Awesome New Jimi Hendrix Biography

Seattlest isn't shy about telling people that we went to the same high school (Garfield) as Jimi Hendrix. And usually they are impressed. We are certain that, if we would only conform to accepted societal standards for oral hygiene, this fact alone might get us laid.

Garfield guitar dorks have long fantasized about finding lost Hendrix lyrics in an abandoned locker. But we've recently learned that those dreams are futile. Hendrix started writing songs only after he'd dropped out.

This, and many other details of Hendrix' short life (he died at 27), are reported in a new, authoritative biography by former The Rocket editor and Kurt Cobain biographer Charles Cross.

Cross reports such tidbits as:

Hendrix suspected that his legal father, Al, was not his biological father

All of Hendrix brothers and sisters were, at one time, given up for adoption.

Hendrix feigned homosexuality to get out of the Army.

Cross describes Hendrix' peripatetic, Dickensian childhood in detail. One memorable passage recounts a starving teenaged Hendrix begging for food outside the former burger joint that now houses Ezell's.

The book has something for everyone. For Seattle residents, the fun of the book is envisioning a young Hendrix at the locations described, many of which still stand. For music fans, it's reading the stupefied reactions of music's elite upon witnessing Hendrix' prodigality with the guitar. For the illiterate—pictures.

Cross draws on more than 350 interviews, including former babysitters of Hendrix, groupie girlfriends, and music legends Pete Townshend, Marianne Faithfull and Richie Havens.

Room Full of Mirrors is released August 3rd. Preorder it.