One Man146;s Anthem

It was 8.30 in the morning of August 18, 1969. After three days and nights, 32 acts, 210 songs, two births and two deaths, Woodstock was gri...

It was 8.30 in the morning of August 18, 1969. After three days and nights, 32 acts, 210 songs, two births and two deaths, Woodstock was grinding to a halt. Most of the legendary half a million had dispersed; the 40,000 who remained were bleary-eyed, sore-headed and seriouslyhungover.

There was only one way to get them going. Half an hour into his set, Jimi Hendrix launched into his version of the Star Spangled Banner; for the next three minutes and forty-two seconds, time stopped at Woodstock. Upstate New York was 11,000 miles from Vietnam but one man and his guitar brought the war home, using every electronic aid 8212; feedback, sustain, fuzzface 8212; at his disposal and his own peerless skill to rewrite the American national anthem.

Even today, on an anodyne stereo and in the aseptic environs of your own home, you can hear the Vietnam War in this track: the screams of the bombers, the bombs and the bombed, the rush of blood as the United States tangled with yet another unequal foe.

8216;8216;Probably the single greatest moment of the sixties,8217;8217; said New York Post critic Al Aronowitz. 8216;8216;You finally heard what that song is about, that you can love your country but hate your government.8217;8217;

Ironically, Hendrix didn8217;t intend it to be social or political comment but merely an exercise in musical creativity. It was typical of the man, arguably the most creative and certainly the most enigmatic guitarist of all time.

This book strips away some of that enigma, telling us how Jimi Hendrix crafted his sound and his party tricks 8212; playing the guitar with his teeth or behind his back, setting it on fire 8212; during his extensive apprenticeship as a backing guitarist on the smalltown circuit.

Even today on an anodyne stereo and in the aseptic environs of your own home,you can hear the Vietnam War in that track: the screams of the bombers, the bombs and the bombed, the rush of blood as the US tangled with another unequal foe

By the time he landed up in England, he was a star-in-waiting; within months he headed the pantheon of rock guitarists 8212; Clapton, Beck, Page, Townshend, Richard. It was down to simple wizardry: simultaneously playing riffs with his thumb and lead with his fingers, or lead and feedback at the same time, to give the effect of two guitarists.

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It was a long way from his very broken early family life in Seattle, Washington, and his initial professional struggles. The net effect of both was to foster a sensitivity which allowed him to write the tender lyrics that were an interesting counter to his heavy chords and tonal distortion.

And Seattle8217;s melting-pot society Bruce Lee was a contemporary, and they met once insulated him from the sharply polarised culture of the 1960s. Hendrix8217;s musical idiom was non-racial; though he learnt the blues, he was as influenced by Dylan and he didn8217;t play the funk and soul of James Brown or The Temptations. To Blacks he was an Uncle Tom; to the vast majority of whites he was a threat to society, at one point the subject of an FBI probe. Like Dylan he believed himself to be a musician, his job to make music, not political statements.

Yet the pulls and pressures never let up, not even when he escaped to swinging, tripping London. The meltdown 8212; chronicled here in this new biography by Charles R. Cross in excruciating detail 8212; was long and winding, fuelled by drugs, alcohol and melancholy. He died, choking in his sleep, aged 27. Too young to kiss the sky.