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Jimi Hendrix

Name: Jimi Hendrix
Author: Sharon Lawrence
ISBN: 9780060562991

by Sharon Lawrence

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Overview

The Jimi Hendrix legend has lived on longer than the man, who died in 1970 at the age of twenty-seven. More than thirty years later, what the world knows about him has become deeply distorted. Now Sharon Lawrence, a trusted friend of Jimi's in the final years of his astonishing life, has written a serious exploration of his life, death, and enduring legacy, based partly on the author's never-before-heard recorded interviews with the late musician.

Jimi Hendrix: The Man, The Magic, The Truth contains new and rare material about Hendrix, with major insights from sources who have previously kept their silence — from childhood neighbors to rock stars and musicians, to music-industry insiders. This book corrects years of false information, reveals key truths, and supplies facts previously known to only a precious few. It also chronicles the years of mind-boggling legal battles over his estate and legacy.

This is the definitive account of Jimi Hendrix, the young man from a pathetic poverty-stricken childhood who invented himself into something rare and special, the man who radiated genius and a bold yet charming personality when he picked up a guitar. It revisits the glory of Hendrix's talent, giving new insight into his sensitive persona, imagination, musical standards, and far-reaching impact.

Iluminating, honest, and bracing, Jimi Hendrix will forever change how we view one of rock and roll's greatest icons.

About the Author, Sharon Lawrence

Sharon Lawrence started her career as a reporter for the United Press International's Los Angeles bureau. Her specialty was the entertainment beat, including film and pop music. After more than five years with UPI, she became a management, marketing, and PR consultant for such clients as MCA, Columbia, Apple, and Rocket Record Company, as well as for major movie studios. She has worked with numerous artists including Elton John, David Bowie, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tim Rice, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Lawrence is the author of So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star and Old Carmel in Rare Photographs. She lives in Los Angeles.

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Editorials

Mary Ishimoto Morris

Lawrence's insightful rendering of Jimi Hendrix the human being is the first written by someone whom Hendrix apparently trusted with his deepest thoughts and feelings -- about his music, family and career. Her Hendrix laughs, worries, shouts, cries, smokes, shares cherished photographs, talks about problems with his family, irons a shirt, flings furniture.
— The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

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. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

A veteran journalist and friend of the late Jimi Hendrix, Lawrence offers a sympathetic memoir of the musician that unlike past biographies doesn't dwell on Hendrix's creative marvel or lament his early demise. Instead, Lawrence focuses on Hendrix's troubled childhood and the rock star excesses, which included drugged-out hangers-on, social parasites, and preying businessmen. The book starts slowly, yet Lawrence's firsthand experiences with Hendrix (as well as Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton) provide an insider's view of the late 1960s and early 1970s rock landscape. Best of all are the memories of Hendrix the numerology nut (he was a nine), serving as a witness in his much-publicized Canadian drug trial, and recalling his admission that he had "never been in love," all of which reveal the human side of a musical messiah. Thus, Lawrence's presence when Hendrix died reads less like the passing of a god than the sad loss of a friend. Recommended for any library with standard Hendrix biographies like David Henderson's 'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky: The Life of Jimi Hendrix.-Robert Morast, Argus Leader, Sioux Falls, SD Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.