By Andy Aledort. Electric Ladyland is widely regarded as the apex of Jimi Hendrix's musical creativity within the confines of the studio environment. It is a vivid snapshot of his innovative artistic genius, captured during what was an extremely fertile and creative period in his life. As rock music began to explore its very boundaries, via cutting-edge, creatively ambitious releases like Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde and The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Hendrix seized the opportunity to devise an album of a scope that had previously only been imagined. Thus was planted the seed for the creation of what many regard as the greatest rock album of all time, Electric Ladyland.

By Steven C. Pesant. Electric Ladyland was the third and final studio album released by The Jimi Hendrix Experience… and it was all Jimi’s. Developed over the course of 13 long months, a period in which The Experience performed a near endless series of concert tours throughout North America and Europe, it also saw Hendrix taking full control of his music.

This time, Electric Ladyland was Jimi’s own personal message for the world—comprised of 16-songs and 77-minutes of music—and served as his most ambitious and confessional album of his lifetime. It was a near cinematic journey exploring themes of atmospheres, oceans, crisis and solitude, and Jimi’s prepared credits read like a major motion picture. Produced and directed by Jimi Hendrix—every aspect of the album came from Jimi’s hands … or so it seemed.

By Dave Thompson. It's the first thing you see when you buy a new album, and one of the last things you'd imagine could be subject to dispute. A record sleeve, after all, should say more for its contents than the musicians ever could, and if you range through rock's most dynamic catalogs, the jackets come to mind as quickly as the music, and encapsulate them as well: the historical hall of fame that covers The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper; the pennant bedecked scooter on the front of The Who's Quadrophenia; the cut 'n' paste blackmail text for the Sex Pistols' Never Mind The Bollocks; and of course, a room full of 19 bare naked women for The Jimi Hendrix Experience's Electric Ladyland.

By Dave Thompson. It was hard to believe, but the band was going home. They'd been on the road for just about nine months straight; they'd been touring America since the last days of July. But finally, exhaustedly, they'd reached the end of the road ... or at least, they'd been given three weeks off, the longest break in their work schedule in almost exactly two years. Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell had already booked their flights back to London; Jimi Hendrix had rented a house in Beverly Hills' Benedict Canyon. They just had two more shows to play, in Sacramento on Sunday, and Hollywood tonight. Here's the story of The Experience’s headlining appearance at the historic Hollywood Bowl on September 14, 1968.

By Jym Fahey. August 31, 2021 marks the 51st Anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's headlining appearance at the Isle Of Wight Festival of Music. In the late 1990s and early 2000's Experience Hendrix teamed up with Academy Award winning Director Murray Lerner to develop an extended Jimi Hendrix concert film and accompanying soundtrack release. Debuting in November 2002 Blue Wild Angel: Jimi Hendrix Live At The Isle Of Wight was the first comprehensive film to document this historic performance in front of 600,000 fans. We’re looking back at the making of this film and the footage that Murray Lerner shot at the original festival with this special interview originally conducted in 2000 during the film’s production.

By Wayne Pernu. Jimi Hendrix's performance of "Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock was a turning point in the history of the counter-culture movement. As a summing up of one of the most volatile eras in the nation's history, his adaptation of our national anthem has entered our cultural lexicon as perhaps the most powerful musical touchstone of the era, a zeitgeist of expressiveness.

By Dave Thompson. It was raining. Of course, it was raining – what else does it ever do in Seattle? But even local standards were shattered as Sunday, July 26, 1970, swam into overcast view and the heavens literally opened up and wept, turning the sky to steel and the streets to rivers. The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s early evening performance on this date would mark Jimi’s last home-town concert. Here is that story …

By John McDermott. The Dick Cavett Show represented Jimi’s US network television debut and this special collection features complete live performances of “Izabella,” “Machine Gun,” and “Hear My Train A Comin’.” Jimi’s insightful interviews with Cavett touched upon a variety of personal and professional issues ranging from his stint as a US Army paratrooper to this celebrated rendition of “Star Spangled Banner” at Woodstock. During production for this 2003 documentary, we sat down with Dick Cavett for an extended discussion on his own history on television plus Jimi’s two historic appearances on the show in 1969.

By Frank Moriarty. It is one of the most powerful images in the history of rock music, one that has come to symbolize the wild pedigree of a form of music where anything can happen. This image is one that has burned its way into the consciousness of popular culture: Jimi Hendrix is on his knees as his Fender Stratocaster lays before him, shrieking in flames on the stage of the Monterey International Pop Festival. Jimi's fingers flutter over the guitar's body, urging the tendrils of fire higher as the instrument is consumed. But the act of burning a guitar was far from the only combustion ignited by Jimi Hendrix in the minutes that led to the climax of this performance. Jimi Hendrix had arrived in America. On that historic Sunday evening, Hendrix served notice to the world that "pop music" had been reinvented, its course altered to a bold new path - one that Jimi Hendrix saw clearly.