Purple Haze : Rolling Stone

Written by: Hendrix
Produced by: Chas Chandler
Released: March '67 on Reprise
Charts: 8 weeks
Top spot: No. 65

It is one of the unforgettable opening riffs in rock: a ferocious two-note guitar march scarred with fuzz. And it launched not one but two revolutions: late-Sixties psychedelia and the unprecedented genius of Jimi Hendrix. A three-minute blaze of overdubbed guitar sorcery, "Purple Haze" -- the opening track on the U.S. version of his debut LP, Are You Experienced? -- captured the liberating rush of day-glo culture just in time for the Summer of Love. The song, which Hendrix wrote on December 26th, 1966, in the dressing room of a London club, was also a concise showcase for his brilliant, often contradictory gifts. In "Purple Haze," he spiked the surging rhythmic confidence of the Experience with intimate pictorial tension: "Actin' funny, but I don't know why/'Scuse me while I kiss the sky." Hendrix echoed his screaming Strat in the closing solo with another shrieking guitar put through a new harmonic-manipulation device called an Octavia and played back at double speed. He claimed he wrote "Purple Haze" after he had a dream in which he could walk underwater. The result: out of this world.

Appears on: Are You Experienced? (Experience Hendrix)

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