Jimi Hendrix

January 24, 2005
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. Agent, Martha Kaplan.