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Cross, Charles R. Room Full of Mirrors; A bibliography of Jimi Hendrix.  Hachette Books 2005.

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Jimi Hendrix was born on the day after Thanksgiving in 1942, November 27 at that time. Born in King County Hospital, later called Harborview in Seattle, Washington, he was born at 8 pounds and 11 ounces and was considered a gift from God. He was loved by all his family as they were going through tough times, and gave them hope for improvement and a more righteous world for the up-coming generation.

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Jimi was around the age of 3 when he got to see his dad for the first time. His dad was is the army which lead to not much communication through them both. His father Al, wanted Jimi to know who his father was although that's what he already calls him. Up until that point, Jimi was raised by women and was lacking the father figure every child needs.

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In the spring of 1953, Al, Jimi's dad, got a job as a laborer which increased his earnings. With the money he earned, they bought a house for their own. The house might have been 50 years old, but that didn't stop Jimi from seeing the small 900 square feet house feel like a palace. Later on, Jimi's cousin and husband decided to move in with them to take care of him and his brother, and receive the motherly figure that lacks as his own mother only visits occasionally.

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"Jimi had been to that point raised exclusively by women and had lacked any father figure" P. 27.

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In the year of 1955, Jimi's parents went to court to sign away their parental rights of his 4 other siblings. His mom confesses her failure as a mom, and his dad confesses that he was not the father of all 4 of them. His life at home was tough because his father Al, lost his job and fell behind the mortgage payments. Later along the year, Jimi confesses to a girlfriend that he had been sexually assaulted as a child.

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Lucille Jeter Hendrix Mitchell's death. 

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Lucille Jeter Hendrix Mitchell's death. 

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Lucille, Jimi's mother, died in 1958 from a splenic rupture and hemorrhage. Jimi was torn by the idea that his mother was dead. The funeral was scheduled on a Sunday at 2 p.m. that was attended by everyone except his father, himself, and his brother. Already known as a shy kid, Jimi became even more distant to people after his mom's funeral and not being allowed to go. The reason for his distance was for the reason that the day of his mom's funeral his dad wouldn't take him, creating anger towards his father.

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Textual Evidence for 'Lucille Jeter Hendrix Mitchell's death'.

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"Jimi had always been shy, but after Lucille's death, he became more withdrawn and distant. During his adolescence, it was rare for him to initiate a conversation with anyone other than his closest friends" P. 59.

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Around the age of 16, music was an increasingly important part of his life. Jimi's father had decided to gift him his very own guitar. He would practice his guitar in the park. Carmen, his girlfriend at the time, said that she was his first fan and she thought he'll have many fans. The guitar was his life and his life was his guitar. He would play with everyone in the neighborhood who owned an instrument. Jimi had no place to store or carry his guitar so he had to carry it either unprotected or in a paper dry cleaner's sack.

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His first gig was in the basement of the Temple De Hirsch Sinai, a Seattle synagogue. He played a group of older boys as an audition for a permanent spot in the band.During the first set, he did a 'thing' with his guitar that didn't please the band. Later on for the second set, Jimi did not appear back on stage for he had been kicked out. Jimi was in complete disappointment and sat in and alley for an hour rather than going home replaying the moment in his head.

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"After the set break, the band returned to the stage without Jimi... He told Carmen that he had been fired after the first set-fired form his first band on the first night of his progessional career. Rather than going home, he sat in the alley for an hour" P.67.

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As stated in his song "Spanish Castle Magic" in 1968, he did not spend half a day to get to the castle, it took him and hour. His first time on stage was with the Ricking Kings opening for another band in late 1960. Although the majority of the audience was white, the club was integrated and the musicians had embraced R&B and jazz music. After listening for a while, Rich Dangel, which was a huge influence of Jimi, complemented his playing as he stated that he was clearly trying to flatter him.

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In the summer of 1965, he offered himself to many bands as a season players. He had begun writing songs and gave a demo tape to Juggy Murray at Sue Records. Jimi's song came to no interest go Murray and offered him a position as a guitar player. He quickly signed a two year agreement without reading the contract. He might have had second thoughts for he did not talk to Murray again for months. Instead he did some studio work with R&B bandleader Mr. Wiggles. Mr. Wiggles hired Jimi to play on some singles for the Golden Triangle label.

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"Though Jimi's songs were of no interest to Murray, he was offered a position as guitar player. Murray suggested they first settle on a contract, and without even reading the piece of paper, Jimi signed a two-year agreement...Wiggles hired Jimi to play on a series of singles for the Golden Triangle label" P.119.

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In may of 1966, Jimi was playing a gig in New York when he met Linda Keith and Rolling Stones Keith Richards. They took him to their apartment where they talked about music, politics, and drugs. Eventually, the question arrived to Jimi if he wanted to take acid. He said no but said he wanted to try some LSD. The only problem was that he didn't know that acid was the 'street name' for LSD. He soon became addict and wrote any song or any of his works while being 'stoned'. Jimi also stated that being 'stoned' while writing helped him visualize in his head and could see all the notes or riffs in his head.

