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Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland is 40 years old today

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"But, at the same time, we were dabbling in areas that had never been tried before, like stereo flanging. Every day we were trying something new, because we didn't have much technology at our disposal. We had tape delay, EQ, reverb and that was pretty much it. There wasn't much out there at the time. It was how you placed the mics, how you used the room, a little bit of a Leslie effect, a little bit of flanging. The flanging thing was a revelation for Jimi.

"Every day was a nice challenge. In English studios we only had four tracks, whereas in the States they had eight. We were so jealous of the Americans, so we had to be really creative. How do you get eight tracks? Well, you take a 4-track machine and another 4-track machine, record your first four, then you make a mix of the four and dump that onto the second machine, so you end up going four groups of four to four new tracks. That forced you to be careful with your mix, because the mix that you did was your final mix.

"So every step of the way, it forced you to be very creative and to get your sounds right there. Today it's the opposite: you leave everything wide open and then you make a decision.

"Each successive generation of young kids I've watched over the last 25-30 years, who's the guitar player they go to first? They go to Jimi every time. He's the man. You can't help but be influenced by him."

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Tomorrow, we have tone tips on Jimi Hendrix's guitar sound.