nation Army video, directed by Alex And Martin; a scantily-clad Kate Moss swinging around a strippers’ pole in I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself, directed by Sofia Coppola; and the pulsating The Hardest Button To Button video, directed by Michel Gondry.

Hit: Seven Nation Army

Hidden Gem: You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket

Rocks In The Attic #18: Stone Temple Pilots - ‘Purple’ (1994)

I was always very anti-Nirvana when I was getting into music, in the early nineties. I’m never one to follow hype, and everybody loved them. The band for me at that time - at least the American band for me - was Stone Temple Pilots.

I remember seeing Weiland singing one of the big songs from Core (1992) - probably Plush - on an MTV Awards show, and not being terribly impressed. Yet another vocalist, singing in the style of Cobain and Vedder, I had probably thought. Then when Purple came out and I heard the single Vaseline, I was hooked. I went out and bought the single (the MTV video was in heavy rotation), and probably the album not long after.

Due to Weiland’s drug problems putting the band into hiatus upon the release of their (very underrated) third album, I was never able to see them play back in the 90s. I saw them play in New Zealand last year though (their first time in this country), and they rocked, playing my favourite song from Purple - Still Remains - along with their great cover of Zeppelin’s Dancing Days.

This is one of many coloured vinyls I have in my collection. Needless to say, it’s purple.

Hit: Interstate Love Song

Hidden Gem: Still Remains