FOOD FOR thought

Justin Sandercoe of justinguitar.com lends GT his insight as one of the world’s most successful guitar teachers. This month: Are You Experienced?

- Justin Sandercoe

I wonder if everyone remembers the first time they heard Jimi Hendrix? I was about 14 years old and had been playing guitar for a number of years but somehow had never encountered the music. I remember reading an article about him in a guitar magazine and deciding on the spot to get to the local record store where I bought Are You Experienced on cassette tape. I remember feeling excited on the bus home (buying albums was a big deal back then) and when I got home I put it into my ghetto blaster, lay on the floor and transcended into another place.

I remember feeling quite bewildered but in a great way. It was incredible. Genius. So different to anything else that I’d ever heard before and I didn’t really understand what was going on - he used blues vocabulary, some of which I recognized, but it sounded completely different. Unison bends with wide vibrato and lots of gains blew my mind (it took me ages to figure that out). It was like he was coming from another place, somewhere that I wanted to visit but had no idea how to get there. Looking back, I assume some of it was to do with the era and substances that were popular at the time - certainly nothing I was aware of at 14 years old. He certainly had some kind of special energy in the way that he played. It was totally captivating.