The Wind Cries Mary

Hendrix played an early version in the summer of 1966 with the Blue Flames in New York, and Billy Cox noted the influence of Curtis Mayfield on it. The Experience recorded it at De Lane Lea in early 1967 at the end of the Fire session. Chandler said the band had about twenty minutes left, played it once through without rehearsal, and that with four or five overdubs the whole thing was done in twenty minutes. It came out as a UK single on Track on 5 May 1967 with Highway Chile on the B-side and reached number six.

It is a love song to Kathy Etchingham. She said it followed an argument over lumpy mashed potatoes, and that Mary is her middle name. The line about a broom sweeping up the broken pieces refers, she said, to Hendrix sweeping up the plates she had thrown. Hendrix himself said the lyrics represent more than one person, and some of the words appear in a poem he wrote for another Mary, Mary Washington.

Live

Hendrix played it at Monterey, at L'Olympia in Paris on 9 October 1967 and in Stockholm in 1967. Pitchfork names Seal and Marc Ribot among those who have covered it.