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During his first time in Britain, he had a gig where everyone was amazed by him. People introduced his and recognized him as 'wild man of borneo'. The name might have been racist but Jimi didn't care for he thought it gave him the idea that it made him sound interesting and foreign which is what he had hoped to achieve. Not only did he get that nickname but he also recieved a nickname from the newspaper. ' Mau Mau' was the nickname he recieved which could have created controversy but a godd thing to include to get and artist attention in media.

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"The name was racist, of course, and the description would never have been used for a white musician. Still, Jimi enjoyed the nickname: It made him sound interesting and foreign, qualities he hoped to cultivate" P.155.

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It was while checking a recording studio where he met 'The Who'. The band was unimpressed with the way Jimi dressed but he didn't mind at all. The band later went to listen to Jimi and the band, 'The Experience", play. They immediately became fans. Eric Clapton decided to invite Jimi to his flat. Jimi decided to not go alone and took his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham along. Jimi and Eric did not converse much for as their girlfriends did to break the awkwardness. Later on Jimi stated he did not converse for he was in such awe for Eric.

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Venue sounds were a thing Jimi had to start dealing with for they were malfunctioning and tipping Jimi off. The system would normally go out of tune or his gear would break. As soon as Jimi started to get man, he would throw temper tantrums that would amaze the crowd and later become the reason to go to a Jimi Hendrix concert. Stories of the occured would go on in papers and would persuade people to go just for the show. When everything would function correctly, people would be disappointed because they didn't get want they read on the paper. On the other hand, people who got the show, would cheer on Jimi to do the unspeakable with his guitar.

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" Technology could also come back to haunt Jimi, paricularly on the concert stage when a venue's sound system was inferior. When his gear broke or went out of tune, he'd invariably become frustrated and his performance sufferes... the crowds wanted to watch a spectacle and were impatient when they didn't get the display they had read about in the papers" P. 186.

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It was during a tour in Scandinavia where the band became exhausted and asked for a month's break. The band had become extremely exhausted especially for the excessive use of drugs that they were using at the time. One night before a gig, Jimi became extremely drunk and trashed his hotel room he was using for the night. Jimi ended up being arrested and only got to be released with a fine that took a third of the band's earnings they got from the tour. This was a major setback for the bank especially economically and reputation wise majorly for Jimi Hendrix.

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Jimi had to home for a concert he was doing in Seattle. Much had changed since the last time he went. Before, he was a common guy who lived a normal life whereas now, he is a 'star' and famous among many. Not only did his life change but so did his family's life change. His dad was now re-married and the rest of his family had grown up. Expecting to receive the same brusque dad he had grown up with. To his surprise, his re-marriage helped for the better of everyone for he is now kind and loving compared to the way he was when Jimi was a small child.

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" Prior to arriving to Seattle, he had mentioned to one interviewer that he was fearful his father might grab him and cut off his hair. Instead, Al took Jimi's hand, put his other hand on his back, and said ' Welcome home, son' " P. 215.

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It was on January 4, 1969 when 'The Experience' went live on BBC. The plan for them was to play two songs and they would end with Jimi singing a song with the host Lulu. The band proceeded to play the two songs but refused to stop and sing with Lulu. Instead of doing what they were supposed to do, Jimi announced that the upcoming song was dedicated to his friends and proceeded with a lengthy version of  'Sunshine of your love'. The stage director became furious and began to signal Jimi to stop. Jimi refuses to do so and continues to do so as he pleases. The band did not stop until their time was over, and got the news that they will never appear on BBC again.

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Jimi Hendrix tribute to Cream on The LuLu show

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After playing in Detroit, the band began its way to Toronto. It was during bag searching they found the drugs. What was found in his bags were six cellophane packages of white powder and a small dark residue of resin. After calling a mobile drug testing lab, Jimi was immediately arrested for the possession of heroin and hashish. Jimi was surprised by how little press his arrest causes. Jimi could have been the biggest rock start in America at this time, but his arrest barely made a few Toronto papers. The major U.S. source that spread the word was 'Rolling Stone', which then became to being sympathetic to Jimi implying that he had been framed.

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"But underneath those items, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who were doing the searching, there was a small glass vial. Inside were six cellophane packages of white powder and a small dark residue of resin. A mobile drug-testing lab was called in, and at one thirty in the afternoon Jimi was arrested for possession of heroin and hashish" P.252.

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TORONTO - Jimi Hendrix is now experienced, in the worst way. He was busted May 3rd at Toronto International Airport for allegedly "illegally possessing narcotics."

The bust, made by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, reportedly uncovered several ounces of a chemical substance in a flight bag being carried by Hendrix.

One Toronto radio station (CFRB) reported that the chemical was in fact heroin - but even the Mounties do not yet make that claim. At last report, their laboratory was still at work analyzing the alleged stash.

The singer/guitarist, now in the fifth week of a two-month concert tour of the US and Canada with his Jimi Hendrix Experience, would say nothing to the press beyond "no comment. I'm innocent and my lawyers will prove it."

