Wild Thing
“From the opening lines of this moving audiobook, listeners will know that narrator Ako Mitchell has an artist’s appreciation for 1960s music legend Jimi Hendrix. With deliberate diction and dramatic pacing, Mitchell, nevertheless, sounds authentic and relaxed—a combination of narrating strengths that takes Phillip Norman’s excellent writing to another level…Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
AudioFile
Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award
An Amazon Editor’s Top Pick of the Year in Biographies
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2020
New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice of the Season
Hailed for its astounding portrait of Jimi Hendrix, Philip Norman's Wild Thing has become the definitive biography of rock's most outrageous-and tragic-genius.
Today, Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970) is celebrated as the greatest rock guitarist of all time. But before he was setting guitars and the world aflame, James Marshall Hendrix was a shy kid in Seattle, plucking at a broken ukulele. Bringing Hendrix's story to vivid life against the backdrop of midcentury rock, and interweaving new interviews with friends, lovers, bandmates, and his family, Wild Thing vividly reconstructs Hendrix's remarkable career, from playing segregated clubs on the Chitlin' Circuit to achieving stardom in Swinging London.
"In this rollicking biography, Norman (Paul McCartney) follows the electric guitar god from hardscrabble Seattle boyhood to enormous fame and his 1970 martyrdom to rock-star excess. … Norman combines colorful, energetic picaresque [with] lush evocations of Hendrix's sound. … Norman's entertaining, psychedelically tinged portrait shows why Hendrix made such a deep impression on rock 'n' roll."-Publishers Weekly, starred review
Praise