Rock-Blues-Country-Funky- Freaky SoundI WAS INTRODUCED to Jimmy Hendrix very late. And I couldn’t be gladder I read this book. Starting at Zero, a posthumous compilation of Hendrix’s interviews, letters, diary entries and notes is the closest to an autobiography of this extraordinary man. It tells us the simple ambitions and breathtaking imagination of Hendrix who over the last four decades has come to be regarded as the greatest electric guitarist of all time. We see the book make away from the falsehoods, the myths and the stereotypes that have muddled the narrative of his short, yet unusually eventful life and present to us a first-person narrative that is alive and shows strange new ways to look at his oeuvre.
From the early difficult days in Seattle, to joining the US army, to playing in Tennessee, to eventually being discovered by Chas Chandler and the formation of The Jimi Hendrix Experience that rocked the ‘60s London music scene—we hear the narrative of a man juggling between his stage persona, the media’s misdirection and the safe place he was at as a person. Each page of the book is an insight into Hendrix the man, and the book does a superb job of having us see his voice mature and become crazier over the years. At a point, he describes his love for fairytales, in another he is against categorising his music, insisting throughout the book, and perhaps throughout his life, that it rather be called his “rockblues- country-funky-freaky sound”.
As with all artists, Hendrix is most compelling when talking about his craft and influences. Most of his songs, he reveals, were about 10 pages long and had to be edited. Apart from Dylan and the blues masters, he singles out Mike Bloomfield’s Electric Flag and Jefferson Airplane as his muses. What he calls “freak-out psychedelic” music does not interest him—this is not what he thinks the Experience is doing. “I don’t want anybody to stick a psychedelic label around my neck. Sooner Bach and Beethoven. Don’t misunderstand me, I love Bach and Beethoven, I have many records by them, also by Gustav Mahler.” He loves to be called the Paganini of the guitar, but when voted the world’s greatest guitarist by readers of Melody Maker, responds: “That’s just silly.”
It took just four years in the spot-light for Jimi Hendrix to become an international cultural icon. The sheer impact and originality of his music and his unique mastery of the guitar placed him forever amongst musical giants. But what of the man behind the public image? Modest and intensely private by nature, Jimi was shrouded in intrigue from the moment he first came into the public eye, and the mystery has only grown with time. Much has been written about him by experts, fans, and critics, some of it true and some of it not. He did, however, leave his own account of himself, locked away like a Chinese puzzle in his many interviews, lyrics, writings, poems, diaries, and even stage raps. Starting at Zero brings all these elements together in narrative form. The result is an intimate, funny, and poetic memoir—one that tells, for the first time, Jimi’s own story as only he could tell it.
The Rolling Stone cover story in 1969 says magnificently that “Hendrix’s improvisation transcends category and constitutes music as imaginative and alive as rock and roll has known.” We have come a long way from the days of Woodstock and Star Spangled Banner to see Hendrix being touted as the eponymous musical revolutionary. From his admiration of Bob Dylan’s writing to calling Paul McCartney a cat, from going broke after being the biggest selling artist in the ‘60s and to one day give Bach and Mahler a chance to be incorporated in his music– Hendrix’s is an inimitable life dedicate to the pursuit of the new. It is difficult to find solace in his early death or to say that it was a quasi-cosmic intervention. Hendrix’s thoughts about death were all too prescient. He says, “It is funny the way people love the dead. You have to die before they think you are worth anything. Once you are dead you are made for life.” The book, not needing any quotation marks or citations, ends with Hendrix making the remark: “When I die, just keep on playing the records.” We do.