The electrifying performance is available now
The lead-off song from Jimi Hendrix Experience: Hollywood Bowl August 18, 1967 has been made available on all digital platforms by Experience Hendrix, LLC in partnership with Legacy Recordings, a division of Sony Music Entertainment. This cover of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” which had its world premiere yesterday (Thurs, Oct 12th) on the SiriusXM satellite radio show Breakfast With The Beatles, comes in advance of the full album, which will be released on CD, LP, and digitally on November 10th.
“Here is the sound of the most exciting new group in the world, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, live in rock’s greatest year – and performing the opening theme song from The Beatles’ Summer of Love masterpiece,” guest host of Breakfast With The Beatles and former Rolling Stone editor David Fricke declared. “It is a pleasure and honor to play it, for the first time anywhere, on the Beatles Channel.” Normally hosted by Chris Carter, the terrestrial version of Breakfast With The Beatles (on KLOS in Los Angeles) is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.
Beyond their status as inter-generational icons, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and The Beatles are inextricably linked. Having retired as a touring act in 1966, The Beatles concentrated on their studio output, releasing the ambitious Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in the middle of 1967. Mere days after the record hit store shelves, Paul McCartney and George Harrison witnessed the Jimi Hendrix Experience covering the title track at the Saville Theatre in London on June 4th. Hendrix played the song for the group backstage on a portable record player and the opened the show with their own dramatic interpretation. Already a champion of Hendrix, McCartney had urged Monterey International Pop Festival co-producer John Phillips of The Mamas & The Papas to put the Experience on the bill, which took place just a few weeks after the Saville gig. Hendrix’s dramatic Monterey performance made an indelible mark on the Mama’s & Papa’s. The Mamas & The Papas extended an invitation to the Experience to open for them at the Hollywood Bowl on August 18, where they began their set appropriately with “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
This live concert performance of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, captured just five days before the US release of Are You Experienced?, their album debut, is notable for being one of the last times the band performed in front of an audience as relative unknowns. Having already conquered the band’s UK base as well as Continental Europe over the previous ten months, the vast majority of the 17,000 plus Los Angeles concertgoers were there to see headliners The Mamas & The Papas and were caught off guard by Jimi Hendrix’s electrifying musicality and showmanship. Finally, the set can be enjoyed by the rest of the world for the first time ever; amazingly, not a single second of this unique, two-track live recording has ever been released before in any capacity, either via official channels or otherwise.
The Experience Hendrix team of Janie Hendrix, John McDermott and Eddie Kramer prepared this special album for its release. Kramer, Hendrix’s long-standing recording engineer, recently restored the audio, and three-time Grammy Award winner Bernie Grundman served as mastering engineer. Jimi Hendrix Experience: Hollywood Bowl August 18, 1967 will be available on CD as well as audiophile-grade, individually numbered, 150-gram vinyl, complete with many previously unseen photos by Ed Caraeff, Henry Diltz and Allen Daviau from that night. These include performance shots as well as candid backstage images of band members co-mingling with The Mamas & The Papas, scene maker Rodney Bingenheimer and manager Chas Chandler.
