New Hendrix biography - CT review
Posted: Sun May 15, 2005 5:42 pm
Setting the record straight
A friend and former journalist looks for the real person behind the 'authentic' Jimi Hendrix
By Jeffery Renard Allen. Jeffery Renard Allen received the 2000 Heartland Prize for fiction for his book "Rails Under My Back" and a 2002 Whiting Writers' Award, given to new literary talents. He is a
Published May 15, 2005
Jimi Hendrix: The Man, the Magic, the Truth
By Sharon Lawrence
HarperCollins, 352 pages, $24.95
One of the seminal figures of '60s counterculture, guitar pioneer Jimi Hendrix died under ambiguous circumstances of an overdose of sleeping pills Sept. 18, 1970, a little more than two months shy of his 28th birthday. His posthumous existence in American culture and consciousness has, sadly, been typified by further scandal as a result of the self-serving and troubling uses many have made of his name, image and music. One of the most egregious examples: Producer Alan Douglas released three albums of new Hendrix music in the early through late 1970s that deleted large portions of the original tracks, rearranged other parts of them, removed some of the original musicians and dubbed in new ones, including--the unthinkable--several guitarists. To take another telling example, white rock guitarist Randy Hansen made a good living in the late '70s covering Hendrix songs while outfitted in black face and Afro wig, like some modern minstrel performer.
The posthumous Hendrix is one of the primary subjects of the latest Hendrix biography, Sharon Lawrence's "Jimi Hendrix: The Man, the Magic, the Truth." Lawrence seeks to set the record straight and recover Hendrix's true legacy while providing a thorough deconstruction of his post-mortem reinvention.
Lawrence met Hendrix through a mutual friend after a Los Angeles performance in February 1968. At the time, she was a young journalist and he was at the top of the music world after his impressive performance at the Monterey Pop Festival the previous June. But it was also a bad time for Hendrix, as he was under tremendous financial pressure from unscrupulous managers and a bogus lawsuit, money troubles that would plague him until the end of his life. Lawrence says this about their first conversation:
"As he spoke, I could never have known how desperately Jimi needed a confidante, a sounding board, an actual friend who wasn't involved in his career. Nor could I have guessed that in the next years I would see him in a variety of places, situations, and especially moods--ranging from joy to fear."
She and Hendrix became fast friends and remained close.
Although her recollections of Hendrix play a significant role in the book, she does not choose the path of memoir but approaches Hendrix as a journalistic subject. In the opening 200 pages she provides a terse accounting of his life, from his birth Nov. 27, 1942, in Seattle as Johnny Allen Hendrix through his death. Lawrence publicly reveals several facts for the first time. While previous Hendrix biographers have noted that Al Hendrix, Jimi's father, legally changed his son's name to James Marshall Hendrix when the boy was 4, these biographers never accounted for why Al chose to rename his son. Lawrence tells us Al suspected his wife, Lucille, "might have named the baby after a boyfriend." Lawrence's Al Hendrix is a jealous and insecure man who picked fights with his wife, a small, frail and sickly woman. Although she bore a second child, Leon, the troubles with her husband continued, and she soon decided to leave her husband--and to leave her two sons behind in his care. (She died when Jimi was 15.)
If we are to believe Lawrence, Al Hendrix did not exactly welcome the responsibilities of fatherhood. Through her interviews with former Seattle neighbors of the Hendrix family, Lawrence reveals that Al neglected his sons, leaving young Jimi behind to care for his little brother in their small apartment, often with little or no food, while he went out drinking in bars and chasing women. One of Lawrence's sources recalled neighbor rumors of Al feeding the boys horse meat. As well, Leon told Lawrence that Al often beat him when he was drunk. Al ended up giving Leon away to the foster-care system. In the ensuing years Leon would have little contact with his older brother, as he was shuttled from home to home. Like many foster children, his adult life has been marked by alcohol and drug addiction, and at least one incarceration. Before he died in 2002, Al cut Leon out of his will and forever deprived him of a share of the wealth generated from Jimi's estate.
