Jimi Hendrix Experience Caricature

Jimi Hendrix Experience Caricature, illustrated here from the photo session for the band’s second album, “Axis: Bold As Love”, in 1967 with Noel Redding, age 22, Jimi Hendrix, age 25 and Mitch Mitchell, age 21.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience was an American-English rock band that formed in Westminster, London, in September 1966. Singer, songwriter, and guitarist Jimi Hendrix, drummer Mitch Mitchell, and bassist Noel Redding comprised the group, which was active until June 1969. During this time, they released three studio albums and became one of the most popular power trios in rock.

Highly influential in the popularization of hard rock and psychedelic rock, the Experience was best known for the skill, style, and charisma of their frontman, Jimi Hendrix. All three of the band’s studio albums, Are You Experienced (1967), Axis: Bold as Love (1967) and Electric Ladyland (1968) were huge hits.

Visually, they set the trend in psychedelic clothes and hairstyles (following his bandmates’ Bob Dylan 1966-style hairdos, Mitchell got himself a permed copy). Their early performances, such as at The Bag O’Nails in London, were attended by some of the biggest names in the English rock scene, including members of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and guitarists Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. The Who’s Pete Townshend admitted, “Jimi changed the whole sound of electric guitar and turned the rock world upside down”. Clapton agreed: “after Pete Townshend and I went to see him play, I thought that was it, the game was up for all of us, we may as well pack it in.”
The group came to prominence in the US after the June 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, one of the first major rock music festivals.
The band’s performance ended with Hendrix famously setting his psychedelically painted Fender Stratocaster on fire.

Greatest hits: “Hey Joe”, “Purple Haze”, “The Wind Cries Mary”, “Foxy Lady”, “Burning of the Midnight Lamp”, “All Along the Watchtower”, “Fire”, “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)”, “Little Wing”, “Machine Gun”, “Red House” and “Castles Made Of Sand”.

In 1992, the Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Jimi Hendrix died at 12:45pm on September 18, 1970 in London. Hendrix, while in his sleep, aspirated his own vomit and died of asphyxia while intoxicated with barbiturates.
Hendrix had taken nine prescribed Vesparax sleeping tablets, 18 times the recommended dosage. He was buried in Renton, WA, a suburb of Seattle.

Redding was found dead in his home in Clonakilty on May 11, 2003, three weeks after the death of his mother. Redding died from shock hemorrhage due to oesophageal varices in reaction to cirrhosis of the liver. He was 57 years old.

Mitchell died in his sleep on November 12 2008, in his room at the Benson Hotel in Portland of “natural causes”. Mitchell had been in ill health for many years due to alcohol-related problems. He was the last surviving member of the original Experience. He was 62.

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