Are You Experienced

The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Hendrix with Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, recorded the album and its singles between 23 October 1966 and 4 April 1967, in sixteen sessions across three London studios. Dave Siddle engineered at De Lane Lea, Mike Ross at CBS and, from 3 February 1967, Eddie Kramer at Olympic. Chandler limited the input of Mitchell and Redding. He moved the sessions away from CBS after a payment dispute with its owner, Jake Levy. Kramer recorded the drums in stereo on two tracks and used all four tracks for the band. Hendrix disliked being watched while singing, and Olympic built him a screen. The title track has backwards rhythm guitar, bass and drums.

The CBS session of 13 December 1966 produced Foxy Lady and the basic tracks for Love or Confusion, Can You See Me and Third Stone from the Sun. Red House was taped in the last fifteen minutes of that day. Redding played rhythm guitar on it, so the track has no bass guitar. Every song on the British edition was written by Hendrix, and Chandler, Hendrix and Kramer finished the final mixes by 3 a.m. on 25 April 1967. Chandler recalled that when Polydor's Horst Schmaltze heard the album he called it brilliant.

The US edition on Reprise ran 39:29 and replaced Red House, Remember and Can You See Me with the singles Purple Haze, Hey Joe and The Wind Cries Mary. The UK cover was by Chris Stamp, with a photo by Bruce Fleming and lettering by Alan Aldridge, and Hendrix disliked it. For the US cover Karl Ferris photographed the band at Kew Gardens with a fisheye lens.

Reception

It reached number two in Britain, where it stayed 33 weeks and was held off the top by Sgt. Pepper, and number five on the US Billboard chart, for 106 weeks. It sold more than a million copies within seven months. NME's Keith Altham called it a brave effort at an original and exciting musical form. Rolling Stone's Jon Landau praised the guitarist and arranger but criticised his singing and songwriting. Rolling Stone placed it fifteenth on its 500 Greatest Albums list in 2003 and 2012, thirtieth in 2020, and third on its 2013 list of best debut albums.

The Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry in 2005 and described it as one of the most groundbreaking guitar albums of the rock era. Writing in Pitchfork in 2025, Grayson Haver Currin called it his "first and best explosion of brilliance".