Iron Butterfly and Captain Beyond bassist dies

Iron Butterfly bassist Lee Dorman has died at the age of 70. He was still performing with the band who received the first-ever platinum disc for sales of their 1969 breakthrough album In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. He’d also continued work with side-project Captain Beyond until the death of guitarist Larry ‘Rhino’ Reinhardt earlier this year. Dorman, who had suffered heart problems for many years, was found in his car. Police believed there are no suspicious circumstances surrounding his death.

Tony Iommi has reflected on his first year as a cancer victim. The guitarist announced he was suffering from lymphoma soon after Black Sabbath‘s reunion with Ozzy Osbourne was revealed in 2011. Iommi says: “What a year! Certainly not the one I was expecting. Thanks to you all for your massive help and support. It was very encouraging. I’m still working on the album and managed to play three shows – not bad given the news a year ago. I’m looking forward to next year, seeing what you think of the record and touring as much as we’re able.”

Led Zeppelin have reissued their catalogue via iTunes, remastered to make best use of the digital format. It’s a separate move from the band’s planned reissue series, expected in 2013. Meanwhile, Robert Plant has re-emphasised the thought processes behind refusing to take the band’s 2007 reunion any further. He says: “You have to be creative and imaginative and move on. The great essence of Led Zeppelin is the creativity and imagination that developed with each project. I don’t see us being a stadium act, going round and round making everyone feel great playing the hits.” [CBS]

Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic has explained how the song Cut Me Some Slack was written with Paul McCartney. The grunge pioneers’ surviving members performed the track several times earlier this month alongside the ex-Beatle. Novoselic says in his blog: “Paul came in with this cigar-box guitar and started playing some mean slide on it. He said it was in D. Grunge instincts took over and I dropped the E on the bass to D. Pat and Dave got into it and the tune took shape. Paul flashed a riff and we picked it up. I busted another one out and everyone picked it up. Things started coming together. A new song was born! And that’s about it. That’s all it is – a new song by some players who have been doing it for a while.”

The last live Deep Purple album featuring Ritchie Blackmore will be re-released on January 29. Live In Paris 1975 features the iconic guitarist alongside David Coverdale, Glenn Hughes, Jon Lord and Ian Paice performing tracks including Stormbringer, Highway Star, Space Truckin’ and Smoke on the Water.

A 1969 vehicle registration document sent to Jimi Hendrix has sold on eBay for $2250. The enveloped item, addressed in type to Hendrix, was associated with a Corvette he owned at the time and is believed to have written off in an accident and replaced with a similar car. It comes with the standard California Department of Motor Vehicles statement which reads: “If you no longer own this vehicle destroy this card.” [Ultimate Classic Rock]




Classic Rock Presents Jimi Hendrix: People, Hell and Angels Fanpack is currently available for pre-order, containing the complete new Hendrix album due out next year. Find out more.

A group of scientific researchers believe successful musicians are more likely to die young than those who follow other career paths – but the chance of survival is worst among solo artists. The study was led by Mark Bellis, a UK expert of drug abuse and violence prevention. Researchers discovered that out of 1489 big-name artists famous between 1956 and 2006, 137 or 9.2% of them died young, with 39% of those deaths attributed to drink, drugs or violence. More solo artists died than those who worked in a band – In the US the rate was 23% for soloists versus 10% of band members, and in Europe it was 10% versus 5%. [New York Times]

source: classicrockmagazine.com

Hendrix aimed for Earth Wind & Fire sound

Jimi Hendrix aimed to sound like Earth Wind & Fire later did, says his sister Janie.

She believes the multi-genre outfit, which formed a year before the guitar icon’s death, best matches the description he gave for the sound he was looking for.

And she’s offered a glimpse of upcoming Hendrix posthumous album People, Hell and Angels, while reporting there’s much more to come from his estate’s temperature-controlled vault.

Speaking during a promotional campaign to raise funds for Jimi Hendrix Park in Seattle, Janie tells KISW: “What he was trying to do was create this new sound. He told my dad: ‘You’re going to be doubly proud of me.’

“He was bringing all these instruments like he did at Woodstock. The way he was describing it in 1969 was what Earth Wind & Fire became. That’s what we would have had: richer, bigger bands with more sounds and more cultures. There would have been a definite evolution.”

