Jimi Hendrix: The Intimate Story of a Betrayed Musical Legend

Outstanding book - highly recommended! It provides a candid, extremely honest portrayal of Jimi Hendrix's short career and the greedy people who took advantage of him in life and death. It's not the usual flower biography due to the author's candor, but it was compelling and I couldn't put it down! It's an important book not just for the historical information about Hendrix, but it was also a sobering life lesson about how greed and power can bring the worst out of people. Ms. Lawrence also does a fine job of identifying the people who truly tried to protect Hendrix as he struggled to focus on his music and avoid the hangers-on and narcissistic business people hovering like a swarm of mosquitos in his life.My end thoughts were sobering about Ed Chalpin, Michael Jeffery, Leo Branton, Alan Douglas, Al Hendrix, and perhaps the worst of them - Janie Hendrix, who does not share a single drop of blood with Jimi Hendrix. These people should be judged harshly for trying to re-write history, steal money and use Jimi Hendrix in life and death for their own greed and personal gain. Thank you Sharon Lawrence for calling it like it was! It's not a pretty story, but every Hendrix fan needs to read it. Thank you for trying to set the record straight in memory of your friend.

As a long time Hendrix fan and guitar player, I have always admired and enjoyed playing his music. The extent of my Hendrix knowledge was with his music and any guitar magazine article I happen to come across.This book tells a whole different story. The real story of a musical genius and the greed of others trying to profit and control him. The writing is fantastic. It really feels as if a story is being told and you are a part of it. I couldn't put this book down. This is a must read for any Hendrix fan!It's very disturbing to hear what really happened to Hendrix and how other people took advantage of him, even his own family! Greed at its worst. At one point he is quoted saying "Everyone wants me to die". In the end we all should be ashamed and take a deep look into our hearts. A great spirit was pushed out of this world all too soon with people clawing and ripping him apart along the way. Isn't it strange how we always seem to destroy the beautiful? Just imagine how much brighter our world could have been with Hendrix still in it.This book is both inspirational and depressing. Amazing and sad. I will never look at, or hear Hendrix the same.

Very interesting

I bought this for my sister who is in jail and she said it kept her interest and was very intriguing. She absolutely loved it.

I couldn't put this book down. Anyone who likes Jimi's music will like this book. I say "like" because it was too sad to say "I loved it". Of course Sharon Lawrence did an excellent job in presenting a big part of Jimi's life that I never knew about. I love Jimi's music, and I understand him so much more than I ever did after reading this book. It also points out how awful record company executives can be to popular artists.

great book from a person who knew jimi! very well written and i would recommend it to all jimi lovers

Good

This book was published at a point where so much had already been written about Hendrix, and it establishes a familiar pattern of the often told Hendrix Tale: born into poverty, Hendrix nurtured an interest with the guitar at an early age into a tremendous facility for writing, playing and performing music. He became famous, was surrounded by the usual trappings of stardom (drugs, hangers-on, shady business partners, groupies), and died at an early age when it seemed he still had a lot left to give in terms of creativity. It is clear and established that the author did, in fact, know Hendrix. Some of her recollections may have been somewhat embellished with the passage of time (memory and history can play tricks on us all), but the impressions she gives of her encounters with Hendrix are both very human and generally credible in terms of the overall jist. I, for one, didn't see an agenda in terms of her having made up the story out of whole cloth, as it were. Some of her assertions as to the particulars of how Hendrix died (regurgitating rumors that he was possibly murdered or asserting that he did himself in via suicide) do repeat the more sensational past tales of his demise. I suppose a persons reaction to the book depends on if one finds Lawrence credible or not. I did. What knocks the rating down a few stars for me is the disproportionate amount of page space given over to the posthumous years and the detailed descriptions of the legal battles over the Hendrix estate. As someone who values Hendrix on the basis of what he did when he was alive (not how old he was when he died, or how he died, or what happened to the money after he was gone), about the last third of the book wasn't particularly relevant.