Hendrix and his troupe - drummer Mitch Mitchell, guitarist Noel Redding, and five other men - were going through the customs check when an inspector found six small packages inside a glass bottle at the top of Hendrix' bag.
Photos: Jimi Hendrix Through the Years
According to sources at the scene, the Mounties - who were waiting for Hendrix to step off his plane from Detroit - were at first unable to make any positive identification of the substance; nevertheless, they kept the stunned Hendrix detained while they called a mobile police laboratory unit to the airport. After a delay of nearly four hours (the bust took place around 1:30 P.M.) the Mounties took him downtown to police headquarters. Hendrix was finally released on $10,000 bail posted by a Toronto attorney.

At his arraignment before Magistrate Fred Hayes two days later, a June 19 date was set for a preliminary hearing. Youthful Hendrix admirers filled the staid old courtroom as Hendrix entered wearing a pink shirt open to the waist, an Apache-style headband, a multi-colored scarf around his neck, and beads. His manner was dead serious. When the magistrate called his name - James Marshall Hendrix of New York - he rose and leveled a venomous look at the bench, his lips slightly pursed, which said, without need for words, fuck off.

There was no demand for a guilty/not guilty plea. A few words were exchanged, the hearing date set, and in three minutes, Hendrix was on his way out the door.

He is continuing his tour. Hendrix went directly from police headquarters to the Maple Leaf Gardens to appear before a full house of 12,000 in this Lake Ontario port city - just after the bust and questioning.

He walked onstage and said: "I want you to forget what happened yesterday and tomorrow and today. Tonight we're going to create a whole new world." This may be part of his usual rap, but the arrest gave it special impact. Unfortunately - understandably - however, it was not one of Hendrix' best evenings.

He played well, but it never quite got off the ground. The effect was rather like watching a bullfighter who's so good that no bull really challenges him, and therefore there is no danger, and therefore no suspense. Hendrix was just too cool.
The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time: Jimi Hendrix
The next night, in concert at Syracuse, New York, Hendrix improvised a verse or two of new lyrics for a new song. The words came out something like " . . . and I was in this room/full of light and a thousand mirrors . . . "

Those hours of interrogation by the Mounties had apparently taken their toll.

His June hearing date will also allow him to appear, as scheduled, at a Vancouver, B.C., concert on May 22nd. The Jimi Hendrix Experience is also slated for performances at the Northern California Folk Rock Festival in Santa Clara, Calif., on May 24-25th, and a stop in Hawaii before he returns to fight the dope charge.

Hendrix is being represented by the Toronto lawyer as well as by his own attorney, Steve Weiss. There is talk that the defense - logically - will claim Hendrix to be the victim of a plant.

Louis Goldblatt, who operates Celebrity Limousine Service and drove Hendrix around Toronto during his stay, says the singer was obviously surprised when customs inspectors found the purported stash. He describes how Hendrix stepped back, leaned against the railing and shook his head in amazement as if he couldn't believe it. Goldblatt naturally enough will not divulge conversations that took place later as he chauffered Hendrix around, but does recount that Hendrix' attitude was holy jesus, how did this happen?

"He was," in Goldblatt's words, "genuinely dumbfounded by the whole affair."

Goldblatt met Hendrix just as he deplaned, and he witnessed the entire incident. He - and other observers - note that the Royal Canadian Mounties behaved unusually throughout. For one thing, the Mounties (who wear regular blue police uniforms these days, incidentally, and are the chief enforcers of narcotics laws in Canada) customarily do not wait at the airport to make dope busts, as they did in Hendrix' case.

Another item is that all the inquiry and searching at the airport was done right out in the open at the customs gate. The more usual procedure is for officers and those being detained to retire from public view, in respect for the privacy of the accused. But Hendrix and company were forced to stand for hours under the gaze of scores of onlookers at the cake-shaped airport building - rent-a-car girls, cigar stand operators, porters, cab drivers and travelers - while the feds poked through their belongings.

The whole business seemed a bit too pat to Goldblatt, who's seen many (similar) cases. "You should see some of the things that have been left behind in my car for pop people," Goldblatt says. "It's really incredible."

This is most often done as a token of love, but sometimes for spite. And if somebody was out to "get" Hendrix by laying a surprise stash on him - in his suitcase, more precisely, then phoning ahead to tip off the Mounties - there was plenty of time that this might have been accomplished, from the time he left off the suitcase at Detroit to when it arrived back in his hands at Toronto.

Whatever the case, the Mounties do not typically lie in wait at the airport, ready to pounce. Toronto authorities have been getting tough on the free-living hippie community of Yorkeville, more or less Toronto's version of the Haight-Ashbury, in recent months, and there is the possibility that Hendrix may have been caught in the squeeze.

The populace of Toronto are a very conservative lot, and tend to look with suspicion upon anybody who looks and dresses a little different from themselves. Hendrix looks a lot different. Make an example of this freaky, frizzy-haired psychedelic spade (if you go by this reasoning) and maybe you can scare the freaks out of Yorkeville.

The 26-year-old Hendrix has no previous police record and his traveled extensively on concert tours in recent years throughout Europe, Canada, and the U.S. without incident.

He was named Performer of the Year by this publication for "creativity, electricity and balls above and beyond the call of duty" in 1968. His Electric Ladyland was named American and British Rock and Roll Album of the Year, as well. He was chosen Best Performer because: "Blues players, jazz players, rock players - all were agreed that Hendrix' improvizations transcended category and constituted music as imaginative and alive as rock and roll has known. Jimi, more than any other player, has extended the voice of amplified guitar to an incredible new range of emotive sounds."

