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had no cash. Knight suggested Jimi borrowmoney from Ed Chalpin,
the same producer Jimi had signed a contract with for a one-dollar ad-
vance in 1965.
At two in the morning, Knight and Hendrix dropped by
Chalpin s apartment and woke him. They all three then went to dinner
at a diner. The oddness of this evening can t be overestimated, and it
speaks to core contradictory parts of Jimi s nature: He universally
placed music above the business of music. It was as if whatever gene al-
lowed Jimi to live in the moment, and thus gave him creativity, can-
celed out his ability to carefully consider business deals. The contract
Jimi had signed with Chalpin had come back to haunt him: Once Jimi
had become famous in England, Chalpin sought to halt any future
recordings by the Experience. Chalpin was Jimi s opponent in their
202 C H A R L E S R . C R O S S
court case, yet Hendrix welcomed him as an old friend and appeared to
hold no bitterness.
Chalpin recalled his dinner with Jimi and Knight as a friendly af-
fair, and afterward he loaned Jimi a small amount of money. And in a
decision that seems unbelievable but was captured on audiotape, Jimi
went into the studio in the middle of the night and cut six more tracks
for Chalpin. During the recording, Jimi did warn Chalpin that his name
should not appear on any release. You can t, you know . . . put my
name on the thing, he warned. You can t use my name for any of that
stuff. Chalpin recalled that Jimi s attitude was affable, and not what
one might associate with a combatant in a legal battle. He loved how I
recorded him in 1965, and he came back in 1967, Chalpin observed.
Jimi seemed most interested in demonstrating his mastery of the wah-
wah pedal. Chalpin taped the session and eventually released it under
Jimi s name, which complicated their legal issues even more. If this ses-
sion weren t strange enough, Jimi returned one more time that August
and did another session with Chalpin and Knight.
In August, the Experience played a few more New York dates and
a handful throughout the U.S., including a Hollywood Bowl show
where they opened for the Mamas and the Papas. On August 21, they
flew back to England, their first visit home in almost three months.
Their arrival in the U.K. was reason for feature stories in two major
newspapers, and they appeared on several television shows to support
their most recent U.K. single, Burning of the Midnight Lamp. Jimi
and Kathy Etchingham had a warm reunion, but it wasn t long before
they were fighting again over her cooking.
It wasn t until September 1, 1967, that Are You Experienced was fi-
nally released in America on Reprise Records. The U.S. album left off
Red House, Can You See Me, and Remember, but it did include
the singles that had been omitted from the U.K. album: Hey Joe, Pur-
ple Haze, and The Wind Cries Mary. To confuse matters, the spelling
of two song titles had been changed ( Foxy Lady became Foxey Lady
and Are You Experienced? now had a question mark, as did the album
title). Most of the reviews in America were positive, particularly those in
R OOM F UL L OF MI R R OR S 203
the underground press, but a few were evidence of how revolutionary
Jimi s style was. When Chas Chandler saw a horrid review in the New York
Times, it vindicated his earlier decision that Jimi had to go to England to
break: The disc itself is a nightmare show with lust and misery, the re-
view read. The Times thought even less of the album cover and suggested
it reinforced the degeneracy theme with the three sneering out from be-
neath their bouffant hairdos, looking like surreal hermaphrodites. Jimi
had been called many outrageous things in the English press, but it took
the New York Times to call him a hermaphrodite. A few months later, the
Times wrote a laudatory piece by then, Jimi was too popular to write off.
In America, particularly with what was now being called the
younger generation, outraged mainstream newspaper writers could do
little harm to a rock musician. Far more important was FM radio and
Are You Experienced became one of the first staples of that frequency dial.
In England and Europe, in contrast, Jimi was a pop star and was more
likely to be on television and get singles played on commercial radio sta-
tions. The U.S. album also benefited from the fish-eye cover photograph
that the New York Times had said made Jimi look like a man/woman.
There were few rock stars as photogenic as Jimi who looked handsome
in virtually every frame shot of him but this particular photograph by
Karl Ferris was one of the finest psychedelic images of the decade. Shot
from below, from the perspective of Jimi s crotch, it gave an Alice in
Wonderland appearance to the band and suggested that within the album
cover, a hallucinogenic world awaited. The combination of the cover
and the groundbreaking music inside propelled the album to become
one of the fastest sellers in the label s history, outselling Reprise s biggest
artist, Frank Sinatra. As a Seattle adolescent, Jimi had worshiped croon-
ers like Dean Martin and Sinatra. To outsell Sinatra was a milestone that
he had never imagined was within the realm of possibility.
mn
NOT LONG AFTER he arrived back in England, Hendrix and Kathy
Etchingham moved into a flat on Upper Berkeley Street. They were
204 C H A R L E S R . C R O S S
still sharing with Chas and his girlfriend, and Chas took the best
room in the new apartment. Despite Jimi s star status, Chas was still
Jimi s boss, and their relationship was messy: Chas served as artistic
director, mentor, friend, employer, and even occasionally as a body-
guard. During one incident in a pub, he pummeled a drunk who
threatened Jimi. They would talk about science fiction, and they
would play Risk together, recalled Eddie Kramer. There was so
much trust that when Jimi walked into the studio, he trusted Chas to
help him realize his dream. Even with their closeness, Chandler and
Jimi fought in the studio, typical of a manager and a temperamental
artist. Jimi was exerting his power, recalled road manager Neville
Chesters. By then, he knew what he wanted, and what he wanted it
to sound like. Chas liked songs to be tight and short; Jimi wanted the
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