12 May 1967 - Are You Experienced by the Jimi Hendrix Experience was released in the UK.

A Memory in Praise of the Great Album

FEEDBACK IN THE MARINARA - A chapter from my memoir - Something Happened to Me Yesterday - My Strange Life in Music)

It wasn’t long after seeing the Doors down the Jersey shore that I discovered Frank Zappa. My brother’s friend, Ruben, brought a copy of We’re Only In It For the Money over to our house one day.

(Jimi in the house - stage right)

With one look at that ridiculous cover (a spoof of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band which depicted the gnarly members of Frank’s band in drag) I attained enlightenment… or something like it. It was as if the Mothers’ brilliant, twisted music instantly gave me permission to be weird. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Even more amazing than Frank’s virtuosity on the guitar, was the fact that he was putting down the hippies! As far as he was concerned, the whole anti-establishment thing was a big conformity trip (and he was right!). Zappa proclaimed drugs were a drag and mooching off your friends and parents was irreprehensible. He couldn’t wait for the whole stupid scene to bite the dust. I was shocked. I thought my long hair and love beads had made me “free” or at the least “different” somehow.

I first saw D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary Monterey Pop when I was fourteen at a run-down, weed-infested drive-in on the outskirts of town. I was at sleep-away camp at the time and the whole bunch of us sat cross-legged (“Indian style”) on a blanket on the roof of an old yellow bus watching all the rock bands in awe. Our cool counselor who brought us even lit sticks of sweet-smelling incense!

Judging by the look on the audience’s faces at the Monterey International Pop Festival when Jimi Hendrix made his American debut, it was clear that everybody was flabbergasted by the arrival of a psychedelic black man from outer space, playing a guitar upside down, with his teeth. We watched, stunned, as he madly humped his instrument and then, with a loving kiss, set it on fire as a heart-felt offering to the gods. Even the peace and love crowd in their ponchos and floppy hats had no clue that anyone or anything like Jimi Hendrix existed or could ever exist.

The following fall I went over to my buddy Frank’s house one day after school to listen to records and shoot pool down in his basement. We’d been into Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, as well as what would later become known as “Americana,” devouring albums by the Byrds, the Buffalo Springfield and the apocalyptic parables of Dylan’s John Wesley Harding.

But nothing could’ve prepared us for Are You Experienced? The album cover sure looked weird - with that gooey purple lettering like moldy cheese melting over a chartreuse background, and that fish-eye lens snap of Hendrix and his British pals in their freaky clothes and frizzy hair.

From the moment he dropped the needle on that shiny slab of black vinyl it was clear Frank’s little record player wasn’t up to the job. So, we took the record upstairs to play it on his father’s stereo, a Harmon Kardon - real audio equipment, normally reserved for listening to “serious” recordings of symphonies, opera, as well as the occasional Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra record.

With the opening bars of “Purple Haze,” Hendrix’s guitar shrieked and groaned like Godzilla with food poisoning. Giggling nervously, we dodged behind the sofa, expecting the speakers to explode.

Frank’s mother, Estelle, was in the kitchen, making dinner, stirring a big pot of spaghetti sauce when “Manic Depression” made her come unhinged. “TURN IT DOWN FRANK! TURN IT DOWN RIGHT NOW!” She screamed over and over again, the sad mantra of her generation.

Before the song ended in a fizzle of feedback, Estelle had completely lost her composure and began to sob, as big blobs of bright red tomato sauce splattered all over her apron and onto the white kitchen counters like a murder scene or a Jackson Pollock painting.