How Jimi Hendrix Erupted With ‘Axis: Bold as Love’

Jimi Hendrix was evolving with every note he played. We hear that now as we revisit the music that he made during a period of time that was ultimately very short compared to his peers.

Yet he created a wealth of material that continues to rise to the surface decades after his death in September of 1970.

A new box set for 1967’s Axis: Bold as Love offers an expansive look at the guitarist’s astounding productivity he enjoyed in that era. It was the second Jimi Hendrix Experience album that year, following the trio’s debut with Are You Experienced in May. Available on five LPs or four CDs, each adding a Blu-ray of additional audio, the box is a fascinating fly on the wall listening experience for music fans.

During a recent conversation with UCR, legendary producer and engineer Eddie Kramer looked back at the sessions for Axis: Bold as Love.

It seems like it must be a real trip for you, getting to work on these Jimi Hendrix box sets. What’s it like for you, going back to the session tapes for these albums in such a detailed fashion, what did the experience of doing that perhaps bring out for you this time around, with this new box set for Axis: Bold as Love.
I’m insane, that’s what it brought out. Axis: Bold as Love was one of my favorite….I mean, all the albums, of course, are favorites. But Axis was, I think, the next step. When I look back, Are You Experienced was great, an incredible first album, but kind of primitive in the way the technology was just emerging. When we got to Axis, I was determined to take advantage of what we could do with the four-track half-inch tape machine, and that spread the drums onto two tracks instead of one.

So I now had a stereo image of the drums and then the bass and then Jimi’s guitar, etc. With the four-track half-inch machine, you fill up that first with the basic track and a guide vocal or something, and then you rough mix that, or final mix it, if you can, to the secondary machine and fill up the next two tracks. So on Axis, the first four [tracks] would be mixing to the second machine. That would fill up and then we’d mix it back to the first machine. We do it again. So there was three layers, and many, many years later, when I was doing a lot of research over at LAFX [Recording Services] in North Hollywood, we decided to take those four-track half-inch tapes and realign them in real time. It took about four or five weeks of very careful editing to assemble them so they were eight tracks. It gave us a really beautiful way of doing remixing. And we did a 5.1 surround. Then we developed a Dolby Atmos mix of it as well, which is pretty astounding.

READ MORE: Paul Rodgers Loves Jimi Hendrix’s Emotional ‘Bold as Love’

Just generally, Jimi had some of the most striking stereo mixes for the time period. What was it like working on those mixes at the time? Because Axis: Bold is Love is an incredible headphone record.
It is. Thank you for saying that. I think that’s when I really started to expand my musical horizons. When Jimi was doing solos, I loved the fact that I could sort of move them from side to side and try different phasing effects. In fact, you know that drum break in the middle of “Bold as Love” where the phasing first kicks in? That was a monumental part for Jimi when he first witnessed it.

Listen to the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s ‘Bold as Love’

We knew that phasing was around. The Beatles had done it. And as you know, I was very fortunate enough to work with them and George Martin. [So] I was working with him, and I said, “George, how did you get that phasing sound for the Beatles?” And he said, “Oh, yes, chaps. Well, you know, if you look in the BBC Radiophonics handbook from 1949, you’ll find it in there.” And we said, ‘Geez, thanks, George! [Kramer chuckles] We decided, alright, the Beatles have done it in mono. We’re going to top that — and we did it in stereo. The first time I heard I said, “I’ve got it. We’ve got to use this on Hendrix.”

So we’d just finished that track, “Bold as Love,” and I said, “Jimi, come in and check this out. We’ve got something to play you.” He gets to that moment where the drums [have] that big break where the phasing first kicks in. Jimi was sitting on the couch behind me and I turn around. He is just dumbstruck and he grabs his head in his hands. He fell on the floor and he was like, in a fetal position. He said, “Oh, man, that was unbelievable. How did you do that? It was like something from my dream! Play it again! Play it again!” Okay, so we play it again. “Oh, man, I want that shit on everything.”

