Experiencing Hendrix

The mystique of rock icon Jimi Hendrix gets a reality check in Charles Cross’s new book “Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix.” Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park is hosting a reading by the Shoreline resident at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 10.

Thirty five years after his death, there have been volumes written about Hendrix the musician. In his short life, the groundbreaking guitarist and songwriter only produced three studio albums — “Are You Experienced,” “Axis: Bold as Love” and “Electric Ladyland” — but his influence had endured through subsequent generations of musicians and fans.

Cross, who began his rock journalism career as editor of the now departed Seattle music newspaper, The Rocket, set out to write something different. “‘I don’t want (my) books to be about B-sides, the thickness of Jimi’s strings and all the other stuff that only someone with a musician’s mind would be interested in,” Cross said in a recent interview at a coffeehouse in his Richmond Beach neighborhood. “I’m truly trying to write for a wider audience, one that would be interested in a ‘wider’ story.”

Many biographies of Hendrix also weigh heavily on the “what ifs” — what could have been. “I don’t think you should define somebody by their obituary,” Cross said. “I don’t write obituaries, I write biographies. That’s one of the problems we have in rock (history), we tend to look at someone’s obituary, and talk about someone’s death, his last moments of life, which, in almost every case, lacks dignity.

“Jimi Hendrix led a very dignified life, a very full life.”

“Room Full of Mirrors” is Cross’s fifth book, following his critically acclaimed bestseller “Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain.” A Hendrix biography was a natural progression for him from other books on Bruce Springsteen and Led Zeppelin.

The story Cross tells is of a man who grew up in abject poverty in south Seattle. “Jimi spent two-thirds of his life in Seattle,” Cross said. “I don’t think you can understand the glory of his success unless you understand how hard he struggled to get there. So little of that childhood had been explored before, and I think it was so essential in understanding him, and why he was so unique.”

While race at that time might have otherwise decided the road Hendrix would take in his life, music — and the tremendous force of his talent — changed that. “I do think one of the more amazing things about his story, something that doesn’t get talked about enough, is the fact that he truly was one of the first African-American artists of any genre to have a large following among whites,” Cross said. “That alone should win him a statue, a place in cultural history. The fact that he was able to break color lines and racial stereotypes in music was really significant.”

Cross also examines Hendrix as a central figure of the 1960s. “The outrageousness of his life is a good way to explore the Sixties. How many people’s stories intersected with Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, the Beatles, Brigitte Bardot, Dick Cavett, Woodstock, Eric Clapton?” Cross said.

“Jimi really was a transitional figure, from the Fifties to the Sixties. He lived a life that few of us today can begin to imagine,” Cross continued. “From being on the ‘Chitlin’ Circuit,’ where blacks were confined to road houses and juke joints, playing strictly to black audiences, and few years later, playing Woodstock? What an unbelievable ride. And along the way, he touched on so many other important things in America — Sex, drugs, politics.”