Experienced: On the Road with Jimi Hendrix and Beyond, by Eric Barrett with Lawrence Robinson
Eric Barrett escaped a dead-end life in a British coal mining, steel-milling town through rock and roll. He sang in a band, became a roadie and, through a chance encounter in a London club, became Jimi Hendrix’s guitar tech and gear hauler. This was 1967, when Hendrix’s ascent began, and for Barrett it was the beginning of a four-decade backstage career.
Much of his memoir concerns early days with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Barrett got along well, as Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding were working class blokes like himself. He recalls Hendrix as shy off stage, seldom separated from a guitar. Technology hadn’t caught up with Hendrix’s excursions into sonic distortion, giving Barrett armloads of work maintaining amps and pedals. The profusion of drugs and alcohol he describes makes it a wonder the Experience ever reached the stage with minds and bodies intact—much less conquer the stages as they did.
Barrett went on to work for an array of stars, notably David Bowie, whom he found charming. Experienced will be an enjoyable read for anyone wanting a peek into rock star life when the stars were bright.
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