Hendrix would have celebrated his 70th birthday this year. Janie believes: “He’d still be playing music. He’d be doing what he was doing then: encouraging kids to play, buying them guitars. He’d be producing, encouraging – Electric Lady is still a viable studio. Artists are still working in that studio, for the vibe and also because it’s a beautiful studio. When Jimi was alive there were two studios. Now they have five.”

Two years ago his estate, managed by his sister, signed a ten-year deal with Sony resulting in the release of Valleys of Neptune. Two live concert movies will be coming soon, including “pristine” footage from Miami Pop unseen by all but a few eyes.

First comes People, Hell and Angels. Janie explains: “It was Jimi’s title that he wrote down during the time he was creating the songs. There’ll be twelve songs on the album that haven’t been released – or at least those versions have never been released.”

The album, consisting of material recorded around the Valleys of Neptune era, is due out by the end of the year.

She recalls how Hendrix liked to escape from the trappings of stardom when he went home to his family – although even there he couldn’t escape his music.

“He left his guitar in the hotel so he could focus on family,” Janie says. “He felt like he was missing out when he was on the road. We were excited to hear about all the people he was hanging out with, but he was apologetic and shy about his adventures – he wanted to talk about the family and what we were doing.

“He wanted my dad to be on the road with him and have all of us move to New York so he had that family protection, which he wasn’t really feeling from the management.

“We had Jimi on tape, on albums – I don’t know how many albums we went through. But the music was always blasting from our house. Fortunately we lived in a neighbourhood where people were okay with it. But if they weren’t my dad wouldn’t have cared.”

source: classicrockmagazine.com

How Hendrix changed style for Stills

Stephen Stills has been through the tapes he made with Jimi Hendrix, but believes almost none of the material they jammed together is usable.

He’s paid tribute to his friend for teaching him a lot about guitar playing.

And he’s admitted there won’t be another Crosby, Stills and Nash album, because the trio would never finish the work.
He spent many happy nights playing and talking with guitar icon Hendrix, and recently trawled through their recordings in a hunt for songs which could be made public.
He tells Music Radar: “A lot of it us waiting for somebody to start something. It isn’t really usable. It deteriorates into giggles and then the tape stops.
“There’s a couple of things in there – now the family has worked their business out I’ve done some of the things I did at Electric Lady with him. I’ve finished a couple of those. There’s one song that’s sitting there in want of a lyric. There’s babbling but no good lyric.”
He remembers Hendrix as “astonishing – a very dear, dear soul” and remains grateful for the lead guitar lessons he learned.
“I remember he was showing me something,” says the Buffalo Springfield man, “And I said, ‘Jimi, put your hand up.’ So he held his hand up and I put mine next to his and I said, ‘Your thumb is longer than mine! I can’t do what you’re doing!’ So he went, ‘Oh, yeah,’ and figured out a way to show me the same thing.”
Stills is working on a four-disc box set encompassing his entire career, which started out as a three-disc package. But he says: “I don’t want to have to do it again, so I said, ‘Just do four.’ There isn’t much left off that I care about.”
And while a new CSN live album and DVD is on the cards, he says there’s no chance of new recordings with David Crosby and Graham Nash. “We won’t make another album – we won’t finish one,” he insists.
That prediction appears to include the planned covers record the trio had started with producer Rick Rubin. Stills explains: “You should ask David what happened. I’m not inferring anything, but I was getting along fine. I had an idea for 20 years of making the album we wished we’d written. We started picking songs and stuff. Some of the choices Rick made were pretty off the wall, but we tried them.”

source: classicrockmagazine.com

Jimi Hendrix: "I Don't Want to Be a Clown Anymore"

This story is from the November 15th, 1969 issue of Rolling Stone.

Records, film, press and gossip are collectively ambitious in creating the image of a rock superstar. With Jimi Hendrix – as with Janis Joplin, Mick Jagger and Jim Morrison – mythology is particularly lavish.

Unfortunately, it is also often irreversible–even when it's ill-founded or after the performer himself has gone through changes.