There’s the famous story where Paul McCartney and George Harrison were in the audience not long after Sgt. Pepper had been released. There’s Jimi playing the title track on stage and they’re just blown away. Everyone in that era was paying keen attention to the others and what they were up to. It really informed the music in interesting ways, didn’t it?
Absolutely. It’s interesting to to review how the the rock and roll idols of that time, they were not snobby. I mean, they hung out with each other. The [Rolling] Stones, when I was in the studio with them, [the Beatles], a couple of them, maybe John [Lennon], Paul or whoever would come around to the studio, hang out and maybe help sing some background vocals and not be credited.

They were rivals, but they were friends and the same [was true] with Jimi. Well, you know, Jimi had a very good friend, Roy Wood, from the Move and they would hang out in the studio, join in, do foot stomping on a big board and I’d put mics underneath, because, Jiimi loved him. Dave Mason, from Traffic, played acoustic guitar on “All Along the Watchtower.” All of that stuff was happening because there were no barriers. The management and the record company stayed thankfully away, and we could create and hand in the record and [say], “This is what we’ve got.” There was no steaming great big A&R person going, “Well, we don’t think that’s commercial enough.” There was none of that bullshit.

Listen to the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ Live in Sweden

It was a different time. Roy Wood and the Move, Graham Nash and the various people ended up on the records. There eventually came a point where the record label people eventually started saying, “There’s no way we can release this. There’s no way we’re going to be able to get permission to have these artists on the record.” But at that time, you could still do things like that fairly easily.
Oh, yeah. It was not restrictive — and I think that’s part of the beauty of that era, was that there was a certain amount of freedom to sort of create what you wanted. I mean, within reason. Certainly, having Chas Chandler as a producer for Jimi was grand and wonderful. I mean, he found him, and, you know the whole story. He was brilliant and it was the perfect fit, because he was organized. He knew what he could do to help Jimi. The fact that he was a musician, he understood and it was very productive. I mean, those sessions were amazing, We started at seven o’clock at night. Sometimes we’d only go to about midnight, because that’s all the budget would permit. In four or five hours, we’d cut a couple of songs and be done.

Listen to the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s ‘Spanish Castle Magic’

It seems like as creative as Jimi was, it would be helpful to have somebody like Chas to occasionally bring the focus back.
Chas famously said the rules are there are no rules. And that said to me, “Ah yes, I can now put my foot to the floor on the accelerator and let’s see what I can really drum up.” It just freed me up to do crazy things. With the panning and the phasing and the delays and all the rest of it, [the idea] was [to] push the envelope. And that was such an encouraging thing for someone like a producer to say, “Yeah, go for it.” And Jimi, of course, loved anything that was weird and wonderful. I was constantly surprising him and myself as well, with some of the crazy things we did. You know, wrapping the capstan of the tape machine with layers of tape to make it wobble, [creating a] sort of tape delay, and he would laugh at all that. Jimi had a great sense of humor, by the way. It was amazing. He loved to take the piss out of me and Mitch [Mitchell] and Noel [Redding], and then, of course, himself too.

What are some of the important takeaways you took from recording with Jimi that served you well for your ongoing career after that?
Be prepared for anything. Keep your mind open. And fortunately, when I grew up in South Africa and Cape Town, I had wonderful parents who encouraged my musical career. I started playing piano at the age of about three or four, or something like that, and I continued all the way up through high school. At one point I was thinking I was going to be a concert pianist, but as soon as I heard rock and roll on the shortwave radio from the US [and] Voice of America, I said, “Ah, hmm. This is more more fun for me.” And of course, my classical stuff went [away], but I never forgot it.

Having that background of classical music and not being prejudiced on anything I’m listening to [was important], because my dad had this wonderful idea that [a person should] listen to everything from [composers like Dmitri] Shostakovich to Bach to Brahms to Stravinsky and electronic music, etc. So my mind was always open and whatever Jimi did, my mind was open to whatever. How can I make this crazier or better or stranger? That was always the challenge, and it was fun. We laughed when we’d come up with these crazy [things], we would laugh and go, “Oh, okay, that’s cool. Let’s try that. And that doesn’t work. Let’s try backwards. Okay, that works.” Experimentation, that’s the name of the game.

