When he left home under Chas Chandler’s tutelage to launch his career in London in 1966, the only thing Jimi did not leave behind was the revolutionary music in his head. As a Black American, culturally Jimi Hendrix and his entire team were an ocean apart. Jimi’s producer, his recording engineer, business manager, and both band members were all white Englishmen, and not one had known Hendrix more than a single year when Are You Experienced? was released.
The international bi-racial composition of the Jimi Hendrix Experience may have appeared appealing to some of the European audience, but America was about to erupt with violent race riots in several major US cities.
From this vantage point fifty-five years later it all looks and sounds so obvious, but on the eve of the May 1967 UK release of Are You Experienced? by Seattle native-now-London-based Jimi Hendrix ( August in the States), the sole person who could see rock’n’roll’s event horizon, former Animals bass player and now Hendrix’s English manager/ producer Chas Chandler, was already running out of money.
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