"That album is my favourite because it's the one that feels most concise. Electric Ladyland I love, but it does sprawl a little bit and some of the later ones don't feel like he's absolutely at his peak. The early ones - Are You Experienced? - I do love them but it feels like there's lots of singles. So for me, Axis: Bold As Love has that depth. The production is just fantastic as well. 'If 6 Was 9', embodies that whole wild, epic, Jimi Hendrix thing, in a concise pop song. Him saying about the businessmen going down the street, ""you can't dress like me"", and ""I'm gonna wave my freak flag"". For a long time, my favourite Jimi Hendrix stuff was the live stuff - he's one of those guys where you can be a fan of the the live stuff and it's almost a completely different artist to the albums. Whereas this one feels like it's got that spirit of Jimi Hendrix live in the song as well. He manages to get this epic adventure into three and a half, four minutes. To me it just embodies Hendrix: rebellious but friendly, and totally in control of the universe. He's like a shamanistic character isn't he? 'Up From The Skies' is really amusing, really cool. 'Spanish Castle Magic' is just a rocker. But it's got this real sparkle to the whole thing. I think these albums, the reason why they've lasted, is because you can listen to them at any time. You can have them for breakfast, lunch or dinner. You can listen to Axis: Bold As Love on an epic road trip or having a coffee in the morning."

"Growing up I didn't have an older brother, so all my music was formed by my mother and father. The latter would play old Irish folk songs and outlaw music by Johnny Cash and the only thing my mother would play was heavy melancholy orchestral movements like Night On Bald Mountain. What my mother would make me do is sit on the floor and tell my father to tell a story while putting on this record. This was big for me. I was probably four years old at the time. It sounded eerie, spooky and epic. My dad would make up these ghost stories but what he was really doing was recreating these children's story soundtracks that I'd listened to! I was too young to understand what he was doing at the time, but he was just making his personalised version of The Little Prince or Tales of Witches, Ghosts And Goblins. So he'd be like [eerie voice]: ""The ghosts would move up the Catskill Mountains..."" and I'd just sit there freezing in fear of these ghost stories! It was like having a musical campfire in your living room. Also, this song featured on the film Fantasia, which was my whole life up until the age of ten. It stuck with me and it was embedded in there now you're mixing visuals. I wasn't into the Mickey Mouse aspect of it, but when you watch the eerie castle and spooky ghosts, this is just feeding a young boy's imagination and this is the world he's going to confront when he grows up. These were all the ingredients going into my soup."