Former UPI reporter and Hendrix confidante Lawrence (So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star)
recalls the guitar player's brilliance in this sympathetic biography.
She skims over his early years - his abandonment by his mother, his
high school rock bands, his brief time as a paratrooper - but slows
down once Hendrix gets to playing his guitar in earnest. After knocking
around as a session player and winding up in New York, Hendrix signed
with former Animals bassist Chas Chandler and went to England in 1965,
where he blew away the likes of the Beatles, Eric Clapton and the
Rolling Stones. He triumphantly returned to the U.S. for 1967's famous
Monterey Pop festival, where he became an overnight superstar. But bound
by bad deals he signed without counsel, under an intense media glare,
exhausted by the road, busted for possession and trapped in a downward
spiral of drugs, lawsuits and paranoia, Hendrix burned out. The year
before his death, Lawrence writes, she watched Hendrix become a
"Shakespearean protagonist... while a growing brood of greedy villains
circled like vultures." On September 18, 1970, Hendrix overdosed on
pills, which Lawrence believes was a deliberate act to "confront fate."
While much has been written about Hendrix's meteoric career over the
years, Lawrence's close ties to the musician and her well-written
narrative make this book a welcome addition to the Hendrix canon.
