The 500 - #83 - Axis: Bold As Love - The Jimi Hendrix Experience

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album: #83

Album Title: Axis: Bold As Love

Artist: The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Genre:  Psychedelic Rock, Pop Rock, Funk Rock

Recorded: Olympic Studios, London, England

Released: December, 1967

My age at release: 2

How familiar was I with it before this week: Quite

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #92 - dropping 9 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Little Wing

One of the biggest criticisms of Rolling Stone Magazine's 500 Greatest Albums list has always been who was asked to create it. The original 2003 list, and the revised 2012 edition that I'm using for this blog series, were heavily influenced by rock critics, musicians, and industry figures from an older generation. The result was a list dominated by classic rock, with a particular focus on white male artists.

Cover of the magazine's 2012 edition.

In 2020, Rolling Stone rebuilt the list from scratch. This time, the magazine expanded the voting pool to include a much broader and more diverse group of artists, producers, critics, and music industry professionals. The resulting list featured significantly more women, more artists of colour, more hip-hop, R&B, soul and contemporary music. And a markedly different Top 500.

Cover of the magazine's 2020 edition.

In many ways, the changes were long overdue. The 2020 list better reflects the full history of popular music instead of primarily celebrating classic rock. At the same time, some outstanding albums disappeared entirely, while others dropped dramatically in the rankings. Such is the nature of any "greatest" list. Every addition requires a subtraction. Every new perspective changes the outcome.

A collage of artists present on the 2020 list.

The artists who dominate the 2012 list are familiar classic-rock royalty: The Beatles (11 albums), Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones (10 each), Bruce Springsteen and David Bowie (8 each), and Neil Young and Led Zeppelin (7 each). Looking at those names, it's not difficult to understand why critics argued that earlier versions of the list reflected the tastes of an older, predominantly white rock establishment.

Then there's Hendrix. The Jimi Hendrix Experience has just three albums on The 500 list, but there is a catch: they only made three studio albums. Unlike many artists who needed decades to build their résumé, Hendrix essentially went three-for-three. Every studio album the Experience released made the Top 100 in both the 2012 and 2020 rankings. That's an impressive level of consistency.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience (l-r) Mitch Mitchell, Hendrix, 
& Noel Fielding.

Axis: Bold As Love is the second of the three studio albums on the list. Electric Ladyland is at position #55 and Hendrix' debut, Are You Experienced, is at #15 on the 2012 list. 

The three Hendrix studio records.

There was a story I heard as a teenager about this record and I  researched the veracity of it for this post. The story claimed that Hendrix had left the master tapes for the album in a taxi. They were never recovered and because the release date was approaching, the band had to piece the record’s entire contents back together from older recordings. It is the sort of rock-and-roll legend that sounds too good not to be true. But, it turns out the story is partially true.

London Taxi Cab from the era.

Jimi Hendrix really did leave a tape in the back of a London taxi, and that tape was never recovered. What is often left out of the story is that it was not the master tape for the entire album. Instead, the missing tape contained a nearly completed stereo mix of the song If 6 Was 9. When the tape vanished, Hendrix, manager Chas Chandler and engineer Eddie Kramer suddenly found themselves under pressure to recreate the missing mix before the album's scheduled release.

Rather than rebuilding the entire album, they spent a long and exhausting session reconstructing that one track from earlier tapes and session recordings. The work was completed in time – Axis: Bold As Love met its release date, and most listeners never knew how close one of its songs had come to being lost forever.

What fascinates me about the story is that there is no way to know exactly what disappeared in that taxi. The version of If 6 Was 9 that appears on the album is the reconstructed mix, not the one Hendrix originally signed off on. Somewhere in London, for at least a brief moment, there existed another version of the song that nobody will ever hear. Was it better?

Inner label for If 6 Was 9 single.

The truth may be less dramatic than the legend, but it is still a wonderful reminder of how fragile recorded music once was. Today, artists back up their work to multiple hard drives and cloud services throughout the recording session -- often in real time. In 1967, one forgotten tape in the back of a cab was enough to create a crisis. To wit: one of the greatest albums of the rock era was only a taxi ride away from sounding a little bit different. However, I don't suspect the absence or presence of either version would impact Axis: Bold As Love's place on The 500 list.