Axis: Bold as Love

Work began on 4 May 1967 with Redding's She's So Fine, whose master was take 23, alongside the first takes of If 6 Was 9. On 9 May Hendrix sat at the harpsichord in Studio A and began Burning of the Midnight Lamp, a song that became his fourth UK single and later joined Electric Ladyland. Sessions at Houston Studios in Los Angeles on 28 to 30 June were abandoned, and Chandler called that studio dire. The rest was done at Olympic, with time booked at Mayfair Studios in London on 6 and 7 July. Engineers were Eddie Kramer, George Chkiantz, Andy Johns and Terry Brown.

Hendrix lost the master tape of side one in a London taxi, and he, Chandler and Kramer remixed most of it in one overnight session. Mitchell later said this could have been the start of any conflict between Hendrix and Chandler in the studio. Gary Leeds and Graham Nash stamped their feet on If 6 Was 9, and Nash, Trevor Burton and Roy Wood sang backing vocals on You've Got Me Floating. Wood said he and Burton were in the next studio when Redding asked them to sing. The US edition on Reprise came the following month.

Spanish Castle Magic was inspired by a dance hall near Seattle. Hendrix first used a Leslie speaker on Little Wing, and the coda of Bold as Love holds the first recording of stereo phasing. The cover showed the Experience as avatars of Vishnu, painted by Roger Law over a mass-produced religious poster. Hendrix said the three of them had nothing to do with it, and Malaysia's Home Ministry banned the art after complaints.

Reception

It reached number five in Britain, for 16 weeks, and number three in the US. Jim Miller of Rolling Stone wrote in 1968 that it was the finest voodoo album any rock group had produced to date. Q said in 1993 that the Experience had created a genre which would probably be short-lived because nobody else could play it. Robert Christgau, writing in Blender in 2005, found the music too spaced-out and light. Guitarist magazine placed it seventh among the most influential guitar albums, and Rolling Stone ranked it ninety-second in 2020.