With Hendrix at the airport, besides Redding and Mitchell, were Jerry Stickles, tour manager; Arthur Johnson, New York-based accountant; Abe Jacob, San Francisco sound engineer; Ron Terry and Red Ruffino, promoters, and Burt McCann, merchandiser of concert programs.

If the substance in question does turn out to be heroin and Hendrix is found guilty, it's a mandatory jail sentence with possibility of getting off by paying a fine or getting a suspended sentence. In Canada, the minimum dope stretch is a year's suspended sentence - and this for possession of grass. Dealing grass or holding anything stronger is punishable by at least a few months in the slammer.

There is the added possibility that by the time of Hendrix' June 19th hearing, the Canadian feds will have tacked charges of trafficking and transporting across the border onto the possession rap. And if he's convicted on all three of these charges, the penalties could be that much stiffer.

The best guess is that a conviction would put Hendrix behind bars for from two to seven years. Canadian courts don't screw around. A dealer was convicted of bringing $250,000 worth of grass in from Africa just the week before Hendrix was busted, and sentenced to 14 years.

In the face of this kind of justice, the likelihood that Hendrix would lose his right to travel outside the United States would be an incidental consideration.

The only light note in any of this has to do with the head of the judge who will hear Hendrix' case. It will be topped by an English-style 17th-century powdered wig.

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TORONTO - Jimi Hendrix is now experienced, in the worst way. He was busted May 3rd at Toronto International Airport for allegedly "illegally possessing narcotics." The bust, made by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, reportedly uncovered several ounces of a chemical substance in a flight bag being carried by Hendrix.

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On December 8, 1969, Jimi had to go to trial for his arrest of drug possession from his was to Toronto. Jimi had no other option but to state that someone must have put the drugs, and he wasn't aware of them being in his bags. Jimi was the first to testify with saying that fans would often give him gifts of drugs like hashish cookie. He had admitted using hashish but said he had never used heroin. According to Jimi, a girl with a yellow top had given him a vial which he thought was Bromo-Seltzer, after he had complained to her about a headache. He had stuck it into his bag and completely forgotten about it and would have never thought it was heroin.

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It was only a week into a tour and Jimi was already becoming hard to work with and struggling with the habits of performing. In Madison, Wisconsin he had gone on stage drunk and stated that the Vietnam war was the end of America. He then proceeded to say the 'Room Full of Mirrors' was about getting so high that all you can see is you and your reflection here and there. His personality was so bad that his bandmates believe that it was something much more than alcohol to act that way. During his performance, his stage rap was described as a tone of desperation.

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"Only a week into the tour, Jimi was already struggling with the grind, and in Madison, Wisconsin, he came onstage drunk" P. 292.

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Jimi arrived on Maui on July 28, 1970 to film the movie 'Rainbow Bridge' . The film released in 1972 and was described as 'acid trip memorabilia' by 'Rolling Stones'. The film helped Jimi with restoration and much-needed respite. Melinda Merryweather , part of the cast and befriended him, said he lived maui and it seemed to be he was really happy to be there. Jimi also told her that he wanted to retire to live in the island and grow grapes on the side of the volcano. The trip was also a physical cleansing for Jimi from drugs. Jimi didn't stop using drugs in the time he was in Maui, but it really helped him to use less, and refused the idea of taking heroin.

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It was Friday, September 10, 1970, when Jimi Hendrix was found dead in his hotel room. He had had vast amounts of drugs and alcohol, but that wasn't enough for him. He took nine sleeping pills that would have been almost twenty times the recommended dose for a size and wight like Jimi's. All the contents he had taken in the night would soon heave up in his stomach. The combination of the contents would cause him top spit and then get aspirated into his lungs, which leads him to stop breathing. A person would normally cough out the material but Jimi was past that . His windpipe would needed to be cleared in order for him to survive, but no one was there to do so.

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Some time during the early morning hours, the combination of the Vesparax, the alcohol in his system, and the other drugs he'd used that night caused Jimi to heave up the contents of his stomach" P.332.

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LONDON - Jimi Hendrix is dead at age 27.

The exact nature of the death is still vague, and a coroner's inquest is to be held in London September 30th. Police, however, say it was a drug overdose. They say he took nine sleeping pills and died of suffocation through vomit.

According to Eric Burdon [ The Animals, War], Hendrix left behind for the girlfriend in whose apartment he died what Burdon called a "suicide note" which was a poem several pages in length. The poem is now in the possession of Burdon, the last musician with whom Hendrix played before he died.

Said Burdon: "The poem just says the things Hendrix has always been saying, but to which nobody ever listened. It was a note of goodbye and a note of hello. I don't think Jimi committed suicide in the conventional way. He just decided to exit when he wanted to."

Burdon went on BBC television September 21st - three days after Hendrix's death - to say Jimi "killed himself." He made no mention then of the poem he told Rolling Stone about two days earlier. The inquest was to have been held September 23rd, but the day after Burdon appeared on television, it was postponed one week. (Burdon refuses to show the poem to anyone.)