Several weeks ago, Life magazine described Jimi as "a rock demigod" and devoted several color pages to kaleidoscopic projection of his face. Well, why not? The fisheye lens shot on his first album cover shows him in arrogant distortion: on the second album, he becomes Buddha. Lest anyone forget, Leacock-Pennebaker's Monterey Pop has immortalized his pyromaniacal affair with the guitar. Rock-media bedroom talk makes him King Stud of the groupies. Stories circulate that he is rude to audiences, stands up writers, hangs up photographers, that he doesn't talk.

What Jimi's really all about – and where his music is going – is an altogether different thing.

For most of the summer and early fall, Jimi rented a big Georgian-style home in Liberty, New York – one of Woodstock's verdant "suburbs" – for the purpose of housing an eclectic family of musicians: Black Memphis blues guitarists; "new music" and jazz avantgardists; "Experience" member Mitch Mitchell; and – closest to Jimi and most influential – Juma Lewis, a multi-talented ex-progressive jazzman who is now the leader of Woodstock's Aboriginal Music Society.

The hilltop compound – replete with wooded acreage and two horses – was intended for a peaceful, productive musical growth period. But hassles did come, sometimes sending Jimi off on sanity-preserving vacations in Algeria and Morocco: local police were anxious to nab "big-time hippies" on anything from dope to speeding; the house was often hectic with hangers-on; pressure mounted from Jimi's commercial reps to stay within the well-hyped image and not go too far afield experimentally.

But with it all, growth, exchange and – finally – unity was achieved among Jimi and the musicians, whose work-in-progress was evidenced in occasional public appearances in the New York area (at the Woodstock/Bethel Festival, Harlem's Apollo Theater, Greenwich Village's Salvation discotheque, and ABC's Dick Cavett show) and has been recorded for Reprise on an LP which will be released in January. The name of the album, Gypsies, Suns and Rainbows, epitomizes the new Hendrix feeling.

With close friends of Jimi, I drove up to Liberty on a quiet September weekend. The melange of musicians and girls had departed. In a few weeks, Jimi himself was to give up the house, woods and horses for less idyllic prospects: a Manhattan loft and a November hearing on the narcotics-possession charge he was slapped with in Toronto, May 3rd.

Photographs have a funny way of betraying his essentially fragile face and body. He is lean. Almost slight. Eating chocolate chip cookies on the living room couch in this big house – furnished straight and comfortable – he seems boyish and vulnerable.

He offers questions with an unjustified fear of his own articulateness that is charming – but occasionally painful. "Do you, uh – where do you live in the city?" "What kind of music do you li— would you care to listen to?" He is self-effacing almost to a fault: "Do you ever go to the Fillmore? No? – that was a silly question, sorry." "I'm sorry, am I mumbling? Tell me when I'm mumbling. Damn ... I always mumble."

It becomes uncomfortable, so one says: "Jimi, don't keep putting yourself down. There's everybody else to do that for you." He attaches to that statement, repeats it slowly, whips out the embossed Moroccan notebook in which he jots lyrics at all hours of day and night, and scribbles something down.

Fingering through his record collection (extensive and catholic; e.g., Marlene Dietrich, David Peel and the Lower East Side, Schoenberg, Wes Montgomery), he pulls out Blind Faith; Crosby, Stills and Nash; and John Wesley Harding. The Dylan plays first. Jimi's face lights: "I love Dylan. I only met him once, about three years ago, back at the Kettle of Fish [a folk-rock era hangout] on MacDougal Street. That was before I went to England. I think both of us were pretty drunk at the time, so he probably doesn't remember it."

In the middle of a track, Jimi gets up, plugs in his guitar, and – with eyes closed and his supple body curved gently over the instrument – pick up on "Frankie Lee and Judas Priest," riding the rest of the song home with a near-religious intensity.

He talks intently to Juma and his girl. He cherishes real friends and will do anything for them. They, in turn, feel protective toward him. "Poor Jimi," one says. "Everyone's trying to hold him up for something. Those busts ... Even the highway patrol exploits him. They know his car: they stop him on the road between New York and Woodstock and harass him. Then they have something to gloat about for the rest of the day. Once a cop stopped me on the highway and started bragging: 'Hey, I just stopped Jimi Hendrix for the second time today.'"

