Stephen Mertz writes thrillers
(sometimes with a political tinge) as well as westerns. He tells me JIMI AFTER DARK is
‘State of the Art Mertz,’ not a bad place to begin investigating his work.
London 1970. Somebody
is out to murder rock star Jimi Hendrix, but Jimi's old army buddy – the
Vietnam vet who calls himself Soldier - is on hand to help.
Also in this heady mix are infamous London gangsters
The Kray twins, German drug dealers and the CIA.
JIMI HENDRIX is one of
the most celebrated figures in rock music so here’s (with the help of
Wikipedia) only the briefest summary of his extraordinary life:
He was born James Allen
(later changed to Marshall) Hendrix in
Seattle in 1942. He began playing guitar at age 15. In 1961, he enlisted in the
US Army and trained as a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division, but
was discharged the following year.
He moved to Tennessee and played as a
guitarist in bands fronted by The Isley Brothers, Little Richard and Curtis
Knight. Model Linda Keith (one-time girlfriend of Keith Richard of The Rolling
Stones) brought him to the attention of Chas Chandler, bassist with The
Animals, who became his first manager. In a crucial move Chandler brought him
to London in 1966.
It was Chandler who convinced Hendrix
to change the spelling of his first name to Jimi.
The basis of the Hendrix legend is the next four years, when he released
four albums – ‘Are You Experienced,’ ‘Axis: Bold of Love,’ ‘Electric Ladyland’ and ‘Band of Gypsys,’ - with the
posthumous ‘Cry of Love’ following in
1971. He also released a string of hit singles including ‘Hey Joe’ and ‘Purple Haze.’
Hendrix formed the trio The Jimi Hendrix Experience in England and found
fairly immediate commercial success. Returning to the U.S.A. Jimi finally broke
through to the U.S. market with his incendiary performance at The Monterey Pop
Festival in 1967. The third and final album with The Experience, ‘Electric Ladyland,’ was Hendrix's most
commercially successful release and his only number-one album.
Hendrix was inspired by American rock and roll and
electric blues but went on to influence an enormous number of musicians
himself. Writing for ‘Rolling Stone’
magazine Holly George-Warren said ‘Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument
as an electronic sound source. Players before him had experimented with
feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into a
controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he
began.’ Among effects he pioneered were fuzz tone, Octavia, wah-wah and
Uni-Vibe.
He is widely rated as the greatest rock guitarist of
all time.
As well as his musical brilliance Hendrix was celebrated
for the excitement his live performances generated. He complimented his exotic
appearance with what Eric Clapton called ‘A few
of his tricks, like playing (guitar) with his teeth and behind his back.’ Hendrix
wondered how he could top live performances of the Who, which involved smashing
their instruments. Talking to journalist Keith Altham he joked, ‘Maybe I can
smash up an elephant,’ to which Altham replied, ‘Well, it's a pity you can't
set fire to your guitar.’ Jimi promptly put that in his act!
Jimi sets the stage alight
(literally) at Monterey
Hendrix not only wowed the public with his
live shows, but also his peers in the rock firmament. The Experience performed
at the Bag O’Nails nightclub in London in November 1966, with Clapton,
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, Brian Jones, Mick Jagger
and Kevin Ayers in attendance. Ayers described the crowd's reaction
as ‘stunned disbelief.’
After a performance of ‘Voodoo Chile’ on BBC's ‘Happening for Lulu’ show in January
1969, The Experience abandoned ‘Hey Joe’
for a wholly unrehearsed version of ‘Sunshine of Your Love’ by Cream. Producers brought the song to a premature end and
Jimi was told he would never work at the BBC again.
Lulu and Jimi
His abortive performance on her show
3 years of non-stop touring and
recording took its toll on The Experience. As bassist Noel Redding said, ‘Any
bad feelings came from us being three guys who were traveling too hard, getting
too tired, and taking too many drugs.’ In 1969 they broke up.
Jimi was then the world's highest-paid performer. He threw together an ad-hoc band for his headlining act at
perhaps the most celebrated rock festival of all time, Woodstock, in August
1969. This outfit, ‘The Band of Gypsys,’ rehearsed for less than two weeks before
the show but pop critic Al Aronowitz of the 'New York Post' wrote of this performance: 'It was the most electrifying moment of Woodstock, and it was probably the single greatest moment of the 60s.'
Jimi plays Woodstock
During the first half of 1970,
Hendrix played gigs with a new band and sporadically worked on a new album. At the
second Atlanta Pop Festival on July 4, he played to the largest American
audience of his career, an estimated half a million people.
He performed as the headlining act of the Isle of
Wight Festival. On September 6
1970, he gave his final concert appearance, at the Isle of Fehmarn
Festival in Germany.
On September 18 an ambulance was called to the
apartment of Hendrix’s then-girlfriend Monika Dannerman in the Samarkand Hotel in
London where Jimi was lying in bed, seemingly unconscious. This ambulance transported
him to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead. A post-mortem
concluded that Hendrix had swallowed his own vomit while intoxicated with
barbiturates.
According to friend and collaborator Stephen
Stills, at this point Jimi had been interested in moving away from rock into fusion.
Despite his career being tragically cut short, his influence remains huge to
this day, on artists from Prince to Stevie Ray Vaughan and many others. Jazz
genius Miles Davis compared Hendrix's improvisational abilities with those of
saxophonist John Coltrane.
No time in this blog to cover the Kray Twins!
RONNIE and REGGIE KRAY
REVIEWS of JIMI
AFTER DARK:
‘Part murder mystery, part political thriller, part war story, part
action adventure, part love story and part rock and roll history. The author
put his heart and soul into this one, and clearly had fun doing it.’
‘An action crime novel
with nicely executed action scenes, a few twists, and big ideas: friendship,
loyalty, betrayal… and the relationship between music and culture. …A
well-told, exciting story with the cleanest, strongest prose in the business.
Stephen Mertz’s best novel, and it should be on everyone’s reading list.'
and
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07K4XSHWD/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
