Today! Jimi Hendrix. the early years

He was the best guitarist in rock history. But where did he come from and how did he get there? On the 4th anniversary of his death, we look at the making of a legend.

On september23, 1966, Jimi Hendrix arrived in London. Soon after, the 23-years-old American unknown asked if he could join Eric Clapton's band Cream on stage for one song. The song that Hendrix choose was Howling Wolf's Killing Floor, a blues song wich Clapton later admitted that he had never been able to master. When Hendrix walked off the stage a few minutes later, everybody in the room kneew that star had arrived. "He jost stole the show", Clapton said.
"He played the guitar with his teeth, played in behind his head, did the splits. It was increable!"

He was born in Seattle, Washingotn, a city with a small black population. Hendrix grew up listening to radio station aimed at a white audience, and the first song he learn - on a one-tring guitar- was Dean Martin's "Memories Are Made of This". School friends remember him moving like Elvis Presley and enjoying Frank Sinatra.

In 1958, he got his first guitar and joined a band, the Rocking Kings, who covered recent hits by Fats Dominio and Chuck Berry at a local club.
In 1961, he left school hoping to become a professional musician, but was arrested in a stolen car and chose to join the army rather, then go to prison. As a paratroper in the 101st Airborne Dividion, he was tationed in Kentucky, the firs time he had been in the segragated South or heard the blues.