"I don't believe it was suicide," answered Michael Jeffery, Jimi's personal manager. "I just don't believe Jimi Hendrix left Eric Burdon his legacy for him to carry on. Jimi Hendrix was a very unique individual.

"I've been going through a whole stack of papers, poems and songs that Jimi had written, and I could show you 20 of them that could be interpreted as a suicide note," he continued.

Speaking with Jeffery on another phone extension, Michael Goldstein, Jimi's publicity agent, said, "A lot of foolish things will be said in the next few weeks by people who considered themselves close to Jimi Hendrix; they will not be saying them for Jimi; they will be saying them for themselves."

Both Jeffery and Goldstein said that Burdon was never that close to Hendrix, and also noted that Burdon and his current manager, Steve Gold, have a lawsuit in the courts against Jeffery, Burdon's former manager.

Hendrix had spent Thursday evening, September 17th, at the Samarkand Hotel flat of Monika Danneman, a German painter. She found him in a coma Friday morning and called an ambulance. The ambulance rushed to the hotel on Landsdowne Crescent, in London's Nottinghill Gate district, and took him to St. Mary Abbot's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival at 11:45 a.m., London time.

Police said the sleeping pills were missing from a bottle in Miss Danneman's flat, which she had rented in mid-August for six weeks, and that Hendrix had taken some when he retired the night before. They took the rest of the pills as evidence.

Hendrix had been in Europe since he played the Isle of Wight Festival August 30th. That was his first British gig in two years, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience (with Billy Cox on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums) had taken off almost immediately for a tour of the Continent. The tour was supposed to end in Rotterdam on September 14th, but that final date had been cancelled when Cox suffered a nervous breakdown and had to return to the States. Noel Redding, the original Experience bassist, was due to leave New York to join the group in London when word came of the death.

Jimi had been staying at the Cumberland Hotel off Park Lane since he arrived last month. He was due to check out after Wednesday night, but asked the manager instead to book him over one more evening. However, he didn't return Thursday night.

The last time he had appeared before an audience was Wednesday night, when he joined Burdon and War on stage at Ronnie Scott's Club in London for a jam session.

"I know he had been in a bad state for a year," said Burdon. "He came out of his shell on Tuesday and came over to the club and asked if he could play with us the next night, the 16th, which he did. At first he played like an amateur, real bad, using stage tricks to cover up. Then he came on with a solo which was up to scratch, and the audience dug it. He went off stage and came back, playing the background to 'Tobacco Road.'" That song was his last.

Hendrix had been for some time attempting to become more independent in his business affairs. He saw Electric Lady as a step toward that goal. Burdon says that a week before Hendrix died, Jimi told him he was going to get new management.

"Numerous amounts of times he complained about his managers, I'd have to say he did," said Buddy Miles, who played with Hendrix in the Band of Gypsys. "I ain't gonna lie and say I don't know, because I was with him a lot and got to him in ways lots of others didn't.

"The few good things Jimi got, he really deserved. Even more things, as far as I'm concerned. When I left the Band of Gypsys, I know Jimi was extremely unhappy," Miles added.

"He never said to me he wanted to change management," Jeffery replied to these statements. "What happened was, both of us were expanding in areas, and at certain times he needed very close attention. There was a time when he wanted to expand the group, and the thing was, half my energies were in the studio and other things, and I didn't have time to devote energies fully to helping expand the group.

"Both he and I felt that the three-way function of manager - artist - agent was quite likely to fall apart, because the times are different than they once were in show business. People outside the circle mistook this for discontent, but it wasn't, because Jimi was intelligent and bright enough. If he wanted to split, he would have split.

"As far as being artistically frustrated, Jimi had an incredible genius about him, and the common thing with most artists of that caliber is that they are constantly artistically frustrated," Jeffery added.

"He told everybody different things. He was that way. Always changing his mind," Burdon said over the weekend. "Hendrix was in a such a deep well that the only way out was to stop playing music and try to clear up the mess. But he knew that without music he would be destroyed anyway. He realized that the only thing to do was to keep on playing and died anyway because he was being stifled creatively.

"He realized that the only way he could get what he wanted, helping the Panthers, and setting up an anti-ghetto project in Harlem, was to die and hope that someone else would take care of the business for him using the things that he left behind, his music and his last poem, to make the money," stated Burdon.

Jimi's affairs were in a state of confusion at the time. At one point his road manager, Jerry Stickles, said that the day Hendrix died, he (Stickles) had called Dick Katz, his European agent, to tell him that Jimi wanted to do another European tour and a British tour as soon as possible. Katz lined up a German tour and some British dates that day before he heard the news, according to Stickles.

At another point, however, Stickles said that at Jimi's request he made airline reservations to return to the States September 21st, because Jimi wanted to finish up some recording for a new album by the Experience. (All that needed to be done on that album was the mastering, which Hendrix was going to do himself at Electric Lady.)

None of Jimi's friends or associates except Burdon, at first, would discuss the matter, and in the absence of a complete report, the London press chose to carry instead pure sensationalism. One Sunday paper had an "exclusive story" by a groupie which told of five-in-a-bed orgies with Hendrix.