On the bookcase is a photograph of a Fifties Coasters-type R&B group: processed hair, metallic-threaded silk-lapel suits, shiny shoes. The thin kid on the far left in a high-conked pompadour, grinning over an electric guitar: is it – ? "That's okay," Jimi smiles at the impending laughter. "I don't try to cover up the past; I'm not ashamed of it." But he is genuinely humble about the present. For example, he'd been wanting for some time to jam with jazz and "new music" avantgardists, but worried that such musicians didn't take him seriously enough to ever consider playing with him. "Tell me, honestly," he asked a friend, "what do those guys think of me? Do they think I'm jiving?"

We are listening now to the tape of such a session, the previous night's jam: Jimi on electric guitar, avantgarde pianist Michael Ephron on clavichord, Juma on congas and flute. A beautiful fusion of disparate elements, disjunct and unified at alternating seconds. Now chaotic, now coming together. "Cosmic music," they call it. Ego-free music. Not the sort of stuff the waxlords make many bucks off. Not the kind of sound guaranteed to extend the popularity of a rock superstar.

"I don't want to be a clown anymore. I don't want to be a 'rock and roll star,'" Jimi says, emphatically. The forces of contention are never addressed but their pervasiveness has taken its toll on Jimi's stamina and peace of mind. Trying to remain a growing artist when a business empire has nuzzled you to its bosom takes a toughness, a shrewdness. For those who have a hardness of conviction but not of temperament it isn't a question of selling out but of dying, artistically and spiritually. Refusing to die yet ill-equipped to fight dirty, many sensitive but commercially-lionized artists withdrew. I watch Jimi quietly digging the pictures of faraway people and places in a book, The Epic of Man ("South America ... wow, that's a whole different world. Have you ever been there?") and I wonder just where he will be and what he will be doing five years from now.

We crowd into Jimi's metal-fleck silver Stingray ("I want to paint it over – maybe black") for a sunrise drive to the waterfalls. ("I wish I could bring my guitar – and plug it in down there.") The talk is of puppies, daybreak, other innocentia. We climb down the rocks to the icy brook, then suddenly discover the car keys are missing. Everyone shuffles through shoulder pouches and wallets. "Hey, don't worry," Jimi says. "They'll turn up. No use being hassled about it now." Jimi's taking pictures and writing poetry. "I want to write songs about tranquility, about beautiful things," he says.

Back at the house, he pads around, emptying ashtrays, putting things in order. "I'm like a clucking old grandmother," he smiles. "I've just gotta straighten things out a little." It's 7 a.m. and he has to be at the recording studio in Manhattan at 4 in the afternoon. Everyone's exhausted.

After a few hours of sleep, Jimi floats into the kitchen looking like a fuzzy lamb unmercifully awakened and underfed. He passes up the spread of eggs, pork chops, crescent rolls and tea; breakfast, instead, is a Theragran and a swig of tequila in milk. "Jimi, you never eat ..." Juma's girl worries aloud.

We pile into the car for the two-hour drive into Manhattan. Passing two Afro-haired guys in an Aston-Martin, Jimi turns and flashes a broad grin, extending his fingers in a peace salute. We turn up the radio on Stevie Wonder's "My Cherie Amour"; groove on Neil Diamond, Jackie deShannon, the Turtles. Everything is everything: We're playing with a puppy, grateful for clear skies, clear road, clear AM station. What more could a carload of travelers in an inconspicuous blue Avis ask?

We pull into a roadside stop. No giggly bell-bottomed young girls in sight, Jimi gets out and brings back chocolate milk and ice cream for everyone. Truckers pay no attention. Middle-aged couples glare disdainfully.

The talk is of the session. They'll record at a studio on West 44th Street, then go somewhere else to mix it – maybe Bell Sound of A&R – because Jimi says the recording studio they're going to "has bad equipment ... likes to take advantage of so-called longhair musicians."

Downtown traffic on the West Side highway is light at rush hour. The fortresses of upper Riverside Drive are handsome in the sun, but the air has lost its freshness. Getting off the highway at 45th Street, it's 4:45. The session, costing $200 an hour, was booked to begin at 4:00. But delay couldn't be helped; no hassle. A carful of teenagers alongside us has the radio turned up loud on "If Six Was Nine" – the cut being used as part of advertisment for Easy Rider. I ask Jimi if he's seen the film; he doesn't answer.

