A Jimi Hendrix experience

An unusual biography of the legend built from quotes, easily accessible to the public, is a fitting polychromatic tribute

JIMI HENDRIX: STARTING AT ZERO
Compiled by Alan Douglas & Peter Neal
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Pages: 256
Price: Rs 499

In his 1971 double album Back to The Roots, British blues musician John Mayall included a song called "Accidental Suicide". It was a requiem for American guitarist and fellow traveller Jimi Hendrix: "I want to say a thing or two regarding Jimi Hendrix/Seems to be a case of accidental suicide..."

Even though the song was written approximately a year after Jimi Hendrix's well-documented death in 1969 at age 27, what's striking is that this single event not only inspired a dirge but even has a separate Wikipedia page dedicated to it (http://goo.gl/xxdca4). That, in a sense, sums up the music career of a celebrated musician who had to travel far from home to earn his spurs, gained fame (and some notoriety) but died young. 

Born poor but self-taught, starvation and ennui forced Jimi Hendrix to move across the "pond" at a young age. He began his playing career in USA but soon grew frustrated with the lack of opportunities, especially because agents and record companies were forcing musicians into generic strait-jackets - blues, soul, rock or some such. Hendrix found this repugnant; he wanted to do it all, and he wanted to do it his way. But, the opportunities at home were limiting for musicians like him.

A chance meeting and an impulsive invitation to visit England turned out to be the turning point. Hendrix's first break came when he sat in with Eric Clapton's Cream as a sessions musician. Hendrix was in awe of Clapton and the British guitarist's influence played out in many different ways. For one, Clapton's inimitable Cream sound - a signature stitching of chord progressions, guitar riffs - made a profound impression on Hendrix, so much so that faint traces of a Cream influence can be detected in some of his own compositions. The similarities extended to band composition as well. Like Cream, Hendrix chose to restrict his band Experience to three members - a drummer (Mitch Mitchell), a bassist (Noel Redding) and a lead guitar (Hendrix).

Hendrix felt any additional instrument - even a keyboard - would spoil the originality of the sound. "We don't want to be classed in any category. My music isn't pop. It's ME. My guitar is my notes, our notes, regardless of where they came from." Hendrix's music turned out to be a pastiche of blues, rock, soul, jazz rhythms. He had another invaluable ally, hidden from the headlines, who helped him chisel out a new sound: a sound engineer called Roger Mayer.

This unique sound took England by storm. By December 1966, Hendrix released his first single "Hey Joe" , which went straight to number 4 spot in the UK charts in just two months. The second single "Purple Haze" was released in March 1967 and in six days reached number 3 spot.

There was another deep influence on Hendrix, which not only changed his musical orientation but also might have indirectly resulted in this book. Hendrix bumped into Bob Dylan when both were bumming around for gigs in Greenwich Village, New York. "He doesn't have to be stoned when he writes, although he probably is...I could never write the kind of words he does, but he's helped me out in trying to write because I've got  thousand songs that will never be finished...but now I have a little more confidence in trying to finish one."

This fortuitous meeting opened up some creative spigot somewhere. Hendrix wrote prolifically and compulsively: in hotel rooms or diners, on napkins, cigarette cartons, hotel stationery, on whatever he could lay his hands. The result is a profusion of lyrics, random writings, poems, diary entries, all written across a multitude of media. In addition, Hendrix gave a lot of interviews in the four tumultuous years that he spent in the spotlight.

Record producer Alan Douglas and rock-historian-cum-film-maker Peter Neal were working on a film biography of Hendrix when they started collecting Hendrix's quotes available in the public domain. When interspersed with all his scattered writing, this store of archival material provided an unfettered, if somewhat manic and patchy, view of Hendrix's life and a credible trajectory of his musical growth. This material was thereafter re-arranged into a narrative form that resembles an autobiography. It helped that Alan Douglas knew Hendrix intimately and had spent considerable time with him.

The end-product is a polychromatic story: of a distinctive sound forged in hardship but eventually tuned by a steely resolve, of a music that feverishly married words, notes and chords to deliver a multi-hued visual imagery, of on-stage performances that banished all remnants of Edwardian gentility into obscurity. The chronological arrangement of the material helps trace the progress of Hendrix's personality. If there's one thing that's missing from this book, it's  a good index. But, it did make me reach once again for my old Hendrix albums. That one indicator alone should mark this effort as a success.