EXPERIENCED

Roadie and Jimi Hendrix confidant Barrett tells tales out of school.

Barrett was 21 when he fell into Hendrix’s eccentric orbit and quite by happenstance at that: He’d been working for Keith Emerson’s band, the Nice, when Hendrix landed in London and formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience with Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding, who suggested Barrett come on board with them. “I was si­mul­ta­neously extremely excited and extremely hung­ over, two sensations that would become very familiar to me over the next three years,” he writes. What we learn about Hendrix in that three-year period isn’t always attractive: As Barrett writes, he nearly walked off the job when Hendrix had a tantrum about the erratic behavior of his amp, underpowered by Italian electricity: “I’ve never experienced such bad vibes from an artist, before or since.” Hendrix recovered his composure and apologized, but it wouldn’t be his last explosion. We also learn that Hendrix, by nature a shy man “deeply uncomfortable with being the center of attention,” coped with fame by consuming ever greater quantities of drugs and alcohol, including heroin. It didn’t help that his manager was regularly ripping him off or that Hendrix was constantly puzzled by the lack of Black fans of his music, which didn’t change when he parted ways with Mitchell and Redding, none too nicely, and recruited Buddy Miles and Billy Cox to take their places, even flirting with the idea of adding a horn section à la Chicago, a favorite band of Hendrix’s. Barrett’s narrative makes it clear that Hendrix was a monster talent with an unhealthy lack of self-confidence who “never got the chance to fulfill his genius.” Of course, there are the obligatory tales of sex and drugs to go along with the rock ’n’ roll, but Barrett’s memoir sheds new and mostly sympathetic light on an artist gone far too soon.

Catnip for Hendrix compleatists.