Los Angeles / give me Norfolk, Virginia / dial one oh four ten oh nine / tell the folks back home th...
Los Angeles / give me Norfolk, Virginia / dial one oh four ten oh nine / tell the folks back home this is the promised land calling / and the poor boy is on / the line
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Axis: Bold As Love with its fantastic spaced-out cover art, showing the band as kind of like Hindu deities (cobras, elephants, kings, girls, firebreathers, the lot) was The Jimi Hendrix Experience's second release after "Are You Experienced?" in 1966. The passage of time has seen this album somewhat overshadowed by their debut and the later "Electric Ladyland" complete with their no 1 smash single, the famous and totally brilliant Voodoo Chile. But that's getting a bit ahead of ourselves so let's get back to this interesting record which has 13 songs in all and clocks in at a respectable 46 minutes.
The late 1960's was the era of the power trio, with such bands as Cream, Gun, and the US outfit Mountain playing hard rock with fuzzy guitars and heavy bass rythyms. Indeed the Experience's bassist, Noel Redding, was originally a guitarist and this undoubtedly aided the band in the sense that having an excellent mastery of that instrument he could move along with Hendrix' s sometimes bizarre-yet-effective lead lines. Mitch Mitchell with his solid tight drumming made for
a very complimentary rythym section to allow the great Jimi Hendrix free rein to do what he did best, which was to take guitar playing onto another level.
The record starts off really funnily with EXP a spoof radio interview where Mitch Mitchell - speaking in a speeded up voice - introduces a Paul Carouso (actually Jimi) who stops the interview to say "I must get in my spaceship" and then there's a lot of feedback washing around in the speakers before going straight into the jazzy Up From The Skies, which has a nice swingbeat and a smoky Hendrix vocal, one of the lyrics goes "maybe it's just a change of planet" after which he laughs out loud.
Spanish Castle Magic is an upfront hard rock number and finds itself nowadays on a lot of "Best Of" compliations. Propelled along with Mitchell's military medium and some great words like "it'll only take half a day to get there if we go by……..dragonfly" this is a tight rolling three minutes leading into the lighter laid-back vibe of Wait Until Tomorrow with its subject matter of waiting on a lady, topped off with nice percussion and an airy, summer-like guitar line.
The R&B beat of Ain't No Telling feels a bit like filler to me, it's only 1.49 in length and definitely sounds a bit thrown together, with its changes of pace, so it's a bit of a let down really but the next track Little Wing is a nice example of what is now called a power ballad. Aaah must get the lads in the band to learn this, it's a lovely paced effort with a scorching lead heading into the stratosphere that ends it all off. Good song and now onto another well known track of theirs If 6 Was 9, which at over 5 minutes allows Jimi to stretch out and get down and dirty in this classic example of pyschadelia with its screeching lead and tripped out bass/drums middle section, what a record this is and it's worth buying the CD on its own just to hear this.
You Got Me Floating is another straight up rocker with a big chorus and a rather confused ending which lets it down a little but another great song is next; Castles Made Of Sand, which is a mid-paced number with whistful lyrics all about dreams that don't come true, castles made of sand melt into the sea, eventually.......there's some nice shredded guitar effects on this too. Noel Redding leads the band through the basic 4/4 of She's So Fine, which is a rather poor effort and easily the worst song on this collection (sorry Noel) he doesn't have a bad voice but there ya go.......Jimi takes the wheel again for One Rainy Wish, a thoughtful piece with the vocals placed in the middle of the mix, as well as having a big echoing finish. Jimi is often seen as a whacked-out druggie but when you listen to some of his lyrics he had a way of thinking about what he was writing"there you were under a tree of song, in your hand a flower played"......more pyschadelia in the penultimate track Little Miss Lover with its insistent C, C, C, G, G E bassline before it's Bold As Love with a good rising guitar over a lazy bass.....Mitchell leads the band through the scales allowing Jimi to come in with some power chords to end the song, and its mother album, off with terrific phased guitar, something of a novelty in those days.
So all in all Axis: Bold As Love is a good solid album, if you took She's So Fine and Ain't No Telling out of the equation it would be pretty much essential listening; but still it's classic late-1960's hard-pyschadelia and for fans of that golden age of music it's worth getting hold of. The CD I have (US import) was released on MCA in 1997 remastered from the 1967 original vinyl and comes with a good booklet of notes about the making of the record. Bless you Jimi we won't see another like you.
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Axis: Bold As Love, Hendrix's second album, doesn't resonate through rock history the way ... more
its gatecrashing predecessor, Are You Experienced? did. In places, it almost seems as if Hendrix is cruising, albeit sublimely. Yet it's nonetheless a vital album...
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Jun 10th, 2007
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