Jimi Hendrix

• 1. Introduction

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  Jimi Hendrix died in London on the 18th of September 1970, at the age of 27, from barbiturate-related asphyxia. He was, by then, the world's highest-paid rock musician. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which inducted his band in 1992, calls him arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music. Yet his first guitar was a one-string ukulele he found in someone's garbage. He learned by following along to Elvis Presley songs, picking out single notes by ear. The distance between that ukulele and the stages of Woodstock and the Isle of Wight is the story this documentary follows. How did a shy boy who carried a broom around school, pretending it was a guitar, become a musician who could make an instrument sound like rockets and bombs? Who saw the talent first, and who almost missed it? And why did so much of his recorded life become a battleground of contracts and lawsuits, even after his death?

• 2. A Closet In Seattle

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  Johnny Allen Hendrix was born on the 27th of November 1942 in Seattle, the first of his mother Lucille's five children. His father Al was stationed in Alabama at the time, drafted into the US Army for World War II. Al's commanding officer placed him in the stockade to stop him going AWOL to see his infant son. He spent two months locked up without trial, receiving only a telegram announcing the birth. In 1946, the boy's parents renamed him James Marshall Hendrix, honoring Al and his late brother Leon Marshall. The household Al returned to was poor and unstable. He and Lucille both struggled with alcohol and fought when intoxicated. The violence sometimes drove their son to hide in a closet inside their home. The family moved frequently, staying in cheap hotels and apartments around Seattle. His brother Leon, born in 1948, drifted in and out of foster care, and the two boys lived under an almost constant threat of separation. Three younger siblings, Joseph, Kathy, and Pamela, were all given up to foster care and adoption. On the 17th of December 1951, when Hendrix was nine, his parents divorced and Al was granted custody of him and Leon. When Lucille died on the 2nd of February 1958, her spleen ruptured after years of liver cirrhosis. Al refused to take his sons to the funeral. He gave them shots of whiskey instead, telling them that was how men should deal with loss.

• 3. Broom To Stratocaster

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  At Horace Mann Elementary School in Seattle, a young Hendrix carried a broom everywhere, holding it like a guitar. His clinging to it lasted more than a year, and the school's social worker grew alarmed. She wrote a letter requesting funds meant for underprivileged children, warning that leaving him without a guitar might cause psychological damage. Her request failed. In 1957, helping his father clear an older woman's home, Hendrix found a ukulele with a single string among the garbage, and she let him keep it. The first real instrument came in mid-1958, an acoustic guitar that cost five dollars. He played for hours every day, studying more experienced guitarists and listening to blues artists like Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, and Robert Johnson. The first tune he learned was the television theme Peter Gunn. He formed an early band, the Velvetones, but without an electric guitar he could barely be heard. In mid-1959 his father relented and bought him a white Supro Ozark. His fascination with the Fender Stratocaster came later, in 1966, when a girlfriend loaned him money to buy a used model built around 1964. He called it the best all-around guitar for the kind of work he was doing.

• 4. The Army Years

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  Caught twice riding in stolen cars before he turned 19, Hendrix faced a choice between prison and the Army, and enlisted on the 31st of May 1961. After eight weeks of basic training at Fort Ord, California, he joined the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He wrote home that there was nothing but physical training and harassment, that they worked you to death. His obsession was elsewhere. He had left his guitar with his girlfriend Betty Jean Morgan in Seattle, and begged his father to send it, writing, I really need it now. His father shipped the red Silvertone Danelectro, on which Hendrix had hand-painted the words Betty Jean. His neglect of his duties drew taunts, and peers once hid the guitar until he begged for it. In November 1961, fellow serviceman Billy Cox heard him playing and described his technique as a combination of John Lee Hooker and Beethoven. The two jammed and soon formed a loose band, the Casuals. On the 11th of January 1962, Major General Charles W. G. Rich awarded Hendrix the Screaming Eagles patch. But his platoon sergeant, James C. Spears, filed a damning report, writing that Private Hendrix had no interest whatsoever in the Army and would never meet a soldier's standards. On the 29th of June 1962, Hendrix was granted a general discharge under honorable conditions.