In America, the first report - spread across the country primarily by FM radio within hours after his death - was that Hendrix had died of a heroin overdose. American newspapers generally carried the story of his death on the front page Friday afternoon and Saturday morning.

September 26th, Radio Geronimo in England played unreleased Hendrix material the entire evening, including a tape of Jimi with Buddy Miles and the Last Poets, and another unreleased live album.

The funeral was to have been Monday, September 28th, in Jimi's hometown of Seattle, Washington.

James Marshall Hendrix was born November 27th, 1945. On the day of his death, his father, James, a landscape architect, talked about his son's childhood. The Hendrix family lives in a simple house with lawn and garden in the better part of Seattle's black neighborhood, near Lake Washington. The mantel is covered with pictures, guitar straps, magazine clips and other evidence of Jimi's illustrious career. Mr. Hendrix has remarried, and has two daughters by that second marriage. He also has a 22-year-old son, Leon, by the first marriage.

The last time the family saw Jimi was on July 26th, the day after Leon began doing time for grand larcency. As always when he was in Seattle, Jimi stayed at the Hendrix house that weekend.

Mr. Hendrix recalled that Jimi first became interested in music when he was 10 years old. His father remembers going into Jimi's room one night in the dark and tripping over a broom. He asked Jimi why the broom was there, since he obviously wasn't using it to clean up his room.

"That's my guitar, Dad," Jimi had answered. "I'm learning how to play it."

When he was 11, his father bought him a cheap acoustic guitar, and at 12, Jimi got his first electric guitar. He learned quickly, and was playing in bands at 13. When he was 14, that first electric guitar (inscribed "Jimmy") was stolen, and he was unable to replace it until his sophomore year at Garfield High.

Members of Jimi's bands were quite surprised when he became a star, because he seemed the least likely person in any of his groups to make it. He was then only an average musician, and gave no indication of the almost compulsive creativity that he showed later. He was also known for being very shy and reserved. He displayed no stage presence at all.

Jimi quit Garfield High in the middle of his senior year and went to work as a handyman for his father, who was then doing mostly gardening and lawn jobs. One day as they were working, Jimi told his father that he felt the work was a drag, and that he'd just decided to join the Army instead. This was in 1963.

He left Seattle within a few days and joined the 101st Airborne Division, stationed in the South. His father remembers going into Jimi's room right after he left, seeing the guitar, and expressing surprise that Jimi hadn't taken it with him. Sure enough, a few days later he got a call from Jimi, who said the Army was driving him mad and he needed his guitar "right away."

Except for a photo he received in the mail, that was the last time Mr. Hendrix heard from his son until Jimi reached England in 1966. He had been discharged from the military after 14 months when he suffered a back injury in a parachute jump, and he'd spent the next couple of years criss-crossing the United States, playing with more than 40 rhythm and blues groups. Using the name Jimmy James, he played for six months with a New York group called the Blue Flames. At various times, he backed Little Richard, Jackie Wilson, the Isley Brothers, and Wilson Pickett.

"I got tired of feeding back 'In the Midnight Hour,'" he told an interviewer in 1968. "I was a backing musician playing guitar."

He also played with a group called Curtis Knight and the Squires, and, after he became a star in 1967, Capitol Records embarrassed him by releasing an album called Got That Feeling; Jimi Hendrix Plays, Curtis Knight Sings, an album that was poorly recorded and of no historical value. It revealed only traces of the Hendrix artistry. Hendrix said: "The Curtis Knight album was from bits of tape they used from a jam session, bits of tape, tiny little confetti bits of tapes ... it was done. Capitol never told us they were going to release that crap. That's the real drag about it. It shows exactly how some people in America are still not where it's at, regardless. You don't have no friend scenes, sometimes makes you wonder. That cat and I used to really be friends. Plus I was just at a jam session and here they just try to connive and cheat and use. It was really a bad scene."

In 1966, he was playing (and, for the first time, singing) with a group at the Cafe Wha? on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village when Chas Chandler, then the bass player with the Animals, walked in. Chandler was enthusiastic about Hendrix, who had assembled this group only two months before, but Jimi expressed doubts about his own musical ability and about Chandler's claim that he could become a star. Two weeks later, after a quick tour with the Animals, Chandler returned to New York, confirmed his first impressions, and talked Hendrix into going back to England with him. This was in September, 1966.

A few days later, James Hendrix, Sr., received a phone call at about 4 a.m.

"It's me, Jimi. I'm in England, Dad," said the voice at the other end of the line. "I met some people and they're going to make me a big star. We changed my name to J-i-m-i."

Surprised, his father asked why he'd changed his name, and Jimi replied that it was "just to be different." Mr. Hendrix remembers telling Jimi that if he was really calling from London, the call was going to be very expensive. They both started crying over the phone. "We were both so excited I forgot to even tell him I'd remarried," his father says.

Once in England, Hendrix formed a new band. Noel Redding, who had come to audition as guitarist in the Animals, met Hendrix through Chandler. "Can you play bass?" was the first thing Jimi asked Redding. He never had before, but he immediately became bassist, and sometimes-guitarist, with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Mitch Mitchell, another Englishman, was picked as drummer.

