Mini Biography
Jimi Hendrix was born in Seattle, Washington, on November 27, 1942.
His mother named him John Allen Hendrix and raised him alone while his
father, Al Hendrix, was off fighting in World War II. When his mother
became sick from alcoholism, Hendrix was sent to live with relatives in
Berkeley, California. When his father returned from Europe in 1945 he
took back Hendrix, divorced his wife, and renamed him James Marshall
Hendrix. When Jimi was 13 his father taught him to play an acoustic
guitar. In 1959 Jimi dropped out of high school and enlisted in the U.S.
Army, but soon became disenchanted with military service. After he
broke his ankle during a training parachute jump, he was honorably
discharged. He then went to work as a sideman on the rhythm-and-blues
circuit, honing his craft but making little or no money. Jimi got
restless being a sideman and moved to New York City hoping to get a
break in the music business. Through his friend Curtis Knight, Jimi
discovered the music scene in Greenwich Village, which left indelible
impressions on him. It was here that he began taking
drugs,
among them marijuana, pep pills and cocaine. In 1966, while Jimi was
performing with his own band called James & the Blue Flames at Cafe
Wha?, John Hammond Jr. approached Jimi about the Flames playing backup
for him at Cafe Au Go Go. Jimi agreed and during the show's finale,
Hammond let Jimi cut loose on
Bo Diddley's "I'm the Man." Linda Keith, girlfriend of
The Rolling Stones guitarist
Keith Richards,
was one of Jimi's biggest fans and it was she who told friend Chase
Chandler, a band manager, about Jimi. When Chandler heard Jimi play, he
asked him to come to London to form his own band, and while there
Chandler made the simple change in Jimi's name by formally dropping
James and replacing it with Jimi. Having settled in England with a new
band called the Jimi Hendrix Experience, which consisted of Jimi as
guitarist and lead singer, bass player
Noel Redding and drummer
Mitch Mitchell,
Jimi took the country by storm with the release of his first single
"Hey, Joe." In the summer of 1967 Jimi performed back in the USA at the
Monterey Pop Festival, a mix-up backstage forced Jimi to follow
The Who
onstage, where after a superb performance Jimi tore up the house by
trashing his guitar in a wild frenzy. Afterwards, Jimi's career
skyrocketed with the release of the Experience's first two albums, "Are
You Experienced?" and "Axis: Bold as Love," which catapulted him to the
top of the charts. However, tensions, possibly connected with Jimi's
drug use and the constant presence of hangers-on in the studio and
elsewhere, began to fracture some of his relationships, including Chas
Chandler, who quit as manager in February 1968. In September 1968 the
Experience released their most successful album, "Electric Ladyland."
However, in early 1969 bassist Redding left the Experience and was
replaced by
Billy Cox,
an old army buddy who Jimi had jammed with. Jimi began experimenting
with different musicians. For the Woodstock music festival Jimi put
together an outfit called the Gypsies, Sun and Rainbows, with Mitchell
and Cox as well as a second guitarist and two percussionists. Their one
and only performance in August 1969 at Woodstock took place near Bethel,
New York, where Hendrix and his band were to be the closing headline
act. Because of the delay getting there and the logistical problems,
Jimi performed on the morning of the fourth and final day. Only 25,000
people of the original 400,000 stayed to watch Jimi and his band as the
closing music number, where Jimi's searing rendering of "The
Star-Spangled Banner" became the anthem for counterculture. After
Woodstock, Jimi formed a new band with Cox on bass and
Buddy Miles
on drums with the May 1970 release of the album "The Band of Gypsys."
Jimi's last album, "Cry of Love", featured Cox on bass and former
Experience drummer Mitchell on drums. However, Jimi's drug problem
finally caught up with him. On the night of September 17, 1970, while
living in London, Jimi took some sleeping pills, which were prescribed
for his live-in girlfriend Monika Danneman. Sometime after midnight,
Jimi threw up from an apparent allergic reaction to the pills and then
passed out. Danneman, thinking him to be all right, went out to get
cigarettes for them. When she returned, she found him lying where he
collapsed, having inhaled his own vomit, and and she couldn't wake him.
Danneman called an ambulance, which took him to a nearby hospital, but
Jimi Hendrix was pronounced dead a short while later without regaining
consciousness. He was 27 years old. Jimi Hendrix's life was short, but
his impact on the rock guitar is still being heard which set the course
for a new era of rock music.
Sumber : Internet