Are You Experienced is the debut album by English/American rock band The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Released in 1967, it was the first LP for Track Records. The album highlighted Jimi Hendrix's R&B-based;, psychedelic, distortion-and feedback-laden electric guitar playing and launched him as a major new international star. Are You Experienced has remained a critical and commercial success since its release. The album reached #2 in the UK, behind The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The US version of the album contains some of Hendrix's best known songs, including "Purple Haze", "Hey Joe", "The Wind Cries Mary" and "Fire". In 1987, as part of their 20th anniversary, Rolling Stone magazine ranked it #5 on "The 100 Best Albums of the Last Twenty Years." In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine ranked it #15 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The album was an instant success and was a best-selling album in the United States in 1968, and critics subsequently regarded it as one of the best rock albums of all time. In 2005 Are You Experienced was selected for permanent preservation in the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress in the United States. Hendrix, along with producer and former bass player for The Animals, Chas Chandler, formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience in England in 1966 with Mitch Mitchell on drums and Noel Redding on bass. The band signed with Track Records, a new label formed by The Who's managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp. The