The essential Jimi Hendrix experience: 20 best songs

It was 45 years ago this very week — Sept. 18, 1970 — that Jimi Hendrix left us at the tragic age of 27, having choked to death on his own vomit while intoxicated on barbiturates. By that point, he'd long since established himself as the lead guitarist against which several generations of guitar heroics must be measured and a psychedelic visionary who could hold his own against the Beatles when it came to the fine art of envelope-pushing. Here's a look back at the legend's most enduring tracks — the lion's share of which were featured on three psychedelic masterpieces by the most inspired power trio in the history of rock and roll, the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

20: "Bold as Love"

The title track (of sorts) to 1967's "Axis: Bold as Love," it captures Hendrix at his soulful best, pitting the forces of love against anger (seen here "towering in shiny metallic purple armor") and
Queen Jealousy, whose "fiery green gown sneers at the grassy ground." And Hendrix? Well, he's bold as love, although at one point he does sing, "My yellow in this case is not so mellow / In fact I'm trying to say it's frightened like me / And all these emotions of mine keep holding me from giving my life to a rainbow like you." And that solo is genius.

19. "Third Stone From the Sun"

A strong contender for trippiest moment on "Are You Experienced," this jazz-inflected psychedelic odyssey includes the bold and since-discredited pronouncement, "You'll never hear surf music again." See: "Pulp Fiction." The track is mostly Hendrix soloing over the loose-limbed playing of drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding. But their interplay is interspersed with dialogue and a poem in which the guitarist addresses the third stone from the sun — or Earth, as one might call it — as an alien hoping to visit. "Oh strange beautiful grass of green with your majestic silken scenes," he says. "Your mysterious mountains I wish to see closer / May I land my kinky machine?"

18. "I Don't Live Today"

A distinctive Mitchell drum pattern ushers you into this "Are You Experienced" highlight, leading into one of Hendrix's most memorable riffs. And the production couldn't be more psychedelic, fading in and out as the guitarist improvises with his bandmates and himself while sculpting waves of feedback. Lyrically, it's on the dark side of the psychedelic spectrum, setting the tone with "Will I live tomorrow? Well I just can't say / But I know for sure / I don't live today." And that's before he even gets around to "No sun coming through my windows / Feel like I'm livin' at the bottom of a grave / I wish you'd hurry up and execute me / So I can be on my miserable way."

17. “Angel”

This soulful ballad surfaced on “The Cry Of Love,” the first of far too many posthumous releases, and was memorably covered in a hit recording by the great Rod Stewart. In a 1967 interview, Hendrix said the lyrics were inspired by a dream he had about his mom, Lucille, two years before her death in 1958. "Angel came down from heaven yesterday," he sings. "She stayed with me just long enough to rescue me / And she told me a story yesterday / About the sweet love between the moon and the deep blue sea / And then she spread her wings high over me / She said she's gonna come back tomorrow."

16. “Manic Depression”

This psychedelic waltz feels like it’s actually gliding across some cosmic ballroom, accompanied by some of Mitchell’s most inspired – and flashiest – drumming. It feels like Keith Moon playing jazz in spots as he tumbles his way around the kit. And the riff follows suit, its seeming buoyancy underscoring the waltz vibe, completely at odds with the “frustrating mess” of his manic depression, which as often happens in Hendrix’s lyrical world, has been caused by a woman. First featured on “Are You Experienced,” it later resurfaced as a classic live recording on “BBC Sessions” and “Winterland.”

15. "Love or Confusion"

"Will it burn me if I touch the sun, yeah?" Hendrix asks. "So big, so round?" If any guitarist was flying too close to the sun in 1967, it was Jimi Hendrix, who spent the psychedelic era on the front lines of the sonic revolution. This highlight of "Are You Experienced" is a monument of atmospheric psychedelic soul with guitar lines that soar and a reverb-drenched vocal that wonders, "Must there be all these colors without names,without sounds?" Of course, the music then goes on to answer that with a resounding "Yes, there really must be."

