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Jimi by Janie Hendrix and John McDermott
Jimi Janie Hendrix and John McDermott
320 Pages
ISBN: # 978-1797220017
Chronicle Chroma
2022
Released to coincide with what would have been
Jimi Hendrix
guitar, electric1942 - 1970
As Janie Hendrix, the guitarist's sister and CEO of Experience Hendrix LLC, and author/biographer/archivist John McDermott tell it, Jimi Hendrix's poverty-afflicted early existence was not much less pain-filled than his time in the Army as a paratrooper. Likewise, once the hungry musician rose above the chitlin' circuit, where he spent time backing the
The third longplayer, Electric Ladyland (Reprise, 1968), consolidated Jimi Hendrix' status as a rock and roll star.. But the creation of that magnum opus was a protracted process rife with both fulfillment and frustration: if the abrupt exit of former Animals' bassist Chas Chandler as producer part way through wasn't latent liability enough, there were the dual snafus involving the cover art for the double album: the omission of the late Linda Eastman's photos as Hendrix requested—now in place on the 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition—and differing substitutions by both US and British record labels about which Hendrix knew nothing in advance.
In the context of Jimi, this one sequence of events is a microcosm of the travails Hendrix endured in his stratospheric rise to fame. The pages full of concert ticket and poster reproductions for his shows suggest the relentless tour schedule that conflicted with the man's struggles to nurture his creative impulses.
And while the headlining slot for the legendary Woodstock Festival went to Jimi, due to the ongoing delays in the performances, he ultimately played for only a fraction of the crowd present at the peak of that August 1969 weekend; duly documented from a variety of camera angles, his kinetic presence belies the erratic nature of the performance that included the famous rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner."
Further illustrating the erratic trajectory of Hendrix' career is the comparatively abbreviated Band of Gypsys project with drummer
Buddy Miles
drums1947 - 2008
The inner design of the three-hundred twenty pages in Jimi mirrors such conflicts. Columns of text opposite the visual images sustain a narrative rife with paradox: even as he filled a concert void left by the retreat from the road by " data-original-title="" title="">Dylan,
The Beatles
band / ensemble / orchestra
The Rolling Stones
band / ensemble / orchestrab.1962
Meanwhile, the series of photos that fill the other two-thirds of the content here proffer an even more vivid picture of a man visibly aging even as his appearance otherwise took on the patina of psychedelic splendor (see page two-hundred thirty-one). Oddly, though, especially given that striking visual appeal, even the occasional two-page spreads devoted to Hendrix in action don't quite convey the magnitude of his status at the time, i.e., in the upper echelons of the musical hierarchy of the era.
Thus, in its graphic design as well as the co-authors' matter of fact tone, Jimi parallels its subject's alternately troubled and visionary existence. The over-sized fonts spelling out tributes to their subject approach overkill, for instance, and might well have been reduced in proportion to the reproductions of album covers in the discographical appendix (where track listings for each title might well have been included).
As such, like the very oeuvre of the artist to whom this work is dedicated, this publication is a whole greater than the sum of the parts, the multi-colored, faux 3D images on its gold-embossed cover reflective of its intrinsically fragmented nature.
Tags
Book Review
Doug Collette
Chronicle Chroma
Jimi Hendrix
Isley Brothers
Band of Gypsys
Buddy Miles
Bob Dylan
The Beatles
Rolling Stones
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