Book Review: Sheet Music

Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix

By Charles R. Cross

Hyperion, 384 pp., $24.95

The more we learn about Jimi Hendrix the person, the less we're able to lean on his public image as the embodiment of black macho iconography. As Cross points out in Room Full of Mirrors, Hendrix claimed homosexuality in 1962 as his ticket out of the Army's famed 101st Airborne division. While the guitarist's ravenous appetite for female groupies goes undisputed, accounts of Hendrix propositioning the likes of Noel Redding, Mitch Mitchell, Arthur Lee, and Dallas Taylor of CSN&Y to cuddle up are herein detailed. Cross moves on with reminders that throughout the Sixties his subject actually supported the war in Vietnam. And for those who can't stop wondering what Hendrix's music would have sounded like had he not died in 1970 at the age of 27, Cross allows the exhausted musician himself to knock their speculations senseless. "I'm not sure I will live to be 28 years old. I mean, the moment I feel I have nothing more to give musically, I will not be around on this planet anymore, unless I have a wife and children; otherwise, I've got nothing to live for." Offering new insights into Hendrix's trying childhood and his tragic demise, Room Full of Mirrors affectionately humanizes a man so many would prefer to think of as a god.