Even before groundbreaking, Seattle Weekly said the design could refer to "the often quoted comparison to a smashed electric guitar." Indeed, Gehry himself had made the comparison, "We started collecting pictures of Stratocasters, bringing in guitar bodies, drawing on those shapes in developing our ideas."[25] The architecture was greeted by Seattle residents with a mixture of acclaim for Gehry and derision for this particular edifice. "Frank Gehry," remarked British-born, Seattle-based writer Jonathan Raban, "has created some wonderful buildings, like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, but his Seattle effort, the Experience Music Project, is not one of them."[26] New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp described it as "something that crawled out of the sea, rolled over, and died."[27] Forbes magazine called it one of the world's 10 ugliest buildings.[27] Others describe it as a "blob"[28] or call it "The Hemorrhoids".[26] Despite some critical reviews of the structure, the building has been called “a fitting backdrop for the world's largest collection of Jimi Hendrix memorabilia.”[29] The outside of the building which features a fusion of textures and colors, including gold, silver, deep red, blue and a "shimmering purple haze,"[30] has been declared "an apt representation of the American rock experience."[31]