The short life and spellbinding music of Jimi Hendrix have been well covered by other writers, and, with the exception of some new and dreary information about his death, there are not a lot of surprises in Wild Thing ... the real value of his book lies in the almost casual comments he offers about Jimi’s one-of-a-kind brand of rock ’n’ roll ... Music is notoriously difficult to translate into words, but Mr. Norman comes close again and again ... This is a sad book, but Jimi Hendrix’s music is too original to be anything like sad. There’s something not quite of this world about it.
Wild Thing is good on Hendrix’s meteoric impact on Swinging London (and then the world), the crater he left in consciousness. It’s not quite as good on the precise electric-acoustic dimensions of that crater. But that’s always the challenge with Hendrix: How to describe, how to even verbally gesture at, the extraordinary sounds he made? Or to reconcile this diffident, melancholy man with the Promethean audacity of his art? ... Racism is almost a fully formed character in Wild Thing, popping up all over with demonic buoyancy ... Norman is sensitive to the racial context, except when he isn’t ... Where Wild Thing succeeds, sometimes spectacularly, is in its retelling of the Hendrix fairy tale ... a sadness sets in as one reads the last two chapters of Wild Thing. It’s the sensation of Hendrix slipping out of the story, out of this world, out of the hands of another biographer.
Always entertaining, if a little glib in places, the Sixties chronicler Philip Norman tells an archetypal crash-and-burn story of sex, drugs, rock’n’roll, dodgy gangster managers, debauched tours, bitter feuds, more sex, more drugs and even more sex ... Hendrix effortlessly attracted an army of girlfriends and groupies. Itemised with an unsensational eye in Wild Thing, his erotic exploits eventually start to feel comically absurd ... Norman’s forte is his pithy use of anecdote ... Wild Thing has less to say about Hendrix’s richer and deeper impact as a sonic innovator and counterculture figurehead. In fairness, Norman does make an effort to locate the rocker within the racial politics of his day ... Norman himself can be tone deaf on race at times ... Norman never met Hendrix, who falls outside his usual focus on the white founding fathers of British blues rock. That perhaps explains the uncertain tone of Wild Thing, which feels like the work of a capable chronicler rather than an impassioned devotee. Indeed, the author pads out his observations on Hendrix with tangentially related Beatles, Stones and Clapton anecdotes, as if struggling for a sure footing outside his comfort zone. Wild Thing brings few fresh insights to the table ... Most glaringly, the author skimps on serious analysis of Hendrix’s music or lyrics ... That said, Norman’s instinct for reportage serves him well in addressing Hendrix’s death ... There have been many superior books on Hendrix, and Norman has written better pop biographies than this, but Wild Thing is still an engaging memorial to a rock revolutionary whose music, in contrast to many of his revered Sixties peers, retains much of its explosively thrilling voodoo power.
... a brisk and efficient accounting of a brief life ... Norman, with the proper responsibility of the assiduous biographer, goes over the fateful day and talks of the 'what ifs' and the 'maybes.' But there was a weary inevitability to the death of the guitarist ... The major flaw of the Hendrix book, however, is that his investigations do not include a judicious or informed examination of the Hendrix psychology. This was a damaged human being ... There are moments of genuine interest and, indeed, intrigue in Norman’s biography ... but there was a darkness and Norman seems reluctant to step towards it.
When it comes to putting together a story from other sources, as well as a number of interviews he conducted, Mr. Norman does yeoman’s work. Having lived in England during the era when it became Hendrix’s sometime home and the birthplace of his musical legend, and having written about musicians for so many years, Norman’s wealth of knowledge allows him to bring scenes from this story to vivid life. He also knows how to tell a story engagingly, if at times brashly, and keep the pace brisk ... Norman paints a clear, sad portrait of a reluctant celebrity chewed up by others’ machinations ... So what’s missing from this book? The music ... where are the detailed stories of how more of his classic songs were written and recorded? Where are the descriptions of precisely what made Hendrix’s guitar playing so astounding to his peers? Where are the celebrations of just how poetic and searing and searching and funny his lyrics could be? ... sets up an expectation that is never met ... But, perhaps such glories are best discovered in the works themselves. Mr. Norman presents a flesh-and-blood, warts-and-all Jimi Hendrix most vibrantly. Readers most likely to care have probably already experienced Hendrix’s music deeply and would prefer to learn more about the man behind it rather than the artist creating it.
Norman knows an interesting character when he sees one but, sadly, he misfired when deciding on Jimi Hendrix. Even a fan of the great guitarist, after reading this book, would conclude the man himself is not that interesting. That’s not to say Jimi’s life and career wasn’t 'spellbinding,' as the title suggests but Jimi, as a man without the guitar, was kind of dull and drug addled ... succeeds when it examines the creation myth of Jimi, exploring how he became the acknowledged greatest guitar god of all time. The problem with the book is the hole at the center of the story. It appears from this reading that Hendrix himself had nothing interesting to say ... We know Jimi became more and more obsessed about every track as his career went on and envisioned the Electric Lady Studio in New York, but we’re missing the essential elements that might make Hendrix appear interesting ... The best part of this book is how Hendrix became Hendrix, how this poor kid from Seattle somehow etched his name in the rock history books. Once he hits the big time with his first album and then the masterful cover of Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower, his story devolves into a long, uninteresting drug haze.
Norman weaves artistic achievement, personal struggles, and management difficulties together, making the tragic outcome seem if not acceptable then at least understandable. Occasional suggestions of what Hendrix might have been thinking notwithstanding, Norman avoids sounding overly sensationalist and draws heavily on his revered biographies of other key figures of the time for context and color. Readers searching for complete details of Hendrix’s recorded work will need to look elsewhere, as this is by no means a definitive catalog of his output. But as a biography of the legendary ax man, this is the one.
In this rollicking biography, Norman...combines colorful, energetic picaresque...with lush evocations of Hendrix’s sound ... Norman’s entertaining, psychedelically tinged portrait shows why Hendrix made such a deep impression on rock ’n’ roll.
