OF FREAKS, DEATH, AND THE BLUES JIMI HENDRIX

There is no way to write about James Marshall Hendrix without sentimentalizing the myth, yet at the same time, there is no way to write about him without revealing a desire to debunk that myth. It is a problem that writers have always faced when dealing with a legend, but particularly when that legend has set himself up (or been set up) as a visionary. Dead at the age of 27 on September 18, 1970, after having choked on his own vomit, Jimi Hendrix expired at his peak just when, so legend reads, he was about to fashion his most monumental work. Until then, not since Buddy Holly’s tragic death had a rock ’n’ roll artist attained the truly mystical status of "if he’d oply lived.”

With this legendary aura in mind, perhaps my own critical opinions should initially be laid on the table. First, nothing that has been written or ever will be written about Hendrix can eclipse David Henderson’s exhaustive study, Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child Of The Aquarian Age, published in 1978 by Doubleday (now available in paperback under the title Scuse Me While I Kiss The Sky). Thus, as best as possible, I tried to ignore it as a source so that at least an attempt can be made to examine Hendrix from another angle.