Strip away the icon and consider the timeline: Jimi Hendrix arrived in London as an unknown in September 1966 and was dead by September 1970. Everything — the three studio albums, Monterey, Woodstock, the wholesale reinvention of the electric guitar — happened in four years. No one in the history of popular music did more with less time.
The long apprenticeship
Born Johnny Allen Hendrix on November 27, 1942, in Seattle (renamed James Marshall by his father), Hendrix was a left-hander who learned on flipped right-handed guitars and never stopped playing them that way. After a stint as a 101st Airborne paratrooper, he spent years grinding the chitlin circuit as a sideman for the Isley Brothers, Little Richard, and others — an apprenticeship in showmanship and discipline that later made his "overnight" explosion possible. Little Richard reportedly kept fining him for upstaging the star.
The break came in a Greenwich Village basement club, where Linda Keith — Keith Richards's girlfriend — saw him and wouldn't stop evangelizing until Chas Chandler of the Animals flew him to London in September 1966.
Conquering London in weeks
London fell almost immediately. Weeks after arriving, Hendrix jammed with Cream, launching into Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor" at reckless tempo — an audition-by-ambush that famously shook Eric Clapton, then regarded as God himself in guitar circles. Every major British guitarist made pilgrimages to his early club gigs and left rethinking their careers.
With the Experience — Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell — he released Are You Experienced (1967), Axis: Bold as Love (1967), and the self-produced double masterpiece Electric Ladyland (1968), whose "All Along the Watchtower" so completely transformed Bob Dylan's song that Dylan ever after performed it Hendrix's way.
Monterey, Woodstock, and the anthem
America met him at Monterey Pop in June 1967, where he ended his set by burning his guitar — a sacrifice, he called it. At Woodstock, the detail everyone forgets: Hendrix closed the festival on Monday morning, playing to a fraction of the weekend's crowd as most of the 400,000 trudged home. It was there, nearly by accident of scheduling, that he played "The Star-Spangled Banner" — dive-bombing the national anthem through feedback and distortion into the defining musical statement of the Vietnam era.
The studio he barely got to use
Hendrix poured his fortune into building Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village, a custom creative sanctuary that opened in August 1970. Weeks later, on September 18, 1970, he died in London of asphyxia associated with barbiturates. He was 27. Electric Lady still operates today as one of the world's most storied studios — artists from Stevie Wonder to Taylor Swift have recorded in the house Jimi built and barely got to live in.
Legacy
There is guitar before Hendrix and guitar after him; virtually every player since works inside the vocabulary he invented — feedback as music, the studio as instrument, blues as science fiction. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, his catalog has never stopped selling, and each new generation of guitarists meets him the same way London did in 1966: with disbelief.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long was Jimi Hendrix famous? Barely four years — from his London debut in late 1966 to his death in September 1970, during which he released three landmark studio albums.
How did Jimi Hendrix die? He died in London on September 18, 1970, at age 27, of asphyxia associated with barbiturate intoxication.
Did Jimi Hendrix really close Woodstock? Yes — on Monday morning, August 18, 1969, after most of the crowd had left, which is when he performed his legendary "Star-Spangled Banner."
What is Electric Lady Studios? The New York recording studio Hendrix built, opened weeks before his death — still one of the most famous studios in the world.