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The group’s debut album, Are You Experienced?, was kept from the top of the charts in the summer of 1967 only by the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and before the year was out a second album, Axis: Bold As Love, had followed it into the top five.

In between the group made its US debut at the Monterey Pop Festival and went on a tour with the Monkees. It is hard to imagine a greater mismatch than that between their manufactured teen pop and Hendrix’s psychedelic rock, and the Experience were dropped from the tour after eight days.

Inevitably, it was Hendrix who attracted the attention with his wild look, incendiary guitar playing and eye-catching stage antics, often involving setting fire to his instrument with cigarette lighter fluid.

But Mitchell, sporting his own striking frizz of hair and similarly attired as a psychedelic dandy, also made a considerable musical contribution. He was not only loud and fast — “heavy” in the argot of the time — but he was also highly innovative; at his best, he was capable of a real synergy with Hendrix’s lead instrument, giving the music not only rhythmic support but also momentum and attack.

Times Archive, 1970: Jimi Hendrix

In direct contrast to the violence of his music, Hendrix was a gentle, peaceful man

• Noel Redding

Multimedia

• Video: Jimi Hendrix Experience play Purple Haze

• Video: Mitch Mitchell drum solo

• Video: Mitch Mitchell interview

BACKGROUND

• Live fast, die young: The 27 Club

• Hazy days

By 1968 Hendrix had recognised that there were limitations to the trio format and during the sessions in New York for the Experience’s third album, Electric Ladlyand, he added an array of other musicians, including a second drummer, Buddy Miles. The resulting album topped the US charts and made No 6 in Britain. It included some of Mitchell’s finest studio playing, particularly on 1983 . . . (A Merman I Should Turn to Be) and the bluesy Voodoo Chile.

In summer 1969 Hendrix decided that the Experience had come to the end of the road, and announced their final gig from the stage, much to the surprise of his bandmates. He put together a new ad hoc line-up featuring Billy Cox on bass and a rehired Mitchell for the Woodstock festival in August 1969, but when he formalised the new group as the Band of Gypsies, Buddy Miles has taken over on drums.

Mitchell had been offered the chance to stay on, but Hendrix had surrounded himself with a new entourage, many of them associated with the Black Power movement, and among other considerations, Mitchell was unsure how he fitted in with “the brothers”.

His exile was brief, and by 1970 Miles was out and Mitchell was back, playing with Hendrix on his final “Cry of Love” tour and in the studio on his last recordings. After Hendrix’s death in September 1970, Mitchell played an important role in preparing the recordings for posthumous release on the LPs Cry of Love and Rainbow Bridge.

Strangely, he never again played a prominent part in the musical world. Before Hendrix’s death he had turned down an approach to join Keith Emerson and Greg Lake in a new band that might have become ELM rather than ELP, after Carl Palmer took the drum seat. In 1972, he joined the band Ramatam, recording a single album with them, and there were gigs with Terry Reid, Jack Bruce and Jeff Beck.

He continued to play sessions as he needed the money. As a mere employee, he had not made a fortune from the Experience’s success and at one low point in the 1970s he was forced to boost his funds by selling a guitar Hendrix had given him. It was almost certainly financial considerations that caused him to audition for Wings in 1974, but the job went to Geoff Britton instead.

In later years he worked on a number of Hendrix tribute projects. He had finished an “Experience Hendrix” tour of America only five days before he died.

Mitch Mitchell, drummer, was born on July 9, 1947. He was found dead of natural causes on November 12, 2008, aged 61