Turning around, I find him stretched out on the back seat, legs curled up embryonically, hands clasped under his cheek. Sleeping soundly.

article source: rollingstone.com

Jimi Hendrix Honored By Hard Rock Through Signature Series

MANILA, Philippines — Aiming to help raise funds for charity worldwide, Hard Rock International honors one of the greatest guitarists of all time, Jimi Hendrix.

Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix) joins a legendary roster of rock icons – from The Who, Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton and Bono, to Jon Bon Jovi, Shakira, Ringo Starr and John Lennon – to become part of Hard Rock’s Signature Series program.

The Jimi Hendrix Signature Series: Edition 29, which started Jan. 16 in Hard Rock stores and even online, offers a limited-edition T-shirt and pin. Fifteen percent of the retail price will benefit The Fender Music Foundation and The Jimi Hendrix Park Foundation.

“We are delighted that Jimi is playing such an important role in supporting multiple worthy causes,” said Janie Hendrix, sister of the singer-songwriter.

“It would warm his heart to know that his legacy is being honored this way, continuing to have an impact on the entire universe. At Authentic Hendrix, we’re working to fulfill his vision. Joining our long-term partners the Hard Rock International and The Fender Foundation allows us to continue to shape and inspire our communities through music,” she added.

Although he died at a young age of 27 on September 18, 1970, Hendrix is regarded as “one of the most influential guitarists of all time and has an impact on music and culture today,” according to Annie Balliro, Senior Director of Brand Philanthropy of Hard Rock International.

The Jimi Hendrix Signature Series 29 continues Hard Rock’s long-standing commitment to philanthropy and exemplifies the brand’s “Love All – Serve All.”

The T-shirt, inspired by one-of-a-kind guitar conceived by Hendrix, was commissioned to commemorate Hard Rock’s 40th Anniversary in 2011 at Hard Rock Calling in London.

The pin, on the other hand, features a visual representation of the music legend’s most recognizable songs on a guitar image designed collaboratively in 1970 by Hendrix and artist Alan Aldridge, creator of Hard Rock Cafe’s iconic logo.

article source: mb.com.ph

Jimi Hendrix

40 years ago, September 18, 1970 Jimi Hendrix died at the age of 27 in London. A documentary of Jimi Hendrix life has been released and it has got scenes of the guitar legend playing his favorite music for Little Richard. A number of his legendary making performances are also included in the documentary. It is Narrated by rock icon Slash, this documentary about respected and admired guitarist Jimi Hendrix features some of the famous rock musicians, and it also includes reminiscence of his Family and friends.


The life story of Jimi Hendrix will be recognized and marked whenever one of Jimi's songs are played or reproduced. There is only one Hendrix, an icon and truly one of the most respected guitarists in the music industry.

History's Legendary Guitarists

A guitar is nothing less than a magnificent piece of art for those who are its true lovers. People have played this instrument for many centuries. They play it casually for fun, entertainment purposes, to gain personal satisfaction and even to earn money. However, there are some guitar idols who have etched their names in bold handwriting in the history of legendary guitar players. These guitarists will never be forgotten by their fans and music lovers across the globe.
The list of these extra-ordinarily talented people includes some big names like Carlos Santana, Jimmy Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Jimmy Page, Tom Morello and Bruce Springsteen. These names come from the new age and classical rock bands as well as solo talents who rocked the world while standing alone. These people have inspired hundreds of people around the world to follow their tunes and become skilled guitarists.
Carlos Santana, born as Carlos Augusto Alves Santana in the Mexico City has ruled the world of music with his hypnotising guitar tunes. The American Grammy Award winning talent has complete control over his Spanish guitar and he possesses perfection in playing the electric guitar. The hybridisation of these two brought by Mr. Santana totally mingles with one's ears. His super hit records include Shaman, Supernatural, Zebop, Abraxas and the self-titled album Santana which have all reached the top ten list of the Billboard 200 charts.
The legendary Kurt Cobain, also famous due to his controversial death, is also remembered as one of the very few guitarists who rocked the world to their feet. The guitarist and lead singer of Nirvana has been the primary reason for the band's huge success. His tracks like "Smells like Teen Spirit" and "Come as You Are" are still heard by millions around the world as their rock anthems.
When talking about hard rock bands who have revolutionized the metal genre, especially through the extraordinary talents of their guitarists, Metallica without any shadow of a doubt comes on top. Kirk Hammett, the lead guitarist and songwriter for Metallica, is honoured as the 11th best guitar player in the Rolling Stone's 100 greatest guitarists of all time. Before joining Metallica, he rocked with the underground band Exodus. Joining Metallica polished his guitar playing talents to an unmatchable level. The crazy, but cool sounding strums of Kirk inspired millions around the world to play like him.
Jimmy Patrick Page, the guitarist of Led Zeppelin is another big name in the line-up of history's legendary guitarists. Due to his guitar wonders, Led Zeppelin was the most successful band of the 70's. Ranked at number 9 in the Rolling Stone's list, he was considered as one of the most influential and versatile guitarists of all time.
When talking about new age rock idols, Tom Morello is one name worth mentioning. Tom is the guitarist of the famous band, Audioslave, who have enjoyed a huge amount of success in the recent years. Their versatility is especially noticeable in the guitar works of Morello.