At 18, Jimi Hendrix joined the Army's 101st Airborne Division, doing so, Lawrence believes, to escape Al and avoid becoming like him. Lawrence tells us that for the rest of his life, Hendrix avoided contact with his father. And it seems Al was eager to cash in on his son once he became a celebrity. Lawrence quotes Hendrix as saying to her:
" 'Do you know that he came right out and asked me what I was doing about a will and about him being the beneficiary? How old am I? Twenty-seven, right? He's twice my age, and he wants to be the beneficiary? ' "
Along with this re-examination of Hendrix's childhood and his relationship with his father, Lawrence provides other important facts about Hendrix's life. Many will be surprised to learn that he fathered two children, a boy and a girl, by two women with whom he was casually involved. He died apparently having no knowledge of these children.
Lawrence also sheds new light on Hendrix's death. Many have found it curious that Monika Dannemann, another woman Hendrix was casually involved with, spent the final night with him, saw that he was in serious physical distress, breathing with difficulty and apparently semi-conscious, but failed to call an ambulance. She phoned Hendrix's close friend Eric Burdon, lead singer of the Animals, who told her to call for an ambulance immediately. Instead she went out for a pack of cigarettes. Upon returning she saw that Hendrix was vomiting. She called Burdon again, who repeated his demand that she call for an ambulance. She did. It was too late.
In a phone conversation with Lawrence years later, Dannemann acknowledged that she actually poured wine into Hendrix's mouth while he was choking. As she explained to Lawrence:
" 'It was all untidy. He was messy. I thought it would help.' "
Unfortunately, many of the people who wronged Hendrix in life, people such as Monika Dannemann and Al Hendrix, often became the principal sources for future biographers, offering their own self-serving portraits of the man, usually for financial gain. Equally damaging have been a select handful of people who never knew Hendrix but claim to speak for him and represent his interests.
The Hendrix estate is controlled by Experience Hendrix LLC, managed by Janie Hendrix, Jimi's self-described "sister." As Lawrence points out, she is not a blood relative of his; Al and his second wife adopted her. But she has managed to keep Leon and his half-brothers and sisters from receiving any money from the Hendrix estate. In separate lawsuits, the Hendrix siblings unsuccessfully sued Experience Hendrix.
Like many others, Lawrence questions Janie Hendrix and her company's marketing of Jimi Hendrix's image and music. The company offers an "Authentic Hendrix" catalog that sells memorabilia that seem to trivialize Hendrix and his legacy, everything from "authentic" Jimi Hendrix incense to Jimi Hendrix underwear, wristwatches and even a non-alcoholic wine. As well, Janie Hendrix has licensed out some of his music to large corporations for TV commercials.
One might make the case for such business practices if they generated revenue for the Hendrix estate. But Janie Hendrix seems to have managed the company poorly. Although Hendrix's recordings continue to sell in solid numbers, and although musicians continue to record his music, earning the estate considerable money through publishing rights, Experience Hendrix finds itself in severe financial trouble. In his ruling on Leon's lawsuit, the judge found that Janie had mismanaged the estate. Expanding on this point, Lawrence quotes one of the trial briefs:
" 'Although Experience Hendrix earned more than $48.5 million from 1995 through 2002, it spent about $49.54 million, for a net loss of about $540,000, over those years. At least $19.2 million of that was lost through waste and mismanagement.' "
Janie has used the Hendrix name to live the extravagant lifestyle of a rock star, a life Hendrix himself didn't lead nor had any interest in leading.
Lawrence notes a further irony:
"It was revealed during the course of the trial that Sony/ATV, the worldwide company that administers Jimi's song copyrights, loaned Janie and Experience Hendrix $2.5 million toward legal expenses. . . . In effect, this sizable sum to be paid back from funds earned by music written by Hendrix was spent in an attempt to punish and defeat the brother Jimi loved and to protect and defend Janie, whom he barely knew."
As Lawrence reveals, although Janie met Jimi only once, when she was 9, she has fabricated a history playing up her "close" relationship with him in an effort to present herself as the official voice of the Hendrix family. Indeed, she seeks to create an "authentic" Jimi Hendrix of her own construction, even going to the extreme of altering photographs of him, airbrushing out any depictions of him smoking cigarettes. And her autocratic desire to control Hendrix history has put her at continuing odds with the Experience Music Project, a Seattle museum and performance space that Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen built in Hendrix's memory in June 2000 at a cost of $250 million.
