Celebrate the Life of Jimi Hendrix with These 8 Electrifying Reads

The expanded edition of the definitive, critically praised, and most beloved biography of music legend Jimi Hendrix—including previously unpublished photos.

Originally published to great acclaim in 1978, ’Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky was written by poet, scholar, and Hendrix friend David Henderson as a personal favor to Jimi. Since then, it has garnered rave reviews and sold over 500,000 copies, reaching the legions of Hendrix fans worldwide.

This most thorough update on the book in ten years is filled with brand-new photographs and fresh revelations. It includes more of Jimi’s personal writing, more details about his romantic relationships and sexual encounters, and more in-depth research by the author into Jimi’s music and creative life. At once a grand adventure and a vivid record of 1960s culture and politics, ’Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky shows Hendrix as a member of the Flower Power and the Black Power movements.

With new access to old documents—once covered up by legal barriers—Henderson is now free to tell about Jimi’s opposition to the Vietnam War and his controversial support of the New York Panther 21. With his music selling off the shelves, Hendrix is a rock immortal and this is the only book to tell his whole story.

“A hot-rod joy ride through mid-20th-century American history” (The New York Times Book Review), this one-of-a-kind narrative masterfully recreates the rivalry between the two men who innovated the electric guitar’s amplified sound—Leo Fender and Les Paul—and their intense competition to convince rock stars like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton to play the instruments they built.

In the years after World War II, music was evolving from big-band jazz into rock ’n’ roll—and these louder styles demanded revolutionary instruments. When Leo Fender’s tiny firm marketed the first solid-body electric guitar, the Esquire, musicians immediately saw its appeal. Not to be out-maneuvered, Gibson, the largest guitar manufacturer, raced to build a competitive product. The company designed an “axe” that would make Fender’s Esquire look cheap and convinced Les Paul—whose endorsement Leo Fender had sought—to put his name on it. Thus was born the guitar world’s most heated rivalry: Gibson versus Fender, Les versus Leo.

While Fender was a quiet, half-blind, self-taught radio repairman, Paul was a brilliant but headstrong pop star and guitarist who spent years toying with new musical technologies. Their contest turned into an arms race as the most inventive musicians of the 1950s and 1960s—including bluesman Muddy Waters, rocker Buddy Holly, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Eric Clapton—adopted one maker’s guitar or another. By 1969 it was clear that these new electric instruments had launched music into a radical new age, empowering artists with a vibrancy and volume never before attainable.

In “an excellent dual portrait” (The Wall Street Journal), Ian S. Port tells the full story in The Birth of Loud, offering “spot-on human characterizations, and erotic paeans to the bodies of guitars” (The Atlantic). “The story of these instruments is the story of America in the postwar era: loud, cocky, brash, aggressively new” (The Washington Post).

The Experience: Jimi Hendrix at Masons Yard is the boldest story of 1967, a defining moment in history when a young prodigy from Seattle stormed London, broadcasting live on the BBC, changing music forever and forging his own legend in the immortal halls of rock.

In 1967, British photographer Gered Mankowitz had the opportunity to photograph the Jimi Hendrix Experience in two sessions at Mankowitz’s legendary Masons Yard studio. Hendrix had just recorded his BBC sessions, taking London by storm, and was on his way to establishing himself as the most influential and charismatic rock star of the decade. Considered by many as the finest photographs ever taken of Hendrix and The Experience, these extraordinary images, both solo portraits of Hendrix as well as group shots, capture the musician and his band at the defining moment in their brief but spectacular career. As a testimony to their enduring quality, Mankowitz’s images were selected as the covers for all of Jimi Hendrix’s classic recordings. The Experience: Jimi Hendrix at Masons Yard is the first complete collection of Mankowitz’s two Masons Yard sessions with Hendrix and The Experience. Accompanied by essays from journalist rock historian Richie Unterberger, The Experience is a complete and necessary look at Hendrix during the peak of his revolutionary career.

Covering one of the most unforgettable moments in modern history—and including striking images of twentieth-century icons such as Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsburg, Grace Slick, and more—The Haight is an indispensable gallery of legendary photographer Jim Marshall’s iconic Sixties-era San Francisco photography. 

The counter-culture movement of the 1960s—and the wellspring of creativity it fostered—is one of the most continually fascinating and endlessly examined moments of the twentieth century. The footprint of that movement reverberates strongly today in music, fashion, literature, and social issues, to name a few. Widely regarded as the cradle of revolution, California’s Haight-Ashbury grew in the sixties from a small neighborhood in San Francisco to a worldwide phenomenon—a concept that extends far beyond the boundaries of the intersection itself. 

Legendary photographer Jim Marshall visually chronicled this area as perhaps no one else did. Renowned for his powerful portraits of some of the greatest musicians of the era, Marshall covered Haight-Ashbury with the same unique eye that allowed him to amass a staggering archive of rock-and-roll photography and Grammy recognition for his life’s work. In this one-of-a-kind book, the full extent of Marshall’s Haight-Ashbury work is stunningly displayed: live concerts, powerful candids, intimate sessions with icons of the day, street scenes, crash pads, alleyways, and the human be-in, all culminating in the definitive photographic record of a watershed moment in time. 

Featuring hundreds of images of everyone from Bill Graham, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jefferson Airplane to Donovan, The Beatles, Allen Ginsberg, and Timothy Leary, The Haight tells the complete and comprehensive story of the street, creative, cultural, and revolutionary aspects of the day. Written by bestselling San Francisco music journalist Joel Selvin, the story behind each and every one of these incomparable images is disclosed through an intimate and revealing narrative, lending the images a fascinating context and prospective. 

