The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s ‘Bold as Love’ Expands on a Classic: Review
by Jeff Burger
Jimi Hendrix in the studio (Photo: Chuck Boyd via Legacy Recordings; used with permission)
“Well, I got this guitar, and I learned how to make it talk,” sings Bruce Springsteen in his iconic “Thunder Road.” No knock on Bruce, who plays his instrument masterfully, but if that line applies to anyone, it’s Jimi Hendrix. He could make a guitar talk, sing, dance or fly off into outer space, and he demonstrated all that in mid-1967 with his appearance at Monterey Pop and his group’s debut album, Are You Experienced.
Having heard his startling instrumental pyrotechnics at that event and on that LP, fans had a sense of what to expect and were perhaps a bit less astonished by the time the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s sophomore LP came out around the end of 1967. Half a century later, though, Axis: Bold as Love still sounds terrific. Granted, the cover blurb on a 1990s reissue that called this record “the pivot which connects all music that ever was with all music that will ever be” is hyperbole. But the LP is loaded with high points and represents an important chapter in Hendrix’s musical history.
Like the debut album, it features short, tightly constructed songs, all but two of which clock in at less than four minutes. As Hendrix himself noted, however, the sophomore LP has a “prettier…more gentle” sound than its predecessor. Highlights include “Up from the Skies,” a jazzy sci-fi tale that employs Hendrix’s wah-wah pedal; the psychedelic “Castles Made of Sand,” the Indian music–influenced “Little Wing,” the funk-infused “Little Miss Lover” and the bluesy “If 6 Was 9,” where he waves his “freak flag high.”
You can take a deep dive into this material, thanks to a new, well-assembled box called Bold as Love—The Axis: Bold as Love Sessions, which includes four CDs, a Blu-ray disc and a 44-page booklet with photos and liner notes by music journalist David Fricke. Discs one and two feature stereo and mono mixes of the original album, both with audio remastered from the original master tapes.
That second disc, like many mono mixes, is likely to interest only completists and other fanatical fans, but discs three and four should garner more attention. They contain 40 tracks recorded in 1967, most of which are previously unreleased. They include demos, alternate takes and alternate mixes of songs from the first and second albums, as well as several versions of “Burning of the Midnight Lamp” from the then-unreleased third LP, Electric Ladyland. Also featured are a dozen live tracks, most of which were broadcast in Sweden and included in a now out-of-print 1991 box called Stages.
Related: Engineer Eddie Kramer on working with Hendrix
The set’s Blu-ray disc contains Dolby Atmos and uncompressed stereo and mono mixes of the original album. But unlike the Blu-ray in a 2018 box devoted to Electric Ladyland, this one does not offer a 5.1 mix, which is unfortunate, since there are probably still more people with surround-sound equipment than with Dolby Atmos.
Be that as it may, this is an excellent package, containing lots that Hendrix fans will savor.
The Nov. 7, 2025, release is available in the U.S./worldwide here, in Canada here and in the U.K. here.
Burger wrote one of the first interview-based profiles of Bruce Springsteen to be published in a national magazine. He has interviewed many other music-world luminaries as well, including Steve Van Zandt, Roger McGuinn, John Sebastian, Wolfman Jack, Tom Waits, Foreigner’s Mick Jones, Billy Joel, Steve Forbert, Tommy James, the Righteous Brothers, Gordon Lightfoot, Deep Purple’s Tommy Bolin, and members of Steely Dan and the Marshall Tucker Band. He has also interviewed many other public figures, such as Suze Orman, Daymond John, James Carville, Donald Trump, Sir Richard Branson, F. Lee Bailey, and Cliff Robertson.
His books include Dylan on Dylan: Interviews and Encounters, Lennon on Lennon: Conversations with John Lennon, Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen: Interviews and Encounters, and Springsteen on Springsteen: Interviews, Speeches, and Encounters, all of which are published in the U.S. and Canada by Chicago Review Press. The books have been republished in numerous other countries.
Burger has been the editor of several periodicals, including Business Jet Traveler, from which he retired in 2024. During his 20 years at that
publication, it received more than 120 major editorial awards, including multiple wins for the world’s Best Consumer Travel Magazine in the annual Folio:Eddie competition.
Burger lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey. His wife, Madeleine Beresford, is a puppeteer and former preschool director and teacher. The couple have two grown children.
No Comments so far
Jump into a conversationNo Comments Yet!
You can be the one to start a conversation.