Jimmy was a down-at-heel guitarist in New York, relying on his latest lovers to support him while he tried to emulate his hero Bob Dylan. A black guy playing white rock music, he wanted to be all things to all people. But when Jimmy arrived in England and became Jimi, the cream of swinging London fell under his spell. It wasn't that Jimi could play with his teeth, play with his guitar behind his back. It was that he could really play. Journeying through the purple haze of idealism and paranoia of the sixties, Jimi Hendrix was the man who made Eric Clapton consider quitting, to whom Bob Dylan deferred on his own song 'All Along the Watchtower', who forced Miles Davis to reconsider his buttoned-down ways - and whose 'Star Spangled Banner' defined Woodstock. And when his star, which had burned so brightly, was extinguished far too young, his legend lived on in the music - and the intrigue surrounding his death. Eschewing the traditional rock-biography format, Two Riders Were Approaching is a fittingly psychedelic and kaleidoscopic exploration of the life and death of Jimi Hendrix - and a journey into the dark heart of the sixties. While the groupies lined up, the drugs got increasingly heavy and the dream of the sixties burned in the fire and blood of the Vietnam War, the assassination of Martin Luther King and the election of President Richard Nixon. Acclaimed writer Mick Wall, author of When Giants Walked the Earth, has drawn upon his own interviews and extensive research to produce an inimitable, novelistic telling of this tale - the definitive portrait of the Guitar God at whose altar other guitar gods worship. Jimi Hendrix's is a story that has been told many times before - but never quite like this.

Becoming Jimi Hendrix traces “Jimmy’s” early musical roots, from a harrowing, hand-to-mouth upbringing in a poverty-stricken, broken Seattle home to his early discovery of the blues to his stint as a reluctant recruit of the 101st Airborne who was magnetically drawn to the rhythm and blues scene in Nashville. As a sideman, Hendrix played with the likes of Little Richard, Ike and Tina Turner, the Isley Brothers, and Sam & Dave—but none knew what to make of his spotlight-stealing rock guitar experimentation, the likes of which had never been heard before. From 1962 to 1966, on the rough and tumble club circuit, Hendrix learned to please a crowd, deal with racism, and navigate shady music industry characters, all while evolving his own astonishing style. Finally, in New York’s Greenwich Village, two key women helped him survive, and his discovery in a tiny basement club in 1966 led to Hendrix instantly being heralded as a major act in Europe before he returned to America, appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival, and entered the pantheon of rock’s greatest musicians. Becoming Jimi Hendrix is based on over one hundred interviews with those who knew Hendrix best during his lean years, more than half of whom have never spoken about him on the record. Utilizing court transcripts, FBI files, private letters, unpublished photos, and U.S. Army documents, this is the story of a young musician who overcame enormous odds, a past that drove him to outbursts of violence, and terrible professional and personal decisions that complicated his life before his untimely demise.

Once you're dead, you're made for life. --Jimi Hendrix Hendrix. Janis. Morrison. Elvis. Lennon. Cobain. Garcia. Their reckless brilliance held the key to their self-destruction. Their deaths had much in common--and, surprisingly, so did their lives. From lonely childhoods marred by loss to groundbreaking music and turbulent careers that ended tragically and suspiciously, David Comfort explodes the myths as he probes: • The sinister roles of Hendrix's manager and girlfriend in his death and subsequent cover-up • The bizarre odyssey of Jim Morrison's corpse • Why Kurt Cobain was worth more dead than alive to Courtney Love • The twisted motives that caused John Lennon to sail through the Devil's Triangle to Bermuda--nearly going down in a storm--shortly before he was fatally shot • The crippling disease and "miracle" drug that drove Elvis to suicide Charismatic and gifted, but also isolated and conflicted, these are not the rock icons you thought you knew. Here are their larger-than-life stories of turmoil and excess that led to their early deaths and ultimate immortality. It's a wild ride to the other side of fame. "Fame is the soul eater." --Jerry Garcia "Everybody loves you when you're six foot in the ground." --John Lennon Includes Rare Photos David Comfort is the author of three bestselling nonfiction books. His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines, including Eclectic Literary Forum, Pacific Review, Coe Review, and Belletrist Review. He has been the recipient of several literary prizes and a finalist for such prestigious awards as the Nelson Algren Award and America's Best. A former rock musician, he has spent over 30 years studying rock music, particularly the revolutionary and fatalistic pioneers of the 1960s. He lives in Santa Rosa, California.

