Music: The Hendrix Tapes

What Mick Jagger and other doyens of the mid-1960s rock era had merely hinted at, Jimi Hendrix delivered right onstage. His hair frizzled as though by electricity, his scarves and sashes bobbing over sequined vests and velvet jackets in foppish disarray, he looked like a tripped-out savage impersonating a Carnaby Street dandy. His guitar was a throbbing phallic extension that he would caress, thrust at the audience, then set on fire at evening's end. The music was raw blues blasted out at maximum volume. Bursting on the rock scene in 1967 at the...

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