In correcting the lies and preserving the facts, Lawrence's book comes as a necessary addition to the Hendrix bibliography.
A friend and former journalist looks for the real person behind the 'authentic' Jimi Hendrix
By Jeffery Renard Allen. Jeffery Renard Allen received the 2000 Heartland Prize for fiction for his book "Rails Under My Back" and a 2002 Whiting Writers' Award, given to new literary talents. He is a
Published May 15, 2005
Jimi Hendrix: The Man, the Magic, the Truth
By Sharon Lawrence
HarperCollins, 352 pages, $24.95
One of the seminal figures of '60s counterculture, guitar pioneer Jimi Hendrix died under ambiguous circumstances of an overdose of sleeping pills Sept. 18, 1970, a little more than two months shy of his 28th birthday. His posthumous existence in American culture and consciousness has, sadly, been typified by further scandal as a result of the self-serving and troubling uses many have made of his name, image and music. One of the most egregious examples: Producer Alan Douglas released three albums of new Hendrix music in the early through late 1970s that deleted large portions of the original tracks, rearranged other parts of them, removed some of the original musicians and dubbed in new ones, including--the unthinkable--several guitarists. To take another telling example, white rock guitarist Randy Hansen made a good living in the late '70s covering Hendrix songs while outfitted in black face and Afro wig, like some modern minstrel performer.
The posthumous Hendrix is one of the primary subjects of the latest Hendrix biography, Sharon Lawrence's "Jimi Hendrix: The Man, the Magic, the Truth." Lawrence seeks to set the record straight and recover Hendrix's true legacy while providing a thorough deconstruction of his post-mortem reinvention.
Lawrence met Hendrix through a mutual friend after a Los Angeles performance in February 1968. At the time, she was a young journalist and he was at the top of the music world after his impressive performance at the Monterey Pop Festival the previous June. But it was also a bad time for Hendrix, as he was under tremendous financial pressure from unscrupulous managers and a bogus lawsuit, money troubles that would plague him until the end of his life. Lawrence says this about their first conversation:
"As he spoke, I could never have known how desperately Jimi needed a confidante, a sounding board, an actual friend who wasn't involved in his career. Nor could I have guessed that in the next years I would see him in a variety of places, situations, and especially moods--ranging from joy to fear."
She and Hendrix became fast friends and remained close.
Although her recollections of Hendrix play a significant role in the book, she does not choose the path of memoir but approaches Hendrix as a journalistic subject. In the opening 200 pages she provides a terse accounting of his life, from his birth Nov. 27, 1942, in Seattle as Johnny Allen Hendrix through his death. Lawrence publicly reveals several facts for the first time. While previous Hendrix biographers have noted that Al Hendrix, Jimi's father, legally changed his son's name to James Marshall Hendrix when the boy was 4, these biographers never accounted for why Al chose to rename his son. Lawrence tells us Al suspected his wife, Lucille, "might have named the baby after a boyfriend." Lawrence's Al Hendrix is a jealous and insecure man who picked fights with his wife, a small, frail and sickly woman. Although she bore a second child, Leon, the troubles with her husband continued, and she soon decided to leave her husband--and to leave her two sons behind in his care. (She died when Jimi was 15.)
If we are to believe Lawrence, Al Hendrix did not exactly welcome the responsibilities of fatherhood. Through her interviews with former Seattle neighbors of the Hendrix family, Lawrence reveals that Al neglected his sons, leaving young Jimi behind to care for his little brother in their small apartment, often with little or no food, while he went out drinking in bars and chasing women. One of Lawrence's sources recalled neighbor rumors of Al feeding the boys horse meat. As well, Leon told Lawrence that Al often beat him when he was drunk. Al ended up giving Leon away to the foster-care system. In the ensuing years Leon would have little contact with his older brother, as he was shuttled from home to home. Like many foster children, his adult life has been marked by alcohol and drug addiction, and at least one incarceration. Before he died in 2002, Al cut Leon out of his will and forever deprived him of a share of the wealth generated from Jimi's estate.