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Rolling Stones Magazine

The Rolling Stones Magazine is a bi-weekly publication that was founded in 1967 by Jann Wenner, who is still the publisher and editor, along with Ralph Gleason, who is a music critic. Founded in San Francisco during a time when it was popular to combine politics and music, it has evolved from reporting on the hippie-era interests to a mixture of in-depth political coverage, music icons, television actors and pop culture stories, with a circulation of 1.4 million people. In the very first edition, it was written that "Rolling Stone is not just about the music, but about the things and attitudes that music embraces."

Perhaps many people started reading Rolling Stones Magazine because they liked the famous person on a certain cover. In fact, many people can remember who was on the cover of the first Rolling Stones Magazine they bought and many people collect them for that same reason. Some of the famous artists that have graced the covers include The Beatles, John Lennon, Tina Turner, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Paul McCartney, Donovan and Otis Redding and Jack Goldman. Some of them have appeared more than once for a variety of reasons.

Of course, stories are another reason that people bought their first copy, and stories like the Patty Hearst abduction, was one of the most famous stories covered by Rolling Stones Magazine. In the 60's and 70's the magazine was also known for stories on how to grow marijuana and buy the supplies to do it. Later, it was criticized for turning its back on marijuana and becoming more mainstream, but many people learned about "grow-lights" and "hydro-growing" from the Rolling Stone Magazine stories, however.

Other reasons that people enjoy reading the magazine are the lists, such as The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The magazine has drawn criticism for being biased on the lists they have compiled in the past because they weren't a very diverse mixture of styles and some contained hardly any female artists.

The history of the magazine has been filled with criticism for bias, especially in the early years when the 21 year-old Wenner first founded the magazine. As it has progressed and aged through the years, the purely rock music, hippie revolution reputation has become more relaxed mainstream and other popular artists and styles of music have been included. The political views aren't quite as slanted as they used to be and the magazine is enjoying a resurging popularity, especially among the crowds that are interested in current events and pop culture.

The Rolling Stones Magazine has been published in the International arena, with many different countries involved. For 2010, a Rolling Stones restaurant is going to be opened in Hollywood, but it will have no musical entertainment ties. The magazine's name originally came from the 1948 Muddy Waters song by the same name. Of course, the Rolling Stones and Dr. Hook's song, "The Cover of the Rolling Stone" has made the magazine an American icon that most people really like or have some kind of criticism of. It has been a survivor in the pop culture reporting arena, even though there have been many changes over the past few decades.

Graeme Olsen writes for http://www.magazinesubscriptions.net.au, specialising in magazine subscriptions for popular titles.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Graeme_I_Olsen

Life Story on Jimi Hendrix

Who was the greatest rock and roll guitarist ever? Always and forever the name of Jimi Hendrix will be nominated answering that question. A vastly talented musician and instrumental technician, the legendary Hendrix combined the Blues, Soul, R&B and Rock & Roll into an innovative and mold breaking style. Coupled with flamboyant stage antics and uncharted mixing arrangements, Hendrix became an international, Rock & Roll and pop culture star. Unable to read music, and largely self taught, Jimi became a virtuoso who could play, compose and introduce spell-binding magic that will rock in musical posterity. The life story on Jimi Hendrix played like the comet he was; flashing across the heavens, burning hot, intense and bright - attracting attention, adulation, curiosity, and then suddenly flaming out.

