Room Full of Mirrors - A Biography of Jimi Hendrix
by Charles R. Cross Sceptre, $120
'There is another way for traditional instruments to survive,' says Wu Man, the pipa virtuoso who plays a mean Jimi Hendrix. Charles R. Cross doesn't say whether Hendrix even knew what a pipa is, but Room Full of Mirrors covers near everything else. This was published last year to mark the 35th anniversary of Hendrix's death. He choked on his vomit in a London hotel room after taking his bedmate's prescription sleeping pills. Seattle music journalist Cross - his biography of Kurt Cobain was well received - is best on the Seattle streets piecing together the early James 'Buster' Hendrix, eldest of six, abusive father, mother dead from alcoholism when he was 15, escaped a prison sentence by joining the 101st Airborne, medical discharge in 1962 for 'homosexual tendencies'. Cross found the army file. He talked to some 325 people and reports Hendrix a sexually insatiable heterosexual - a model of his member was dubbed the 'Penis de Milo'. Hendrix's rise to rock's pantheon is old ground, and there's little here about the musical magic. This is the often-uncomfortable story of the life lived that made the music.