Six weeks after he left New York, four days after forming his trio, Hendrix opened at the Olympia in Paris, on the bill with French pop star Johnny Halliday. He reminisced about it for an interviewer in 1968:

"Paris Olympia is worse than playing the Apollo. Four days after we got together, we were playing the Olympia. It is the biggest thing in Europe. The reception was great and we played four songs. We were trying to get together. We did everything. We never played these songs except once in Germany. We got together with 'Midnight Hour,' 'Land of 1000 Dances,' 'Everyone Needs Someone to Love' and 'Respect.'"

They took off on a tour of Europe. Eight days after the Beach Boys broke an attendance record by playing to 7,000 in two shows at the Tivoli in Stockholm, the Experience drew 14,500 for two shows. They became the second group ( the Rolling Stones were the first) to sell out the Sports Arena in Copenhagen. At the Seville Theater in London, they were the first act ever to sell out both shows, and, when a return engagement was booked a month later, tickets sold out the day they became available. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was, as the European press said, "an overnight smash."

Now it was time to return to America. With several hit singles and a successful album in Europe behind him, Hendrix made his U.S. debut in 1967 at the Monterey International Pop Festival. Few in the audience knew that, until nine months ago, Hendrix had lived his whole life in this country. Few knew anything about him except that this "freaky black English bluesman" was making his "American debut."

Lou Adler, with John Phillips, co-producer of the festival, said he heard of Hendrix from Paul McCartney - "He told me about some guy in England playing guitar with his teeth." Adler decided on Hendrix and the Who as the "new" acts to be introduced to the Monterey audience.

In the liner notes to the live recording of Jimi's performance (ironically, it was the last Hendrix recording to be released before his death), Pete Johnson of Warner Brothers writes what happened:

"Their appearance at the festival was magical; the way they looked, the way they performed and the way they sounded were light years away from anything anyone had seen before. The Jimi Hendrix Experience owned the future, and the audience knew it in an instant."

Another ironic note was the presence of Jimi's R&B counterpart, the late Otis Redding, whose own Monterey performance is coupled with Hendrix's on the new album.

And yet another fallen star was at Monterey - Brian Jones, who attended the festival with Nico and spent most of his time as a spectator, seated in the press section. Adler recalled: "Brian was over here for his own pleasure, but he went up on stage and introduced one of the English acts - either Jimi or the Who." Hendrix was on the same bill as the Who and the Mamas and the Papas. His next performance would be at the Hollywood Bowl with the Mamas and the Papas.

The stories that came out about Hendrix after Monterey were enough to shoot him straight to the top, just like in Europe. "Purple Haze" became a hit single, Are You Experienced? a hit album. The Jimi Hendrix Experience, electric hair and all, was taking America by storm.

But if the audience knew just where Jimi Hendrix was at, the same can't be said of the music business brains. In one of those showbiz anomalies, the Experience took off on a tour, second billed to the Monkees, playing to the kiddies. When a promoter complained (under pressure from the Daughters of the American Revolution) that their stage act was "too sexy," the Experience refused to modify it, instead dropping out of that tour and packing houses on one of their own.

Monterey was where Jimi introduced his guitar-burning bit, and by now he was finding it necessary to explain: "At the Monterey Festival, I decided to destroy my guitar at the end of the song. It was a painted guitar. I'd just finished painting it that day and was really into it. I had my little bag on stage. I had my rawhide bag on stage, carried everything in it including kerosene for my lighter which was given to me by Chas at Christmas. I destroyed my guitar again in Washington, D.C. It was accidental.

"I think of people who say that setting your guitar on fire has nothing to do with the music as cellophane, bags and bags of cellophane. Of cellophane but in bags of cellophane. Have you ever thought of lighting cellophane on fire? There's no need to."

The British pop magazine Disc voted him Musician of the Year for 1967, as did the pop newspaper Melody Maker. In 1968 - by which time each of his first three albums were gold - he was named Performer of the Year by Rolling Stone.

When Jimi made his triumphant return to Seattle early in 1968, he received a key to the city and an honorary diploma from Garfield High. His father was floored when he saw Jimi in purple velvet cape and rainbow shirt. Not only did the elder Hendrix not realize how big a star Jimi had become, but he remembered his son as a conservative dresser with a subdued, reserved personality.

But if Hendrix was a brash dresser, if his stage act was pure mayhem, he also had a distinct ambivalence toward being a rock and roll star. Onstage, he was what every mother feared when she expressed doubts about rock and roll's effect on her daughter. Offstage, he remained the same quiet, boyish, seemingly vulnerable Jimi Hendrix as always.

The ambivalence became more noticeable in 1969, his most unproductive year. Hendrix became more uncommunicative, more withdrawn, and the Experience broke up. Noel Redding had his own group, Fat Mattress, and Jimi was saying little to anyone.

In May, he was up for his first, and only, dope bust. It came as he was crossing the border into Canada; the charge was possession of heroin and hashish. Hendrix claimed he didn't know what was in the bag, that a fan had given it to him a few days earlier, and he had packed it without looking to see what it was.

At his trial last December, he said he had tried just about everything from grass to cocaine - but never heroin - a few times, and that he had "outgrown" dope of any kind. The trial lasted three days, and the jury found him innocent of both charges.