Bold and beautifully crafted, The Haight captures the full scope and nuance of Marshall’s San Francisco photography and offers fresh insight into the Summer of Love, Haight-Ashbury, and beyond.

“Unique and highly personal. The photos are beautiful and vivid, providing an eyewitness account of this remarkable moment in time. “—Dennis Elsas, WFUV-Radio and Sirius XM On-Air Personality, from his Foreword

Fifty years have passed by the impact of the Woodstock music festival—three days of music and love” lives on as a memory, as an inspiration, and a turning point in American history. Woodstock 1969 stands out for its singular voice.

Photojournalist Jason Lauré followed his unerring instinct for being in the right place at the crucial moment. He and coauthor Ettagale Blauer trace the historic events that preceded the festival and then envelop the reader with photographs of the headliner rock stars that performed during the landmark three-day concert including The Who, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane, and Santana.

Threading his way back and forth from the stage, through a sea of happy audience members, Jason Lauré photographed the communal life that was an essential part of the phenomenon that was Woodstock. Never intrusive, yet working close-up, he managed to capture these innocent moments in the pond and in the woods with the same compassion and intimacy he brought to his coverage of all the crucial events of the era. After Woodstock, he photographed such legends as Jimi Hendrix, Tina Turner, and Jim Morrison of the Doors.

Woodstock 1969 gives the reader an appreciation of the lasting impact of the festival, showing the way it changed the lives of all who experienced it. It served as the high point of the counterculture that started in earnest in the Summer of Love, and also as a leading influence in the decades that followed. The book concludes with a look at Woodstock's lasting legacy, from Greenwich Village and the rock scene of the Fillmore East to the establishment of Earth Day and the burgeoning environmental movement.

Renowned photographer Robert M. Knight captures the rousing essence of rock and roll with these immortal images.

In 1968, a young photographer named Robert M. Knight arrived in Seattle with a camera and a single roll of film to shoot local legend Jimi Hendrix. The photographs Knight took seized the uncanny energy of Hendrix and documented his primal performance and adrenaline-driven solos that tantalized audiences. The iconic images Knight produced immortalized Hendrix and propelled Knight on a life-long pilgrimage as the photographic herald of rock and roll.

Rock Gods: Fifty Years of Rock Photography is the rich visual universe of Robert M. Knight's work, replete with visions of guitar gods, monumental performances, and earth shattering solos that chronicle the greatest moments in the evolution of rock music and culture. His remarkable photographs define generations of rock stars from the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin to Run DMC and Green Day. With Rock Gods, Knight captures the grueling riffs of Jimmy Page, the flamboyant solos of Elton John, Slash's steel resolve, and Eric Clapton's soulful blues. With his intimate access and friendships with many of his subjects, Knight's photography fashions a unique perspective on the world of rock stars, creating some of the most compelling and evocative portraits of popular musicians witnessed to date.

Through the haze and jagged reverb, Rock Gods captures the ephemeral candor of the stage, visually asserting the impassioned substance of rock that incites our souls.

Rock Gods is now available in an elegant paperback edition.            

The definitive oral history of the seminal rock concert, Woodstock—three days of peace and music and one of the most defining moments of the 1960s—with original interviews with Roger Daltrey, Joan Baez, David Crosby, Richie Havens, Joe Cocker, and dozens of headliners, organizers, and fans.

On Friday, August 15, 1969, a crowd of 400,000—an unprecedented and unexpected number at the time—gathered on Max Yasgur’s farm in upstate New York for a weekend of rock ‘n’ roll, the new form of American music that had emerged only a decade earlier. For America’s counterculture youth, Woodstock became a symbol of more than just sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll—it was about peace, love, and a new way of living. It was a seminal event that epitomized the ways that the culture, the country, and the core values of an entire generation were shifting. On one glorious weekend, this generation found its voice through one outlet: music.

Back to the Garden celebrates the music and the spirit of Woodstock through the words of some of the era’s biggest musical stars, as well as those who participated in the festival. From Richie Havens’s legendary opening act to the Who’s violent performance, from the Grateful Dead’s jam to Jefferson Airplane’s wake-up call, culminating in Jimi Hendrix’s career-defining moment, Fornatale brings new stories to light and sets the record straight on some common misperceptions. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs, authoritative, and highly entertaining, Back to the Garden is the soon-to-be classic telling of three days of peace and music.

It’s been over forty years since the tragic death of Jimi Hendrix, yet his popularity is undiminished and his place as the preeminent electric guitarist of the ages is still unrivaled. In The Jimi Hendrix Experience, bestselling author and rock aficionado Jerry Hopkins delves into the legendary life and career of the greatest man to ever pick up a guitar.

With a consistent mix of greatness and madness, learn why the man who only released three studio albums during his life could forever transform not only music, but also a generation. While he’ll always be remembered for his incredible performance at Woodstock in 1969, Hopkins shows the true side of Hendrix: from his early childhood and the beginning of his career to his early death and the controversial battle of control over his estate that still wages on.

With incredible photographs depicting Hendrix’s rise to the top, The Jimi Hendrix Experience is the ultimate biography of the “Voodoo Chile.” Hendrix’s legacy and music will live on for generations to be enjoyed by and to live on with fans of all ages. And now, thanks to Hopkins, his life can be relived through this incredible biography.