14. "Stone Free"

The first song Hendrix ever wrote is a cowbell-rocking funk jam building tension with minimal instrumentation on the verses then following through with release on the chorus. It's a soulful vocal as Hendrix reflects on his detractors with "They talk about me like a dog / Talkin' about the clothes I wear / But they don't realize they're the ones who's square." Of course, it could be noted that a person can't expect to walk the streets of London dressed like Jimi Hendrix and not have people talk about the clothes you wear. Originally a B-side to his debut single, "Hey Joe," which hit the streets in mid-December, 1966, it was issued as a proper single in September, 1969, but failed to have much of an impact, stalling at No. 130 on the U.S. charts.

13. "May This Be Love"

Hendrix kicked off side two of the U.K. edition of "Are Your Experienced" with this haunting ballad. The guitars are bathed in reverb as he gently sings the praises of a mystic waterfall that makes his worries seem so very small. There's a Native American quality to Mitchell's drumming and an Eastern flavor to the melody. The end result is one the prettier highlights of the Hendrix canon, said to have been written for his mother, who died when he was very young.

12. "Are You Experienced?"

The title track to the first Jimi Hendrix Experience album is to psychedelic Hendrix what "Tomorrow Never Knows" is to the psychedelic Beatles, the perfect sonic distillation of that era making use of all the trippiest effects at his disposal. This is why they call it psychedelic music, a trance-inducing float downstream, mind off and ready to experience. "If you can just get your mind together," Hendrix sings, "then come on across to me / We'll hold hands and then we'll watch the sunrise from the bottom of the sea." Now, that's experienced.

11. "Crosstown Traffic"

There's not much talk about Hendrix's pop sensibilities but they were peaking here. That chorus hook, with vocals by Hendrix Experience bassist Noel Redding and Dave Mason, is Hendrix at his most infectious. So is the guitar hook, which he echoes on a kazoo he fashioned from a comb and tissue paper. Wait, you're thinking, Jimi Hendrix used a comb??!! It doesn't matter where he got the comb. What matters is the way he used it. His vocal delivery is classic, by the way, especially the line, "Tire tracks all across your back / I can see you had your fun."

10. "Up From the Skies"

The only single taken from his criminally underrated second album, "Axis: Bold as Love," it begins with a tumbling drum fill by the great Mitch Mitchell before settling into a bouyant wah-guitar groove as Hendrix employs the poetic device of an extraterrestrial visiting Earth to address his concerns, including climate change. Yes, climate change. In 1967. "I have lived here before," he sings, as the extraterrestrial, "The days of ice / And of course this is why I'm so concerned / And I come back to find the stars misplaced / And the smell of a world that is burned." That last line gets repeated, then he shrugs it off with "Yeah well, maybe, um, maybe it's just a change of climate." And in this case? Climate change is unreal.

9. "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)"

You'd almost swear the wah-wah pedal was invented just so Jimi Hendrix could apply it to the classic riff that opens "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)," his final U.K. hit. And when the song kicks in, he leaves that riff behind to go lumbering off in a much heavier direction, squeezing out some of his flashiest, most awe-inspiring leads while packing the lyrics with images as emblematic of the psychedelic times as "Well, I stand up next to a mountain / And I chop it down with the edge of my hand." Of course, given the brute force of the playing here, you almost have to take him at his word. Released in 1970, it topped the U.K. charts.

8. "Little Wing"

This tender Hendrix ballad was memorably covered in 1970 by fellow guitar god Eric Clapton on "Layla and Assorted Love Songs." Clapton's version is amazing, but I'd hesitate to call it an improvement. There's an understated majesty to Hendrix's recording, with its glockenspiel and the guitar part running through a Leslie organ speaker to create a vibe that Hendrix once said "sounds like jelly bread." The guitar is Hendrix at his most expressive and the lyrics are bittersweet Dylanesque poetry. "Well she's walking through the clouds with a circus mind that's running round," he sings. "Butterflies and zebras and moonbeams and fairy tales, that's all she ever thinks about." It also features some Ringo-esque drum fills from Mitchell.

7. "All Along the Watchtower"

A wholesale reinvention of a classic song, it sets aside the understated unplugged folk Bob Dylan had in mind to go electric to the nth degree. His vocal style, it turns out, is the perfect vehicle for Dylan's lyrics. But it's the soloing that makes this such a triumph, punctuating each verse with its own electrifying lead. The solo that follows the end of the second verse is epic, including a killer wah-guitar part, but the real thrill here is how he underscores the final lyric "And the wind began to howl" with a solo that actually howls. It peaked at No. 20 in the States, his biggest U.S. hit, and peaked at No. 5 in Hendrix's adopted U.K. homeland.

