Jimi Hendrix - Electric Gypsy - Harry Shapiro and Caesar Glebbeek

 

I've owned this book probably since it came out and read it at the time (I took it on a Tommyknockers/ Embryonics tour and pretty much everyone in the van read it, despite it being over 500 pages long! We had some long drives then!) but I don't think that I've revisited it since so since I've caught up on everything new that I've bought, I thought I'd check it out again and give it a review, since it was way before this blog that I last viewed it.

Extensively researched, with interviews with almost everyone in Jimi's life - with the two huge exceptions of Eddie Kramer and Billy Cox, unfortunately, although their words from other sources are used - including Jimi's little brother, Leon, who has himself written a book relatively recently. Family, friends and musicians all add to the tale.

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest with a complicated family life - the parents split and reunited several times with multiple siblings and step-siblings and no one is 100% sure of everyone's paternity - and in near poverty, Jimi's love for music (and science fiction/fantasy) came early (although he was interested in sports, as well) and was encouraged. He joined the armed services in order to get out of town, basically, and when he was released, he started working full time as a musician and was discovered by Chas Chandler in NYC, and brought to England to become a superstar. Obviously, everyone knows the basic story, but the details are what is fascinating in this book.

Billy Cox and Larry Lee (later to play with Jimi at Woodstock) were early friends once Jimi left the military and based himself in Nashville for a while but when he left for NYC, he left on his own. It was a tough slog at first but his luck with women served him well and Fay Pridgeon took him in. He managed to hook up with various musicians and along with some short-term gigs, went on the road with the likes of the Isley Brothers and Little Richard, but Jimi was not very good at merely being a backing musician.

Once Chas "discovered" him and brought him to England, he was an immediate smash sensation with hit singles within a couple of months. There are lots of great photos of these early days, along with reviews and listings of the shows throughout Europe - what an exciting time! Things move extremely fast from then on - 3 albums (including a double LP) in just over a year, innumerable gigs and, of course, internal tension between the band members and the group and their management. Everything takes its toll on Jimi and the authors are fairly ruthless about sub-par gigs and recordings.

Of course, his tragic and untimely death has been discussed endlessly and even here, there are many different versions of what happened the night before and the morning of his demise. At the time of this book even the people who were there (supposedly) had varied accounts but it seems that it was simply a terrible accident and that he wasn't properly treated in time to revive him.

After his death there was still an immense amount of drama, with the numerous contracts, managers, semi-legal banking, and much more. Shapiro does his best to navigate this, but there are plenty of unanswered questions, which probably remain to this day, not the least due to Jimi's last manager dying in a crash not long after Jimi's death!

There is a large portion of the book dedicated to the appendixes, which includes an extensive discography (which has only grown since this publication), a listing of all of his known gigs, a list of his equipment and much more! Shapiro certainly did his best to be thorough! Funnily enough, I noticed in a section on Jimi's techniques that there were some errors, so there may be some other technical issues with some of the equipment sections - I am not a technician but some of the other items sounded a little wonky to me, as well. But, what an undertaking to even try all of this!

In any case, even if there are some errors here'n'there, overall, this is a pretty amazingly researched tome that is still highly readable and enjoyable. Certainly recommended!