• 5. The Chitlin Circuit

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  In September 1962, Hendrix and Cox moved about twenty miles across the state line to Clarksville, Tennessee, and formed the King Kasuals. There Hendrix learned to play with his teeth, mimicking a gimmick he had seen from another guitarist. He later joked that in Tennessee you had to play with your teeth or you got shot, leaving a trail of broken teeth across the stage. The band moved to Nashville's Jefferson Street, the heart of the city's black community and its rhythm and blues scene. For two years he made a living on the circuit of Southern venues affiliated with the Theater Owners Booking Association, widely known as the Chitlin' Circuit. He backed soul, R&B, and blues musicians including Wilson Pickett, Slim Harpo, Sam Cooke, Ike and Tina Turner, and Jackie Wilson. In February 1964 he won first prize in the Apollo Theater amateur contest, and an audition led to a place in the Isley Brothers' backing band, the I.B. Specials. He recorded the two-part single Testify with them in March 1964. Hendrix later joined Little Richard's touring band, the Upsetters, working with him through mid-1965. The two clashed over tardiness, wardrobe, and stage antics, and Richard's brother Robert fired him in late July. By 1966 Hendrix had moved to New York City's Greenwich Village, formed Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, and taken a residency at the Cafe Wha? on MacDougal Street.

• 6. The Man Who Saw It

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  Linda Keith, the girlfriend of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, was mesmerised watching Hendrix play at the Cheetah Club in New York. She tried to interest Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham and producer Seymour Stein, who both rejected him. She then referred him to Chas Chandler, who was leaving the Animals and looking to manage artists. Chandler watched Hendrix play Hey Joe at the Cafe Wha? and was convinced he could turn the Billy Roberts song into a hit. He brought Hendrix to London on the 24th of September 1966 and persuaded him to change the spelling of his name from Jimmy to the more exotic Jimi. Chandler assembled a band to showcase his talent. Bassist Noel Redding impressed Hendrix with his knowledge of blues progressions, though the author Keith Shadwick noted that what Hendrix really liked was Redding's hairstyle. Drummer Mitch Mitchell, recently fired from Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, completed the trio. On the 1st of October 1966, Chandler brought Hendrix to the London Polytechnic where Cream was playing, and Hendrix met Eric Clapton. Hendrix took the stage for a frantic version of Howlin' Wolf's Killing Floor. Clapton later recalled that Hendrix played just about every style you could think of, and that afterward, his life was never the same again.

• 7. Fire On Stage

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  The first time Hendrix smashed a guitar was an accident of panic, in Munich in November 1966, when a frantic crowd pulled him from the stage. The audience read the destruction as part of the act, and Chandler decided it should become a permanent feature. The Experience climbed fast. Their first single, Hey Joe, backed with Stone Free, was released on the 16th of December 1966 and peaked at number six on the UK charts. Purple Haze reached number three in March 1967, and The Wind Cries Mary stayed on the UK charts for eleven weeks. At the Troutbeck Hotel in Ilkley, West Yorkshire, on the 12th of March 1967, around 900 people turned up to a venue licensed for 250, and police stopped the gig over safety. The most famous stunt was deliberate. On the 31st of March 1967 at the London Astoria, journalist Keith Altham suggested Hendrix needed something more dramatic than the Who's instrument-smashing, joking it was a pity he could not set fire to his guitar. Chandler sent road manager Gerry Stickells for lighter fluid, and Hendrix burned his guitar at the end of a 45-minute set. London's press labeled him the Black Elvis and the Wild Man of Borneo. An enduring British legend even claims the country's feral parakeets descend from a pair Hendrix released on Carnaby Street, though a study mapping historical sightings found the myth untrue.

• 8. Three Albums

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  Are You Experienced, released in the UK on the 12th of May 1967, spent 33 weeks on the charts and peaked at number two, kept from the top only by the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The album ranged from blues like Red House to the science fiction piece Third Stone from the Sun. On the 4th of June 1967, Hendrix opened a show at the Saville Theatre with the Sgt. Pepper title track, released just three days earlier. Paul McCartney, who attended, called it one of the great honors of his career. McCartney also recommended the Experience to the organizers of the Monterey Pop Festival, insisting the event would be incomplete without Hendrix. On the 18th of June 1967, introduced by Brian Jones, Hendrix opened with Killing Floor and ended by destroying his guitar. A 17-year-old named Ed Caraeff, who had never heard Hendrix before, used the last frame on his film roll to capture the burning guitar, an image that became one of the most famous in rock. The second album, Axis: Bold as Love, reached number five in the UK after Hendrix briefly lost the master tape of side one in a London taxi. The third, Electric Ladyland, reached number one in the US in 1968, his only chart-topping album. Its cover of Bob Dylan's All Along the Watchtower became his highest-selling single and only US top 40 hit, peaking at number 20.