3 album covers in our archive
The Jimi Hendrix Experience is featured in Behind the Covers' archive with 3 album covers from the 1960s. Released across Reprise Records, Track Records and Track / Reprise labels, the artwork sits in the rock, blues tradition. Each cover is documented in our archive with design notes covering nude, photography, controversial, psychedelic, colorful, painting. Below you'll find the full story behind each The Jimi Hendrix Experience cover — designers, photographers, label history, and the visual choices that defined the release.
Cover evolution
Jimi Hendrix's double album sparked international controversy with its provocative cover featuring 19 nude women photographed by David Montgomery. The image was so scandalous that many countries banned it, forcing alternative covers to be created for different markets.
A London store's mass-produced Hindu devotional poster became the frame for a rock band: Jimi Hendrix and his bandmates painted as arms of the god Vishnu, glowing in pink, orange and turquoise. Hendrix hated it. Decades later, a nation's censors seized copies. Here is the strange life of a cover its own star disowned.
Karl Ferris pioneered the use of infrared film for album art, creating an otherworldly image where the band appears in unnatural purple, orange, and green hues through a fisheye lens — as if Hendrix had literally arrived from another dimension.
