Box Set Review: The Jimi Hendrix Experience, ‘Bold As Love’ – I (Re)Discover A Masterpiece

Last week while I was jamming on the newly released Who Are You (Super Deluxe), the folks down at the Jimi Hendrix vaults released a new box set of their own, entitled Bold As Love. The new box celebrates the Jimi Hendrix Experience (Jimi Hendrix, vocals/guitar; Mitch Mitchell, drums; Noel Redding bass/vocals) 1968 album (in America, late ’67 in the UK) Axis: Bold As Love, with the box having an admittedly truncated title. My relationship with this album has been a weird one but I think I’m justified in saying that Axis gets slightly overlooked since it’s sandwiched between two masterpieces: Are You Experienced? (Hendrix’s debut) and the spectacular old school double album Electric Ladyland. I don’t think this album would qualify for my list of groups/albums that fell victim to the “sophomore slump.” It’s a great album and I truly do love it now… but that wasn’t always the case.

I remember years ago sitting in a bar with my friend Stormin’ arguing about what I considered to be the list of “essential” rock albums in the world. When you’re drunk in Denver, you look for things to do… When we got to Hendrix, it was my contention that only the previously mentioned debut and the double album were essential. Stormin’ contended that Axis and really anything Hendrix played is essential, he’s that important. All these years later I have to admit, Stormin’ was right. I haven’t written much about Hendrix in these pages, mostly vault stuff, but I got the chance over the last week or so to revisit Axis: Bold As Love because of this box and I’m all the better for it. It’s past time to write about this key piece of the Hendrix canon.

I was introduced to Hendrix, like so much music from the 60s, through my younger (yes, younger) brother. He started collecting albums almost from the womb. He had either The Essential Jimi Hendrix from 1978, or The Essential Jimi Hendrix, Volume 2 from 1979, memory fails me. I think I might have owned the latter and he owned the former. Either way, he had a Hendrix compilation record that he played for me and eventually I committed to cassette tape which is how I got a lot of music in the early days… showing up at someone’s doorstep with a blank cassette and a charming smile…

It wasn’t until college, when my musical tastes exploded in all directions, that I started actually collecting Hendrix albums. I bought and loved his debut album (but then I love debut albums). Once I got started on somebody’s back catalog, I usually worked my way chronologically through it. Next up, naturally I bought Axis. This is where it gets weird. I never did buy Electric Ladyland on vinyl. I eventually bought it on CD and then later again on CD in a “super deluxe” version. That tells me that maybe, at the time, Axis might have left me a little cold. I listen to it now, in this box as both a stereo mix and a mono mix for you headphones people – listen to both and marvel at the difference – and I think it’s sensational. But clearly 20-something me wasn’t ready for Hendrix’s second album.

As I listened to the first two discs from Bold As Love, the aforementioned stereo and mono mixes of the original album, I do have flashes of memory from my first Jimi Hendrix experiences with the album. I remember being terribly smitten with the ballads. “Castles Made Of Sand” was on my brother’s comp and I love that classic. And who doesn’t love “Little Wing,” perhaps one of my top 3 Hendrix tunes. It’s been done by Derek & The Dominos, Sting and even Stevie Ray Vaughan, but nobody does this soulful ballad like Hendrix…”It’s alright she says, take anything you want from me….” I think I put this song on my Playlist: Songs About Flying because it makes my soul literally soar out of my body. And I’ve always loved the quasi title track, “Bold As Love.” It starts slow and builds to fabulous guitar crescendo. I’ve always been drawn to the sheer power of Hendrix’s guitar playing but the intricacy with which he plays on these tunes is spell binding.

But in my 20’s, I only wanted loud squalling guitar. I wanted melt-my-face-off rock n roll. If I’m being honest, the only rock song on this album I immediately connected with was, yes, “If 6 Was 9.” It was, as I recall, a favorite of my brother’s as well, but I digress. Hendrix’s music was exploding in so many directions. Not only rock n roll but of course psychedelic influences but we get a taste of blues and jazz and frankly music that no one else can play. I listen to this now and I’m just stunned at how spectacular this all is.