Still, through most of last summer, he kept himself out of the public eye. Billy Cox, an old Army buddy, was announced as his new bass player, and Mitchell stayed on. Jimi spent most of the summer with an "electric family" of musicians - everyone from old bluesmen to avant garde classical composers - in upstate New York. He questioned whether he was taken seriously by other musicians. He said the new "family" was going to do what he called, for lack of a better term, "sky church music" and that the group would have other singers and songwriters.

"I don't want to be a clown anymore," Jimi told one interviewer. "I don't want to be a rock and roll star."

But the musical family didn't work out, and when Hendrix surfaced again, it was New Year's Eve at the Fillmore East and he was playing with Cox and old friend Buddy Miles on drums. This was A Band of Gypsys. Bill Graham danced in the stage wings during their set, then personally went up to the dressing room to tell Hendrix it was the best music he'd ever heard in his hall.

Although all but the Curtis Knight albums were on Warner-Reprise, Jimi still owed Capitol one album through an old contract deal. He gave them the Band of Gypsys album, although in later interviews he revealed he wasn't completely satisfied with the performance because his guitar was out of tune. Stylistically, the music was close to the "Purple Haze" days, and Hendrix had merely stood on stage and casually played his guitar, with none of the old gyrations.

Just a couple weeks later, at the Moratorium concert in Madison Square Garden, he put down his guitar in the middle of the second song, said "We're not quite getting it together," and walked off the stage. He was depressed about the new group. The music just wasn't right, and soon he was back with the original Experience.

In an interview given at that time, Jimi explained what had happened to the Gypsys: "Maybe I just started noticing the guitar for a change. It's like the end of a beginning maybe or something. I figure that Madison Square Garden is like the end of a big long fairy tale. Which is great. I think it's like the best ending I could possibly have come up with.

"The Band of Gypsys was outasite as far as I'm concerned. It was just ... going through head changes is what it was, I really couldn't tell - I don't know: I was very tired. You know, sometimes there's a lot of things that add up in your head about this and that and they might hit you at a very peculiar time, which happened to be at a peace rally, you know? And here I'd been fighting the biggest war I ever fought. In my life. Inside, you know? And like that wasn't the place to do it."

Supposedly, things were to be better than ever with the Experience together again, but that didn't turn out to be true. Relationships between the three weren't entirely patched up, and for the rest of this year he played with Mitchell and either Cox or Redding.

One of the last interviews Jimi Hendrix gave was to Melody Maker, the British pop newspaper, around the time of the Isle of Wight. Jimi told reporter Roy Hollingworth about his fear that Europeans didn't regard him as they used to.

"While I was doing my vanishing act in the States I got this feeling that I was completely blown out of England. I thought they had forgotten me over here. I'd given them everything I'd got, I thought maybe they didn't want me anymore, because they had a nice set of bands. Maybe they were saying, oh, we've had Hendrix, yeah, he was okay. I really thought I was completely through here," he said.

Jimi was pleased to find he was wrong, that they still liked him in Europe, and the interview ended with him stressing, "I'm happy, it's gonna be good."

Hendrix explained that he had been "... thinking about the future. Thinking that this era of music - sparked off by the Beatles - had come to an end. Something new has got to come, and Jimi Hendrix will be there.

"I want a big band. I don't mean three harps and 14 violins. I mean a big band full of competent musicians that I can conduct and write for. And with the music we will paint pictures of earth and space, so that the listener can be taken somewhere.

"It's going to be something that will open up a new sense in people's minds. They are getting their minds ready now. Like me, they are going back home, getting fat, and making themselves ready for the next trip.

"You see, music is so important. I don't any longer dig the pop and politics crap. That's old-fashioned. It was somebody's personal opinion. But politics is old hat. Anyone can go round shaking babies by the hand and kissing the mothers, and saying that it was groovy. But you see, you can't do this in music. Music doesn't lie. I agree it can be misinterpreted, but it doesn't lie.

"When there are vast changes in the way the world goes, it's usually something like art and music that changes it. Music is going to change the world next time.

"We are going to stand still for a while, and gather everything we've learned musically in the last 30 years, and we are going to blend all the ideas that worked into a new form of classical music. It's going to take some doing to figure out all the things that worked, but it's going to be done.

"I dig Strauss and Wagner - those cats are good, and I think that they are going to form the background of my music. Floating in the sky above it will be blues - I've still got plenty of blues - and then there will be Western sky music and sweet opium music (you'll have to bring your own opium) and these will be mixed together to form one.

"You know the drug scene came to a big head. It was opening up things in people's minds, giving them things that they just couldn't handle. Well, music can do that, you know, and you don't need any drugs.

"The term 'blowing someone's mind' is valid. People like you to blow their minds, but then we are going to give them something that will blow their mind, and while it's blown, there will be something to fill the gap. It's going to be a complete form of music," he had said.

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LONDON - Jimi Hendrix is dead at age 27. The exact nature of the death is still vague, and a coroner's inquest is to be held in London September 30th. Police, however, say it was a drug overdose. They say he took nine sleeping pills and died of suffocation through vomit.