The legendary Jimi Hendrix has had all kinds of superlatives bestowed on him since his incendiary debut in 1966, but Lou Reed’s pithy summation beats the lot: ‘...he was such a bitching guitar player’. Jimi Hendrix On Track explores each thrilling song and album, drawing out exactly what made Hendrix not only a great guitarist but also a vocalist, arranger, interpreter, producer and songwriter of genius. Hendrix’s revolutionary albums with The Experience and Band of Gypsys are discussed in detail, as are his posthumous releases from First Rays of the Rising Sun to Both Sides of the Sky. His early work as a session player for acts like The Isley Brothers, Little Richard and even Jayne Mansfield is considered, along with his later work as a guest star on albums by Stephen Stills, Robert Wyatt, and McGear and McGough, and not forgetting his blistering work as a producer for Eire Apparent. From psychedelic odysseys to progressive blues to proto-metal to funk-rock, Hendrix mastered them all. Jimi Hendrix On Track is an informative guide to some of the 20th century’s most extraordinary recordings. Emma Stott missed out on the 1960s and the 1970s and she still isn’t over it, so writing about the greatest decades in rock music helps with her loss. She also writes about literature and education, being an English teacher by day in Manchester, UK, where she forbids any ‘dark sarcasm’ in her classroom.

Since the magazine’s first issue in 1964, TeenSet’s role in popular music journalism has been overlooked and underappreciated. Teen fan magazines, often written by women and assumed to be read only by young girls, have been misconstrued by scholars and journalists to lack “seriousness” in their coverage of popular music. TeenSet, Teen Fan Magazines, and Rock Journalism: Don’t Let the Name Fool You disputes the prevailing conception that teen fan magazines are insignificant and elevates the publications to their proper place in popular music history. Analyzing TeenSet across its five-year publication span, Allison Bumsted shows that the magazine is an important artifact of 1960s American popular culture. Through its critical commentary and iconic rock photography, TeenSet engaged not only with musical genres and scenes, but also broader social issues such as politics, race, and gender. These countercultural discourses have been widely overlooked due to a generalization of teen fan magazines, which have wrongly presumed the magazine to be antithetical to rock music and as unimportant to broader American culture at the time. Bumsted also examines the leadership of editor Judith Sims and female TeenSet staff writers such as Carol Gold. By offering a counternarrative to leading male-oriented narratives in music journalism, she challenges current discourses that have marginalized women in popular music history. Ultimately, the book illustrates that TeenSet and teen fan magazines were meaningful not only to readers, but also to the broader development of the popular music press and 1960s cultural commentary.

“Surely make you lose your mind…” So the Eagles warn us about the outrageous and ruthless lifestyle of the ambitious rock-n-roller. In fact, Don Henley could barely listen to the track “Life in the Fast Lane” when they were recording it. He was so high that it made him sick. The band that embodied the American dream with globe-straddling success, impossibly luxurious lives, and almost supernatural talent also descended into nightmare with bloodletting betrayal, hate-filled hubris, the skeletons of perceived enemies, brutally discarded lovers and former band mates left unburied in the road behind them. The Eagles’ story is a truly gothic American fable: one of ultimate power and rivers of money; of sex and drugs at a time when both were the lingua-franca of sophisticated So-Cal living; of a band who sang of peaceful easy feelings in public while threatening to kill each other in private. Now, legendary rock journalist Mick Wall delivers definitive insight into America's best-selling band of all time, a band that has sold more records than Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones combined, exploring their meteoric rise to fame and the hedonistic days of the 70s music scene in LA, when American music was taking over the world.