The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Fame arrived at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. Before that, his name was known only in British club circles, but Monterey put him in front of half a million people. The closing of his set became legend: after playing Wild Thing, he set his guitar on fire onstage. The photo of the moment became the cover of Rolling Stone, and the act—less a provocation than a declaration—proved rock could be theater, chaos, and alchemy all at once. That same year, they released Are You Experienced, an album that blended Hey Joe with Purple Haze and The Wind Cries Mary, songs that sounded like they’d been recorded on another planet. In 1968, Electric Ladyland took them to number one in the U.S., a double album where Hendrix treated the studio like a lab: he pioneered stereo recording techniques no one had tried before and let musicians improvise until a take sounded “right.”

The band lasted barely two years, but in that time they redefined what a guitar could do. Redding and Mitchell weren’t just sidemen: Redding crafted basslines that sounded like melodies, and Mitchell played drums like he was in a jazz jam session—only at industrial volume. When the trio split in 1969, Hendrix experimented with larger lineups—like at Woodstock, where he used a full band—before returning to a stripped-down format with Buddy Miles and Billy Cox in the Band of Gypsys. Yet the heart of his sound always lived in those three records: Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, and Electric Ladyland. He died in London in 1970, at 27, but his influence lives on in every pedal someone stomps to distort a note.