Stone Free: Jimi Hendrix in London, September 1966–June 1967

I really enjoyed this book; it's like a throwback in time and it's a great trip. I liked the build up of the story, from NYC to London to Monterey. Excellent.Just a couple of things that I would have liked, which would make this really a 5+ Star, was just a little more about Jimi's days in Greenwich Village, hustling for gigs, before flying to England; just for a little more context and understanding of what it was like as a working musician struggling to make it, in those days.I was expecting more details and perspectives on Jimi's performance at Monterrey: like what other musicians, industry people and critics said. It would be great to know what the Jimi Hendrix Experience did after the concert. And how did Jimi's management move to capitalise on the band's breakthrough ? These details would have given the story fullness. Just my ideas about 'book-ending' the story.Maybe in a revised edition, we'll get the extra details, but as it is, it's still a book, you can't stop reading...Fantastic!One last thing, the author writes that Jimi refers to Mitch, as "Bob Dylan's grandmother" during the intro to "Like a Rolling Stone" ; I always thought that Jimi made that comment about Noel...

Forty years ago, I had just turned 17 and was still basking in the glow of the first album I’d ever purchased, "Hendrix In The West." I was reading Guitar Player magazine and anxiously awaiting every monthly issue that came out—I was a devout reader and follower of all things GP. One of the names that I repeatedly saw during the ensuing years was one Jas Obrecht, who had a writing style that was concise and insightful, but he also seemed to have direct access to every legendary rock and blues guitarist in the world. Forty years ago, almost to the day of this writing, I purchased a fresh copy of David Henderson’s "‘Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky" which was released in November 1978. That was my first foray into reading a full-length bio of Hendrix. Fast forward to today, and I was “experienced” in the life of Hendrix through books by Henderson, Welch, Sampson, Hopkins, Potach, Roby, Lawrence, Cross, Shapiro & Glebbeek, McDermott & Kramer, Stubbs, Hitopi, Neal, Egan, and, of course, Mitchell and Redding. By now I thought I’d read just about everything and pretty much knew what I needed to know about Jimi Hendrix.But I’m here to tell you—there’s something else—Obrecht’s "Stone Free: Jimi Hendrix In London." From start to finish, this insightful, thoroughly-detailed book will leave you feeling as if you were in the studio, on the stage, and running to the tour bus with Jimi! Obrecht has painstakingly researched this specific period of Jimi’s career—the before, during, and after phase of the atom-bomb drop of "Are You Experienced?" on London’s music scene. One of the greatest aspects of Obrecht’s book is how he meticulously exposes the gradual yet direct impact on British rock cognoscenti—Clapton, Townshend, Beck, Lennon/McCartney, Jagger/Richards, et al., and their self-described permanent after-shocks which still reverberate to this day. In what is obviously a labor of love, Obrecht has given us a gift that we could have only hoped for—a focused treatise on what will forever remain, in hindsight, as the happiest (though relatively brief and fleeting) period of Jimi’s life—when he dared to take the world by storm and rattle the cages of our minds and leave us breathless. Indeed, "Stone Free: Jimi Hendrix In London" will do the same—and make you reach for that the vinyl disc and get “experienced” all over again. Be free, ride the breeze, and fly on with Jas Obrecht as he shares his experience with Jimi like none of the others have done before. In other words, just get your mind together--I have.

Jimmy, becoming Jimi....a VG book, telling of the event's in detail of the rise of a guitarist super-nova!

Ever read a book ya hate to put down? Any Hendrix fan will for this one. Jason weaves together music mag interviews from '66 and '67 and interviews with those who were there and more and gives us as close to a 'you are there's book as you can get 50 years later. Ya learn a lot about Jimi and that transformational time. Bloomfield said Jimi was a guitar and blues guitar encyclopedia. It just oozes nuggets in as it unfolded format. Outstanding. I'm blown away by this book n I rarely say that.

This is a very interesting window into Hendrix in a small but critical slice of time, in London before his legend was huge. His story of super stardom is well known, but this book tells the story of the shy, young artist forming The Experience, meeting Clapton for the first time, and overall how nascent rock and roll itself was in 1966. The book is well-researched, if a little dry.