Yet U.K. and U.S. fans were offered different experiences, as
the album was issued in two different editions, typical of American
releases at the time, capitalizing on the hits that were left off The U.K.
version. The U.K. release contained three songs not on the U.S. LP: "Red
House," "Remember," and "Can You See Me." The U.S.
release instead included the first three British A-side singles, "Hey Joe",
"Purple Haze", and "The Wind Cries Mary."
For the U.K. edition, Hendrix & Co. were photographed by
famed rock photographer Bruce Fleming, who captured the guitar god wearing
a cape and standing over his group like the Prince of Darkness. It was,
according to the photographer, not his favorite photo from the shoot, and the
artwork, oddly listed the album's title twice without mentioning the
band’s name. All in all, the U.K. cover was a pale comparison to the
American release.
Hendrix himself was dissatisfied, and requested that a
new shoot be set up for the U.S. sleeve. The group's eye-catching, alien look was better served by Karl Ferris' photo of the trio, taken at London’s Kew
Gardens. Redding's and Mitchell's hairdos were teased into afros that matched
Hendrix' own, while the reverse-color and fish-eye lens effects used for the
shoot gave the band an otherworldly look while complementing the shockingly new music within.
With evocative bubble lettering typical of the times and a striking yellow wrapper,
the sound and image combined to become something which, once experienced, was
left indelible.
On the recording of the LP, Recording Engineer Eddie
Kramer said, "By January 1967, when we started work on Are You Experienced?, Jimi Hendrix had
already had a run of successful singles in the UK with 'Hey Joe,' 'Purple Haze' and 'The Wind Cries Mary.' A lot of that
work, as well as some other tracks, had been recorded at De Lane Lea Studios in
London, but Jimi and the Experience had to get out of there because there was a
bank above the studio and they couldn't play loud. But they'd heard about
Olympic Studios, where I was a staff engineer. It had just opened up and the
Jimi Hendrix Experience were really one of Olympic's first clients. It was
brand-new and it was the hippest recording studio in the U.K., if not all the
world. The Helios mixing console we had was like nothing else around.
"Jimi was very shy when he first came into the studio. He
just sat quietly in the corner and waited for the amps to arrive. He didn't say
much until the amps were situated and the drums set up. Then he plugged in and
we were off to the races! The sheer volume set me back a bit. But that's what
you deal with as an engineer.
“We took the original tapes that they'd recorded
elsewhere and overdubbed, fixed and tweaked what had been done previously. Then
we just kept on recording and adding more tracks. Jimi was writing material
with his producer and manager, Chas Chandler. He was living in Chas' apartment
in London and they'd stay up all night working on lyrics, chords and the rest
of that. And they'd come into the studio with a completely written song.
Kramer went on to address the title song: "There are a
lot of backwards tape tracks on that one — drums, bass and guitar. We cut basic
tracks and then flipped the tape over. At the end of the session, I made Jimi a
copy of the backwards tracks. He went home and rehearsed himself all night to
figure out what the guitar was going to do. He came in the next day, said, 'OK, roll the tape from this point. ...' And he knew from the
downbeat precisely what the guitar was going to sound like and what the melody
was going to be. He was playing the melody in real time, but he'd figured out
how it was going to sound backwards. He was brilliant that way."