At 18, Jimi Hendrix joined the Army's 101st Airborne Division, doing so, Lawrence believes, to escape Al and avoid becoming like him. Lawrence tells us that for the rest of his life, Hendrix avoided contact with his father. And it seems Al was eager to cash in on his son once he became a celebrity. Lawrence quotes Hendrix as saying to her:
" 'Do you know that he came right out and asked me what I was doing about a will and about him being the beneficiary? How old am I? Twenty-seven, right? He's twice my age, and he wants to be the beneficiary? ' "
Along with this re-examination of Hendrix's childhood and his relationship with his father, Lawrence provides other important facts about Hendrix's life. Many will be surprised to learn that he fathered two children, a boy and a girl, by two women with whom he was casually involved. He died apparently having no knowledge of these children.
Lawrence also sheds new light on Hendrix's death. Many have found it curious that Monika Dannemann, another woman Hendrix was casually involved with, spent the final night with him, saw that he was in serious physical distress, breathing with difficulty and apparently semi-conscious, but failed to call an ambulance. She phoned Hendrix's close friend Eric Burdon, lead singer of the Animals, who told her to call for an ambulance immediately. Instead she went out for a pack of cigarettes. Upon returning she saw that Hendrix was vomiting. She called Burdon again, who repeated his demand that she call for an ambulance. She did. It was too late.
In a phone conversation with Lawrence years later, Dannemann acknowledged that she actually poured wine into Hendrix's mouth while he was choking. As she explained to Lawrence:
" 'It was all untidy. He was messy. I thought it would help.' "
Unfortunately, many of the people who wronged Hendrix in life, people such as Monika Dannemann and Al Hendrix, often became the principal sources for future biographers, offering their own self-serving portraits of the man, usually for financial gain. Equally damaging have been a select handful of people who never knew Hendrix but claim to speak for him and represent his interests.
The Hendrix estate is controlled by Experience Hendrix LLC, managed by Janie Hendrix, Jimi's self-described "sister." As Lawrence points out, she is not a blood relative of his; Al and his second wife adopted her. But she has managed to keep Leon and his half-brothers and sisters from receiving any money from the Hendrix estate. In separate lawsuits, the Hendrix siblings unsuccessfully sued Experience Hendrix.
Like many others, Lawrence questions Janie Hendrix and her company's marketing of Jimi Hendrix's image and music. The company offers an "Authentic Hendrix" catalog that sells memorabilia that seem to trivialize Hendrix and his legacy, everything from "authentic" Jimi Hendrix incense to Jimi Hendrix underwear, wristwatches and even a non-alcoholic wine. As well, Janie Hendrix has licensed out some of his music to large corporations for TV commercials.
One might make the case for such business practices if they generated revenue for the Hendrix estate. But Janie Hendrix seems to have managed the company poorly. Although Hendrix's recordings continue to sell in solid numbers, and although musicians continue to record his music, earning the estate considerable money through publishing rights, Experience Hendrix finds itself in severe financial trouble. In his ruling on Leon's lawsuit, the judge found that Janie had mismanaged the estate. Expanding on this point, Lawrence quotes one of the trial briefs:
" 'Although Experience Hendrix earned more than $48.5 million from 1995 through 2002, it spent about $49.54 million, for a net loss of about $540,000, over those years. At least $19.2 million of that was lost through waste and mismanagement.' "
Janie has used the Hendrix name to live the extravagant lifestyle of a rock star, a life Hendrix himself didn't lead nor had any interest in leading.
Lawrence notes a further irony:
"It was revealed during the course of the trial that Sony/ATV, the worldwide company that administers Jimi's song copyrights, loaned Janie and Experience Hendrix $2.5 million toward legal expenses. . . . In effect, this sizable sum to be paid back from funds earned by music written by Hendrix was spent in an attempt to punish and defeat the brother Jimi loved and to protect and defend Janie, whom he barely knew."
As Lawrence reveals, although Janie met Jimi only once, when she was 9, she has fabricated a history playing up her "close" relationship with him in an effort to present herself as the official voice of the Hendrix family. Indeed, she seeks to create an "authentic" Jimi Hendrix of her own construction, even going to the extreme of altering photographs of him, airbrushing out any depictions of him smoking cigarettes. And her autocratic desire to control Hendrix history has put her at continuing odds with the Experience Music Project, a Seattle museum and performance space that Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen built in Hendrix's memory in June 2000 at a cost of $250 million.
In correcting the lies and preserving the facts, Lawrence's book comes as a necessary addition to the Hendrix bibliography.