OF FREAKS, DEATH, AND THE BLUES JIMI HENDRIX

There is no way to write about James Marshall Hendrix without sentimentalizing the myth, yet at the same time, there is no way to write about him without revealing a desire to debunk that myth. It is a problem that writers have always faced when dealing with a legend, but particularly when that legend has set himself up (or been set up) as a visionary. Dead at the age of 27 on September 18, 1970, after having choked on his own vomit, Jimi Hendrix expired at his peak just when, so legend reads, he was about to fashion his most monumental work. Until then, not since Buddy Holly’s tragic death had a rock ’n’ roll artist attained the truly mystical status of "if he’d oply lived.”