“Up From The Skies” is a jazzy vamp that I’ve come to really love. “Ain’t No Telling” is just blistering blues rock of the highest order. “You Got Me Floatin'” is one of my favorite riffs from Hendrix, let alone just this album. “Spanish Castle Magic” is well, magic. It rocks hard. I love Mitchell’s drumming. “Wait Until Tomorrow” is a jaunty tune and is quite funny if you listen to the lyrics. “Come on Dolly May…” “One Rainy Wish” should be on my Playlist: Songs About Rain. It’s back on the mellow end but it’s very trippy and simply wonderful, you can get lost in it. “Little Miss Lover,” again featuring great drumming from Mitchell, is wah wah wonderful.

Quite simply put, this album is a classic and I was out of my mind in college to let it put me off Hendrix for a few years. Sometimes your mind just has to be ready for rock n roll and clearly I was not ready. Images of me with a mullet in college saying, “I’m not worthy” are running through my mind. Of course the mullet may be evidence of my bad judgement in those days…

Disc 3 and 4 are all material recorded around the time of Axis. We get alternative versions, demos or early versions of tracks that ended up on this album and a couple that ended up on Electric Ladyland. Since Hendrix passed his people have gone through the tapes and released everything short of him sneezing on tape. Every concert, every performance is out there somewhere. Since 2010 he’s released a series of studio vault stuff: Valleys Of Neptune (2010), People, Hell and Angels (2013), and Both Sides Of The Sky (2018) that I just loved. Those releases stand along side many, many box sets and live releases.

There are many Hendrix-ologists who can tell you everything about each recording. What day, what studio, who was there and what Hendrix had for breakfast. I am not one of those. I see a lot of people getting that deep into Hendrix or the Beatles or Dylan and more power to them. Disc 3 and 4 of this box contain supposedly “unreleased” versions of the songs. I have seen some arguments on line about that “unreleased” claim. Sometimes they Frankenstein different parts from different, previously released songs into a new version of the song. I don’t know anything about that. I just dig the songs. As I’ve often said about Hendrix conspiracy theories, “There’s no second guitarist on the grassy knoll.”

Disc 3 is all alternate and demo versions of the songs on the album or that appeared on the next album. One novelty here is a couple of versions of a song called “The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam’s Dice” which sounds like a concept piece and it’s one I’ve never heard in any capacity and I own the box West Coast Seattle Boy. Depending on how deep you want to get into Hendrix, disc 3 will be a treasure trove, or one that you don’t return to very often.

For me disc 4 is actually where the gold is. Disc 3 has a lot of tracks without vocals, instrumental versions of songs, but disc 4 is more fully realized songs. The last 2/3 of disc 4 are all live stuff from around the time of Axis. We get a song from a performance in London, “Burning Of The Midnight Lamp” and it just reminds me that these guys were so good live, in front of an audience. We also get quite a few tunes recorded live in Stockholm, including Hendrix covering the Beatles’ “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” which I’ve always thought was cool. He dug the Beatles and Dylan. The last three tracks are live as well, one of which is from the BBC, which I would have thought would have been included on Hendrix’s previously released Live At the BBC album, one of my favorite Live At the BBC albums.

One of the things I love about these “Super Deluxe” or “Expanded” versions of these classic albums – beyond the myriad bonus material – is it gives me the chance to go back and rediscover an album I might not have spent time with in quite a while. The time I’ve spent this week listening to the master, Jimi Hendrix, playing guitar and really immersing myself in his second album has been an enjoyable rock n roll week.

I suggest you all turn this one up loud. The bonus material might not be enough here to entice the hard core listener, but to the casual Hendrix fan I think this is a fun journey. Regardless, everyone should hear Axis: Bold As Love in it’s glorious entirety.

Cheers! “Fly on, little wing!” Indeed.