Relatively new to superstardom, even Jimi Hendrix felt nervous when he made his Arizona debut almost 60 years ago.<\/p>\n
Hendrix had exploded onto the scene at the Monterey Pop Festival in June\u00a0 1967, a month after The Jimi Hendrix Experience\u2019s first album, \u201cAre You Experienced?,\u201d was released. He\u2019d spend that whole summer on his first U.S. tour, which never made it to Arizona, although a Tempe stop was within sight.<\/p>\n
Out promoting the \u201cAxis: Bold As Love\u201d album, which had just come out in the U.S. in January 1968, the band\u2019s first North American tour opened with a few shows in San Francisco before arriving at the Sun Devil Gym \u2013 known today as Physical Education Building West \u2013 on Feb. 5 on the ASU campus.<\/p>\n
The bell-bottomed Hendrix was in the dressing room fretting backstage about trouble with his amplifiers, worried that someone had swiped his trademark black hat moments before going on stage (he found it), and still unsure how audiences \u2013 that Monday night before 3,000 fans in Tempe specifically \u2013 would take to his live show.<\/p>\n
It was only a few months earlier when Hendrix had lasted just a handful of shows in a mismatched pairing where he opened for The Monkees.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose kids out there expect to hear the records we have cut and think we will sound exactly the same tonight,\u201d Hendrix told Dave Gurzenski of the ASU State Press backstage that night. \u201cSometimes a three-minute record might stretch into 10. So much depends on the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n
It turned out, Arizona was ready for the experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe came out and wailed away before a mass of screaming fans,\u201d Rob Spindler, an archivist with the ASU library, told ASU Now in 2018.<\/p>\n
Hendrix still had more time ahead in Arizona.<\/p>\n
The group traveled the next day down Interstate 10 to play in Tucson at the V.I.P. Club. That day also saw Hendrix receive the World\u2019s No. 1 Musician Award from the showbiz paper \u201cDisc,\u201d and while hanging out in Tucson he had a phone interview with the Sunday Mirror newspaper in London where he talked about, among other things, that while the Flower Power movement of the previous year was already fading, its ethos wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201c(It) was an experiment, but although it was all tied up with sensation stuff about drugs, the \u2018love everybody\u2019 basic idea helped one hell of a lot with the color problem in the States,\u201d he told the Mirror, which published his interview from Arizona in its Feb. 11, 1968, edition. \u201cColored artists daren\u2019t go near some Southern audiences in the past. But since the flower power craze, much of the violence has gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the Tucson gig, Hendrix still wasn\u2019t done with his Arizona story.<\/p>\n
Later that year, on Sept. 4, he performed a much-ballyhooed show at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix in which he and The Experience opened with \u201cAre You Experienced?\u201d and closed the 65-minute set \u2013 his last ever appearance in Arizona \u2013 with \u201cPurple Haze.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was the same day the Experience would release the \u201cAll Along The Watchtower\u201d single in the U.S., which would become Hendrix\u2019s only Top 40 hit in his lifetime. One month later would see the iconic album \u201cElectric Ladyland\u201d come out to further cement his legend long after Hendrix died in 1970.<\/p>\n
Whatever it was during his time in Arizona made it to the \u201cElectric Ladyland\u201d liner notes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe dedicate this album to acoustic and electric woman and man alike,\u201d Jimi wrote, \u201cand to the girl at or from or with the button store, and Arizona, and Bil of some English town in England, and well, EVERYBODY.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRob Spindler, archivist with the ASU library, in a screenshot from a 2018 video produced by Ken Fagan of ASU Now, stands inside the gym on the Tempe campus where The Jimi Hendrix Experience performed on Feb. 5, 1968. Hendrix and the band warmed up for the show in the men\u2019s locker room, the entrance to which can be seen in the background.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t(Used with permission from ASU)\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"Rob](\"https:\/\/gamma.creativecirclecdn.com\/yourvalley\/original\/20251224-132316-3e7-jimi2.jpg\")
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n