The Grail Guitar
The Search for Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze Telecaster
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- اطلاعات
- نقد و بررسی
- دیدگاه کاربران
نقد و بررسی
March 7, 2016
Musician Adams's fascinating search for the provenance of his beloved and battered Fender Telecasterâwhich may or may not have been owned by guitar hero Jimi Hendrixâis equal parts cultural history and detective story, and it's completely compelling reading. Adams's quest for the history of his "grail" begins almost 40 years after he found the guitar in 1973 in a London music store, where a salesman casually tells Adams he got it from "one of Hendrix's roadies." At the time, Adams was guitarist in the folk-rock band String Driven Thing, and his knowledge of the late 1960s music scene serves him well as he and a researcher friendâinspired decades later by rumors about "Jimi's lost Tele"âcomb through Hendrix biographies and Internet sites. They discover a few solid facts in the chaos of Hendrix history: that Jimi used a Telecaster on overdubs on the "Purple Haze" recording, even though his guitar of choice was the Fender Stratocaster; that Hendrix bass player Noel Redding had procured the guitar from a friend for the session; that Redding ended up with the guitar after he had stopped playing with Hendrix; and that Redding had probably sold it to an actual Hendrix roadie. As Adams traces the guitar's journey through the 1960sâincluding a day-glo paint refinishingâhe successfully rescues "this little piece of rock history for posterity."
Starred review from March 1, 2016
In 1973, Adams bought a guitar from a music store in London. The salesman mentioned that the guitar had been brought in by one of Jimi Hendrix's roadies. It was a maybe-it's-true curiosity, and the author talked about the possible Hendrix connection from time to time as the years passed. Forty years later, though, he learned that a lot of Hendrix fans were debating the existence of a (possibly mythical) lost guitar, one used by Hendrix at some London recording sessions that had disappeared in the early 1970s. Could Adams have bought that guitar? He was determined to find out. This endlessly fascinating account of his search for the truth is structured like a police procedural: Adams finds clues, follows leads, and interviews people who might know something. It's the story of a guitar, sure, but it's also the story of a music subculture, of a global fan collective whose devotion to a long-dead musician has shaped their lives. It's not often that you can say about a music book that readers will be impatiently turning the pages, anxious to see how the story plays out, but that's exactly what happens here.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)
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