Experienced - by Eric Barrett (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Jimi Hendrix road manager and confidant Eric Barrett breaks fifty-five years of silence, revealing what it was like to live inside the rock legend's orbit--at Woodstock, on the Isle of Wight, at a Toronto drug bust, and in the private moments when Hendrix let his guard down--set against the backdrop of Barrett's full rock 'n' roll career . . . a rock odyssey for the ages.

As Jimi Hendrix's road manager, Eric Barrett was there when the amps blew out in Milan, when Hendrix unleashed fire at Woodstock, when paranoia set in at the Toronto airport, and in the quiet hours backstage when Hendrix revealed the insecurities behind his genius. Hendrix confided in few people. Barrett was one of them.

No one was closer to Hendrix's supernatural talent--or his demons.

Experienced is Barrett's long-awaited, unflinching memoir: the definitive inside account of Hendrix as friend, bandleader, and phenomenon. It strips away the mythology to reveal the man in all his musical wizardry and human contradictions--volatile, generous, insecure, incandescently creative, and always in pursuit of the next sound.

While his journey with Hendrix provides the book's spine, Barrett's decades on tour with David Bowie, Madonna, George Michael, and others add depth, parallels, and a sweeping sense of how Hendrix's short life set the template for rock 'n' roll excess--and survival--through the decades. The result is not just another rock memoir, but a once-in-a-lifetime backstage history of music's most transformative years, told through the prism of Barrett's ride on Hendrix's incandescent rise and tragic fall.

Review Quotes

"There are songwriters, producers, engineers, inventors, performance artists, bluesmen, and, of course, guitar players (and the rest of us mortals)--and then there is Jimi Hendrix. Here Jimi's genius is documented by one of the few men who was there to help facilitate it."
--Joe Perry, Aerosmith

"The first book I've read--and I've read plenty--that captures the man, not the myth. Eric Barrett was there, and he brings Hendrix into focus as a working musician, a flawed genius, and, just as importantly, a genuinely cool hang."
--Brad Tolinski, author of Light & Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page and Blow by Blow: The Jeff Beck Story

"I had no idea that Eric was Jimi Hendrix's entire crew, that he was tour manager, lighting director and dear friend to David Bowie . . . 'til much later in our relationship. That being said, until you've woken up to Eric Barrett literally jumping up and down on your hotel room bed, screaming obscenities at you . . . because you overslept and missed the lobby call, you have no concept of how important everything you do on the road is and what a great tour manager has to put up with!"
--Waddy Wachtel, guitarist for, among others, Linda Ronstadt, Fleetwood Mac, Keith Richards, James Taylor, and Iggy Pop; cowriter of Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London"

"Eric, oh man, he was the one keeping our little circus on track. You can imagine those times during the Charmed Life and Cyberpunk tours, what kind of crazy shit we got up to, but Eric made sure every show was perfection. I still consider him my close friend and someone with a world's worth of knowledge. There are so many times in my life since then that I wished he was still there guiding my musical path, telling me the stories of his fantastic journey."
--Mark Younger-Smith, guitarist and writing partner of Billy Idol

"There has never been a book about Jimi Hendrix that has the unfiltered, raw intimacy of this memoir from his former roadie and friend Eric Barrett. Experienced offers a vivid portrait of both Hendrix's brilliance and his vulnerability. It's a rare, invaluable document of the apex of rock 'n' roll in the late 1960s."
--Danny Goldberg, author of Bumping Into Geniuses and Serving The Servant: Remembering Kurt Cobain

About the Author

Eric Barrett was Jimi Hendrix's road manager and confidant from 1968-1970 and spent nearly five decades on tour with music's biggest names, from the early Beatles to Madonna. Known within the industry as a fixer, manager, and trusted insider, he lived through rock's most legendary highs and lows. He now lives in Santa Monica, California, with his wife.

Lawrence Robinson is a British author and journalist based in Los Angeles and London. He has ghostwritten numerous nonfiction titles for major publishers and worked as a screenwriter for DreamWorks and Universal. His journalism has appeared in The Face, Arena, LA Weekly, and more.