30. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced
This is what Britain sounded like in late 1966 and early 1967: ablaze with rainbow blues, orchestral guitar feedback, and cosmic possibility. Jimi Hendrix’s incendiary guitar was historic in itself, the luminescent sum of his chitlin-circuit labors with Little Richard and the Isley Brothers and his melodic exploitation of amp howl. But it was the pictorial heat of songs like “Manic Depression” and “The Wind Cries Mary” that established the transcendent promise of psychedelia. Backed by drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding, the guitarist made soul music for inner space. “It’s a collection of free feeling and imagination,” he said of the album. “Imagination is very important.” Widely assumed to be about an acid trip, “Purple Haze” had “nothing to do with drugs,” Hendrix insisted. “‘Purple Haze’ was all about a dream I had that I was walking under the sea.” - RollingStone.com
