Over fifty years after his death, Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970) is celebrated
as the greatest rock guitarist of all time. But before he was setting
guitars and the world aflame, James Marshall Hendrix was a shy kid in
Seattle, plucking at a broken ukulele and in fear of a father who would
hit him for playing left-handed. Bringing Jimi's story to vivid life
against the backdrop of midcentury rock, and with a wealth of new
information, acclaimed music biographer Philip Norman delivers a
captivating and definitive portrait of a musical legend.
Drawing from unprecedented access to Jimi's brother, Leon Hendrix, who
provides disturbing details about their childhood, as well as Kathy
Etchingham and Linda Keith, the two women who played vital roles in
Jimi's rise to stardom, Norman traces Jimi's life from playing in clubs
on the segregated Chitlin' Circuit, where he encountered daily racism,
to barely surviving in New York's Greenwich Village, where was taken up
by the Animals' bass player Chas Chandler in 1966 and exported to
Swinging London and international stardom.
For four staggering years, from 1966 to 1970, Jimi totally rewrote the
rules of rock stardom, notably at Monterey and Woodstock (where he
played his protest-infused rendition of the "Star-Spangled Banner"),
while becoming the highest-paid musician of his day. But it all abruptly
ended in the shabby basement of a London hotel with Jimi's too-early
death. With remarkable detail, Wild Thing finally reveals the truth
behind this long-shrouded tragedy.
Norman's exhaustive research reveals a young man who was as shy and
polite in private as he was outrageous in public, whose insecurity about
his singing voice could never be allayed by his instrumental genius, and
whose unavailing efforts to please his father left him searching for the
family he felt he never truly had. Filled with insights into the
greatest moments in rock history, Wild Thing is a mesmerizing account
of music's most enduring and endearing figures.
