Wild Thing
The short, spellbinding life of Jimi Hendrix
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
'Arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music,' says Jimi Hendrix's citation in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. James Marshall Hendrix remains unique as an African American who broke out of the traditional 'Black' genres of blues, r&b and soul to play hard rock to an overwhelmingly white audience, almost single-handedly creating what became known as heavy metal.
With unprecedented access to Jimi's younger brother, Leon, the two most important women in his life and numerous previously untapped sources, bestselling music biographer Philip Norman resurrects the real Jimi from the almost mythical icon who has continued to influence young guitarists. His death in 1970, aged only twenty-seven when his fame was at its height, has long been rock's greatest unsolved mystery. But finally we learn where the responsibility lay for Jimi's lonely, squalid end.
'An engaging memorial to a rock revolutionary whose music, in contrast to many of his revered Sixties peers, retains much of its explosively thrilling voodoo power' The Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this rollicking biography, Norman (Paul McCartney) follows the electric guitar god from hardscrabble Seattle boyhood to enormous fame and his 1970 martyrdom to rock-star excess. (The author's lengthy postmortem considers conspiracy theory suspects his manager, the mafia, the CIA before returning to the official line that he overdosed on sleeping pills and drowned in his vomit.) Norman styles Hendrix as a great Black crossover pioneer who founded heavy metal with his flamboyant stagecraft and use of feedback and other effects in his virtuosic solos, which saw him play guitars with his teeth and behind his back and then hump, burn, and smash his instruments in ritual sacrifice. (Offstage, Hendrix is more shy naif than rock demon in Norman's telling.) Norman combines colorful, energetic picaresque "It might have been a brilliant duet had not Morrison been helplessly drunk and ruined the recording by shouting I want to suck your cock' at Jimi until Janis Joplin subdued him by breaking a bottle over his head" with lush evocations of Hendrix's sound. (One solo "resembles a thrillride through some extraterrestrial cityscape, each gush of the slide like a glowing elevator, sibiliantly ascending or descending.") Norman's entertaining, psychedelically tinged portrait shows why Hendrix made such a deep impression on rock 'n' roll.
Customer Reviews
Make my heart sing
Author
British. Former journalist, novelist, playwright, and biographer (P McCartney, J Lennon, E Clapton, E John, M Jagger, B Holly, the Beatles, the Stones).
Summary
Fifty years after the death of the greatest guitarist in the history of rock music, Mr N tries to make sense of Jimi. From a dirt poor upbringing peppered with domestic abuse in Seattle, emerged the self taught musician’s self taught musician: a talent like no other. Out of the marginalised Chittlin’ Circuit of black R&B and Blues players shut out of the mainstream white dominated US music industry of the sixties, came a player so good that he made white people sit up and took notice, not to forget a playa almost irresistible to young white women. That he had to wait until The Animals’ bass player turned agent/manager Chas Chandler brought to London to make his mark is a testament to the times, times when white British musicians were making their white American cousins understand what they were missing in the African-American music systematically suppressed their politicians, broadcasters, and record companies in the Land of the Free.
Within weeks of Jimi's arrival in London, Eric Clapton, to his great relief, was no longer being hailed as “God.” Instead, he was sitting spellbound in dingy clubs and dilapidated halls watching in awe as the new kid in town reinvented music. Ditto Messers Townsend, Lennon, McCartney, Burdon, Richards, Jagger, and many others. That he was black mattered less than it did in his homeland, not that Britain was perfect by any means when it came to racism. He was exploited like any other rising artist with stars in his eyes. The enigma of Jimi - the overwhelming stage presence in stark contrast to the quiet, deferential private persona - is expertly explored, if not entirely explained by Mr Norman, although it’s fair to say that the phenomenon that became most famous member of the 27 club - rock stars who died, often by their own hand, at the age of 27 (others include Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Kurt Cobain) - is ultimately inexplicable.
Bottom line
I was in grade 9 when a friend (I must have had one once) phoned to tell me Jimi Hendrix was dead. I only “got into” rock music a year or so before that, the sixties having been a largely music free existence for me while I was at primary school. (My mother’s hearing aid created more than enough feedback on its own. Our solitary transistor radio was tuned to the ABC and only turned on at news time.) News of Hendrix’s death upset me considerably less than did John Lennon’s demise a little over 10 years later. It probably should have been the other way around. I still have a selection of “Jimi classics” on my phone, but the impact he had, and continues to have, on modern popular music is apparent everywhere.