Crosstown terriffic
Jimi Hendrix: The Man, The Magic, The Truth by Sharon Lawrence
Should OutKast’s Andre 3000 ever get to play Jimi Hendrix in the much-mooted biopic, he could do worse than have a leaf through this new biography. Sharon Lawrence races through Jimi’s rise from dire poverty to stadium-straddling success, and – unlike anything else you might read on the ‘6os guitar god – the whole thing has Jimi’s voice singing from every page.
That’s because Lawrence was a trusted confidante. When things got tough for Jimi, she was the one he’d call. When Jimi was busted for drugs in Toronto, she was the one who testified for him. And when he died, she was the one around in the immediate afermath taking it upon herself to find out exactly what happened. Her verdict is that Hendrix was no Pete Doherty on the hard-drugs scale and that his death was a suicidal gamble linked to his interest in numerology (he was a nine, hence a fatal dose of nine prescription painkillers). We also learn that he loved Spike Milligan, didn’t rate The Doors and had a messier history of management than the Queen Vic.
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If anything, the chapters detailing what happened after Jimi’s death are even more depressing. On hearing of his son’s death, dad Al’s first question was, “Is there much money?” There was, but his trusty British sidekicks in the Experience didn’t see a bean, while everyone else who knew him battled in the courts for decades. When you finally learn that his manager snuffed it in a plane crash, you’re left feeling – as Lawrence clearly does – that it was too good for him. Martin Horsfield
‘Jimi thought that if he played good, people would treat him good. That’s the real cautionary tale’
NME: So what was Jimi like?
Sharon Lawrence: “I found him essentially a very admirable character who faced awful odds in his life from the day he was born. Jimi was someone who always lived hard. He would say to me about growing up, ‘Didn’t have any underpants.’ You have to be brave to go to school and have people say, ‘You’ve worn that four times’, or, ‘That’s from a thrift store.’ Saying it with contempt like he was nothing.”
Like The Strokes, The Killers and Scissor Sisters, he made his name in Britain.
“The English were incredibly kind and generous to Jimi. You had wonderful musicians who were in competition with this complete stranger and they just fell in love with him. For a long time I assumed that Jimi had spoken about his previous life in America – that Eric Clapton and everyone knew about it – and I was surprised to find out that they didn’t. I guess men don’t talk about stuff like that!
You’re pretty adamant that Hendrix wasn’t a big user of drugs
“You know, hard drugs really only took off about a year after Jimi died. I was pretty disturbed; I thought that when he died people would straighten up. In Jimi’s case it wasn’t like he had to go out into the street or make phone calls for drugs – they were just pushed in front of him – and, according to his mood, he took them. But I would say categorically that anyone who thinks he was a heroin addict is just nuts. You simply couldn’t maintain the pace this management expected of him if you were.”
And you become part of the whole messy saga, defending him in court after someone planted heroin on him. Is this a cautionary tale for the Pete Dohertys of this world?
“That was surreal. The idea that people were out to get Jimi was frightening. There were a lot of of drugs around his management and they were a form of control. The huge difference between Jimi and his peer group was that they were relatively well treated by their management. Like, when he called me from Hawail and he’d hurt his feet on some coral - no one cared.
“I really feel they didn’t see him as human. Believe me, there was a moment of joy when I got that call about his manager (dying in a plane crash). Billy Cox (one of Jimi’s bassists) said, Jimi thought if he played good, people would treat him good. That’s the real cautionary tale.”
First published in NME, 26 February 2005