Listen to the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s ‘Stone Free / Up From the Ashes (Demo)’

What are some of the things you’re glad fans finally get to hear with this box set?
Well, I think the outtakes are fantastic, just hearing how the songs are being constructed in their earlier versions. That is just so wonderful to hear how Jimi was putting the songs together. I love his demos and the outtakes, even the incomplete ones, this is part of the legacy that Jimi has left us. And you can’t stress that enough, that whenever he was in the studio, something interesting was going to go down. I always had a quarter-inch machine running in the background, just in case something happened and I wasn’t recording on the main machine. I always had something running so I could capture things.

What did you appreciate about the dynamic that Jimi had with Noel and Mitch?
Well, certainly in the beginning [with] the first two albums, there was no real issues at all, as far as I can [remember]. They were just a great team. I always thought Noel did a great job on bass. I mean, he was amazing, coming from [being] a guitar player to a bass player overnight, pretty much. Who knew that was going to work? But it did. It was brilliant.

[Later on], getting into Electric Ladyland and stuff, you know, Noel had a bit of a chip on his shoulder. But I thought, you know, looking back on it, with that bit of a chip on his shoulder, when he got on stage, man, he certainly gave it some grease in terms of really pushing Jimi in terms of the way he played. I always liked his playing and he was a musical guy. But, you know, personalities, what are you going to do, eh?

Oh, for sure.
In terms of Mitch, Mitch and I got on like a house on fire. I just loved his sense of humor. But more importantly, I love the way he played. I mean, coming from the jazz [world], I love jazz. I really got into it as a teenager and hearing him play, you could hear the jazz influence and he was a lovely character. I miss him. I miss them all.

“Bold as Love” is a pretty epic album closer. what sorts of memories do you have when it comes to working on that particular song? How early did you have a sense that that was going to be the song that would wrap up the album.
Boy, you are asking a question. I’m not sure of that. But it became….I think it’s the centerpiece, the thing that sort of holds all of the songs together. It’s epic. It’s got dynamics and power. It’s always been a favorite of mine. Just the way it starts with the intro and he really hits that vocal so hard. It gives me goosebumps thinking about it,

It seems like it would have been a moment, hearing “Little Wing” for the first time.
That song is a classic. When I first heard it, it hit hard emotionally, because it’s [got a] beautiful structure. Here’s where I think Jimi surpasses some of the stuff on both sides of the fence. He plays in a way where the guitar tone is held back just by where he was able to sort of crank the volume from the guitar, not from the amp. He had set the amp in a particular way, but to be able to adjust the tone quality from this beautiful, soft, melodic thing with virtually no distortion to the roaring solo, that is genius.

Now let me tell you a quick story. So we’ve cut the track and it’s beautiful. Jimi was walking out into the studio and I followed him. Now, Olympic had the most amazing collection of instruments left over, because it was a huge studio. We would do 80-piece [orchestras], with film scoring and all of that. Every day there was stuff left over from the sessions that hadn’t been picked up yet from the rental companies. There was this long table on the left hand side, where they collected a bunch of stuff. Jimi was walking by the table, and he said, “Hey, man, what’s this?” And I showed him. I said, “This is a glockenspiel. And you play it like this.” “Oh, cool. Hey, man, check this out.”

So I quickly grab a mic, put it over the glockenspiel and put the headphones on. “Okay, run the track.” I remember five minutes, I swear to God, you know those little bells that are in “Little Wing,” they’re so distinctive. If you can imagine “Little Wing” without those bells, it wouldn’t be the same. But there’s Jimi, literally, I swear to God, it took us 10 minutes — five minutes to learn it and five minutes to record it. And it’s this little tone quality that is gentle but so powerful. And that’s the magic of Mr. Hendrix.

Listen to the Jimi Hendrix Experience Perform ‘Little Wing’ Live in London