Hendrix 1969: Day By Day
Ben Valkhoff & Luigi Garuti WWW.JIMIHENDRIXBOOKS.COM Revelatory forensic diary of Jimi’s pivotal year.
With Hendrix unchallenged as rock’s all-time greatest guitarist, performer and icon, books continue to roll out that are increasingly divided between mediocre retreads from mainstream publishers, and self-publishing fresh insights from veteran experts.
Dutch Hendrix archivist and Univibes co-founder Valkhoff and Italian collector Garuti were motivated by endless recycling of factual errors in high-profile books to produce 2019’s diary-style Hendrix 1968: Day By Day, collating recording dates, jam sessions, interviews, incidents and gig minutiae that set the record straight through exhaustive fact checking and detective work. The pair continue their mission by turning their microscope on the most seismic 12 months in Hendrix’s four-year supernova career, adding more than 100 pages to include press stories, correspondence, fan club newsletters, studio log sheets, bassist Noel Redding’s diary, finances, and quotes from friends, fans and associates.
Jimi’s ’69 started with the Lulu TV show uproar and his final UK indoor shows, at London’s Royal Albert Hall, the landmark second gig getting over twenty pages of eye-witness accounts, including Valkhof’s. Jimi’s return to the US in March sees chaotic recording sessions shoehorned in around punishing gig schedules, conflicts with manager Mike Jeffery, the Experience breaking up, getting busted in Toronto, Gypsy, Sun And Rainbows at Woodstock, producer Alan Douglas, lawsuits, Harlem street concert and Band Of Gypsys, whose Fillmore shows provide the finale, underscored by many girlfriends, Electric Lady studios’ ongoing construction…
As a rabid devourer of Hendrix books for more than 50 years, it’s so refreshing to encounter one that replaces sex-and-drugs myth-stoking with forensic accounts that add to well-trodden stories. The Toronto trial, bungled kidnapping, Band Of Gypsys… everything has never been covered in such (non-judgmental) detail.
News to this Jimi-sodden brain is that he once jammed in LA with legendary blues veteran Slim Harpo, another time with Cynthia Plaster Caster on bass. Most jaw-dropping is NY rock magazine
Zygote’s shocking account of ex-girlfriend Kathy Etchingham pursuing Hendrix to a New York studio, and collapsing a forlorn, wasted husk in the corner.
After this relentless sequence of (not altogether happy) events, 1970’s tragic climax would present a formidable challenge for Valkhoff and Garuti. But add 1967 and Hendrix would finally have his definitive, gold-standard account. ■■■■■■■■■■