Though it reads like the author’s effort to write himself back into the official history of his famous sibling, this memoir...
The guitar legend’s kid brother delivers a candid memoir of the Jimi Hendrix only he knew.
Though he died in 1970 at the age of 27, leaving behind only three officially released studio albums, Hendrix remains perhaps the most influential rock guitarist ever. With the assistance of Mitchell, Hendrix’s younger brother Leon recounts their upbringing in and around Seattle in the 1950s and early ’60s, shedding light on the origins of his brother’s genius and some of his famous song lyrics. The factuality of his account may be disputed—he includes several stories that have been contradicted by others, notably that of a 1959 meeting with Little Richard in his aunt’s kitchen—but it paints a vivid portrait of growing up in that time and place, with parents struggling with a volatile relationship fueled by alcohol and gambling and trying to keep their family together. Jimi, known to the family as “Buster” after sci-fi serial star Buster Crabbe, looked to and beyond the stars from an early age, conjuring the otherworldly landscapes he would later bring to life in his music. The author was drawn more to the mean streets. As Jimi left home on the road to stardom, Leon fell into the life of a hustler, leading him to drug addiction and jail. After his brother found success, the author briefly benefited from Jimi’s excess of women, drugs and money, despite the attempts of manager Mike Jeffery (the villain here as in other Hendrix bios) to keep them apart. In the aftermath of his death, the extended family eventually splintered over control of his legacy, with father Al’s adopted daughter, Janie, winning the final court battle and leaving Leon out in the cold. The author’s recounting of this fight shows a bitterness belied by his insistence that he is “at peace”—though he seems to have gotten his life together, helped in part by learning to play the guitar given to him by his older brother.
Though it reads like the author’s effort to write himself back into the official history of his famous sibling, this memoir provides some insight into the background of a musical icon.Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-66881-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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