Johnny Allen Hendrix was born in 1942 in Seattle, Washington; the son of seventeen year old Lucille Jeter and Army soldier James Allen Hendrix. Jimi's early childhood was marked by poverty and personal tragedies. Of the five Hendrix siblings, three were given up to state custody due to physical disabilities and blindness. Jimi became a shy and reserved boy, isolated and withdrawn. But he loved music and would strum a broomstick as if it were a guitar.

When Jimi was 15 his mother died and he bounced between relatives for a time. The sensitive boy was deeply affected and carried within him a burden of sadness, abandonment and neglect. Sensing his son's detachment and loneliness, Jimi's father paid five bucks for a used acoustic guitar to replace a one-string ukulele Jimi had bonded with for a number of years. At age 17, with his talent blossoming, Jimi received his first electric guitar and thereafter the life story on Jimi Hendricks changed forever,

Jimi began his formal musical career playing with local Seattle area bands, some paying gigs, some not. He was fired more than once for over-the-top stage stunts, but his talent was without question and he played left-handed, behind his back and with his teeth.

Still in high school, Jimi was an indifferent student who curiously received an "F" in music. He was eventually expelled for attendance and discipline problems and soon found himself in minor trouble with the law. The solution; Hendrix was ordered to enlist in the Army. But he was a poor soldier and was discharged within a year.

After his Army stint, Hendrix went on the road playing small towns, honky-tonks, warm-up and background for larger, better known acts. Ever expanding, Jimi was soon playing with notable acts such as the Isley Brothers, Ike and Tina Turner and Little Richard.

With his star rising and reputation growing, he traveled to London where he was introduced to the British rock scene. With the help of a few English musical luminaries, Hendrix formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience, a band that would soon hit the top of the charts and play to sellout crowds. Their first album, Are You Experienced, became a mega-seller, second only to the Beatles epic Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Back in the United States, The Experience, now a rock and roll wonder very much in demand, played the Monterey Pop Festival, Fillmore East, and headlined venues coast to coast. Hendrix's fame grew exponentially and in the "sex, drugs, and rock and roll", culture of the times, he was an accomplished practitioner, or if you like - victim.

Legal and personal entanglements mounted including a drug possession arrest and contractual disputes. During this time of high flying success and excess, The Experience broke up. Other notable musicians joined Jimi and as his schedule excelled and his popularity peaked, so did his use of drugs and alcohol, sometimes affecting his work on stage and in the studio.

Hendrix's signature performance was at the famous, iconic, epic, historically footnoted Woodstock Musical Festival in August of 1969. Jimi and his group played a two-hour set, climaxing in Hendrix's solo rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, which has become a representation and marquee of the turbulent times of the 1960's.

Hendrix played his last concert in the contiguous United States in August, 1970 at Seattle's Sick,s Stadium, blocks from his childhood home. He didn't like the area or his memories growing up and he cursed the rain and played badly. He left abruptly, did a show in Hawaii and returned to England. The next time he would be on American soil would be for his funeral. The life story on Jimi Hendrix was over.

Jimi died September 18, 1970 at the age of 27 in the London flat of friend Monika Danneman after drinking heavily and taking a handful of sleeping pills. His sudden, shocking demise engendered speculation and innuendo. Some rumors claimed suicide, others hinted at murder, still others espoused that he was not dead at all, that reports of his death were only a publicity stunt.

The life story on Jimi Hendrix will be memorialized every time one of his songs is played, replayed, copied, re-copied, stolen or new renditions attempted. There was only one Hendrix and though his legacy may be clouded by his risky, showman's lifestyle, he was truly a man for his times. After all, Jimi was one of the first black Rock and Rollers to capture a predominately white audience while incorporating, mixing, and modifying culturally identifiable genres of American Music and turning out his own unique sound.

Wendy Pan is an accomplished niche website developer and author. To learn more about life story on jimi hendrix [http://myrocklegends.info/life-story-on-jimi-hendrix/], please visit My Rock Legends [http://myrocklegends.info/] for current articles and discussions.

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