6. "Purple Haze"

That opening riff is one of psychedelic music's most iconic moments, a lyrical blues lick that sounds like it's having a conversation with itself while the undeniably brilliant Mitch Mitchell set his virtuosity aside to punctuate that conversation with a primal beat that comes down hard on every quarter note. Then, Hendrix hits the mike with "Purple haze all in my brain / Lately things just don't seem the same / Actin' funny, but I don't know why / 'Scuse me while I kiss the sky." And by the time that second overdriven solo hits, with a second guitar run through a psychedelic-friendly new effect called an Octavia, it's as though the sky is kissing back. This song was Hendrix's first entry on the U.S. pop charts, hitting No. 65 while performing much better in England, where it peaked at No. 3. It kicked off the U.S. edition of "Are You Experienced."

5. "Burning of the Midnight Lamp"

Included on 1968's "Electric Ladyland," this was released as a single in 1967, hitting No. 18 in the U.K. And it certainly sounds like the Summer of Love, a psychedelic masterstroke that eases in with a majestic melody on wah-guitar and harpsichord before giving way to a soulful lead vocal. "The morning is dead," Hendrix sighs. "And the day is too/There's nothing left here to lead me but the velvet moon." It's quintessential headphone music, the guitar solo seeming to swirl around your head as the angelic gospel vocals swell to a crescendo.

4. "Fire"

Mitchell's slinky jazz-funk drumming takes the spotlight on the verses, Hendrix setting the tone for the opening verse with "Now dig this, baby." It sounds like Hendrix has been listening to Sam & Dave, infusing his delivery with a handful of playful asides on this obvious highlight of "Are You Experienced." "Listen here, baby," he says at the top of the second verse. "And stop acting so crazy." As great as that is, Hendrix tops himself with "Ah, move over Rover and let Jimi take over. Yeah, you know what I'm talkin' about. Yeah, get on with it, baby" to set up the solo. And when he's finished soloing? "That's what I'm talkin' about."

3. "Foxey Lady"

The title was misspelled as "Foxey Lady" on the U.S. pressing of "Are You Experienced." But however you spell it, this is classic Hendrix, fading into full intensity before the feedback gives way to a funky, distorted guitar riff, driving home the sexual urgency of Hendrix's vocal with its lecherous accents on a dirty jazz chord many rock fans now refer to as "the Hendrix chord." The vocal is one of his greatest, punctuating the end of several lines with a nervous laugh before letting his "sweet little lovemaker" (rumored to be Heather Taylor, future wife of Roger Daltrey) know "you've got to be all mine, all mine." It also features some stinging guitar licks and a classic overdriven solo. This one peaked at No. 67 in the States.

2. "Hey Joe"

This was the Jimi Hendrix Experience's debut single, a cover of a song whose origins remain unclear. By the time this version hit the streets, it had been previously covered by the Leaves, the Standells, the Surfaris, Love, the Music Machine and the Byrds. But Hendrix's version, which hit the U.K. charts at No. 6, was reportedly inspired by a slowed-down arrangement folk singer Tim Rose was doing. What ultimately matters is what Hendrix did with it, casting the story of Joe and the gun in his hand in an ominous light with eerie backing vocals and searing blues guitar lines. His delivery is genius. "Yes, I did / I shot her / You know I caught my old lady messin' around town and I gave her the gun," he sings, shouting "I shot her" to set up the solo. And then, he punctuates that solo with "All right, shoot her one more time again for me." Now, that's a crime of passion.

1. "The Wind Cries Mary"

The man could definitely rock, but Hendrix was an underrated master of the soulful ballad. And this was his crowning achievement in that area, drawing you in with the majesty of that ascending riff before letting the Dylansque lyrics spill forth with "After all the jacks are in their boxes and the clowns have all gone to bed, you can hear happiness staggering down the streets, footprints dressed in red." A broom is drearily sweeping up the broken pieces of yesterday's life? The traffic lights, they turn blue tomorrow and shine their emptiness down on my bed? Every verse brings further evidence that Hendrix may be one of rock's most underrated poets. And the soloing? That's brilliant, too, but heroic guitar was just one weapon in the Hendrix arsenal. This one peaked at No. 6 in England.