WILD THING THE SHORT, SPELLBINDING LIFE OF JIMI HENDRIX
PHILIP NORMAN W&N, 400pp, £20
As Stephen Dalton observed in the Times, ‘When Hendrix crash-landed in London in 1966, he sent an electric charge through Britain’s rock scene. Within three years [he] was the world’s highest-paid rock star... Within four years he was dead from an accidental overdose of barbiturates, aged 27.’
In the Sunday Times Victoria Segal said, ‘With rare comedy, [Norman] describes the Jimi Hendrix Experience grinding around the UK’S “Scratchings Circuit”, tough clubs – Ilkley’s Troutbeck Hotel, for example – galaxies away from London’s perfumed A-list. Hendrix’s mix of blues, rock and psychedelia made him hard to place.’
She pointed out that in the Hendrix story ‘many key players are dead: bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell; managers Chas Chandler and Mike Jeffery; and Monika Dannemann, the “fiancée” who was with Hendrix when he died… Norman is best, though, turning his narrative skills to Hendrix’s death, reconstructing his final hours. He raises the conspiracy theories – he was murdered, he killed himself – but what comes through clearest is how exhausted Hendrix was, how isolated from people who cared.’
‘The biggest question,’ raised by Neil Mccormick in the Telegraph, ‘is why, after all this time, Norman would choose to add to the vast trove of Hendrix tomes. The author wrestles disingenuously with the inconvenient fact that he never showed any interest in Hendrix at a time when Norman was, by his own account, “at the epicentre of swinging London… free to interview whomever I liked and with tables reserved for me at all the clubs where he appeared”.’
Segal summed up: ‘ Wild Thing can’t quite match the dazzling velocity of Hendrix’s life, but at best it catches flickers of the man in motion, sometimes falling, often in flight.’
‘Norman is best, though, turning his narrative skills to Hendrix’s death’