A River Runs Through It

And I think this is what makes Jimi Hendrix such a popular figure for canonization, besides his sheer genius: we also admire just how many qualities he was able to let coexist in his playing, his style, and his way of being. He seemed to realize early on that you can take it all with you: the blues; his love of Bob Dylan, Arthur Lee, the Aleem twins of Harlem, and Curtis Mayfield; his enduring respect for the armed forces as a former paratrooper; the help of Linda Keith, the British Jewish model who got Hendrix his first record deal; his proud but difficult father; his adoring but absent mother; his own heady mix of drugs; and his spirituality. Like Whitman had before him, Hendrix sang a strange song of himself, a self that was not raceless or without flaws, but whose greatest muse was the country of his birth. Who else but Jimi Hendrix could make “The Star-Spangled Banner” sound so true, so blended, so inventive, so broken, so borrowed?

Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah is, I think, one of the greatest writers working today, and every piece she’s written proves that, but this essay in The Believer about Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios is a strong contender for best. Read the whole thing slowly; the last three paragraphs will be even better if you feel like you’ve earned them.