Book delves into Hendrix’s chaotic life

SEATTLE – Jimi Hendrix might have stayed in the Army. He might have been sent to Vietnam.

Instead, he pretended he was gay.

And with that, he was discharged from the 101st Airborne in 1962, launching a musical career that would redefine the guitar, leave other rock heroes of the day speechless and culminate with his headlining performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock in 1969.

Hendrix’s subterfuge, contained in his military medical records, is revealed for the first time in Charles R. Cross’ new biography, “Room Full of Mirrors” (Hyperion, $24.95). Publicly, Jimi always claimed he was discharged after breaking his ankle on a parachute jump, but his medical records make no mention of such an injury.

In regular visits to the base psychiatrist at Fort Campbell, Ky., in spring 1962, Hendrix complained that he was in love with one of his squad mates, Cross writes. Finally, Capt. John Halbert recommended him for discharge, citing his “homosexual tendencies.”

Given Hendrix’s soon-to-be legendary appetite for women – from countless groupies to French actress Brigitte Bardot (a two-day affair unearthed by Cross) – the notion he might have been gay is ludicrous, Cross writes. Nor, Cross says, was his stunt politically motivated: Contrary to his later image, Hendrix was an avowed anti-Communist who exhibited little unease about the escalating U.S. role in Vietnam.

He just wanted to escape the Army to play music. He had enlisted to avoid jail time after being repeatedly arrested in stolen cars in Seattle, his hometown.

“Room Full of Mirrors,” titled after an unreleased Hendrix tune, is being published this summer to coincide with the 35th anniversary of his Sept. 18, 1970, death from a sleeping-pill overdose. It is Cross’ second biography of a popular musician who died at age 27; “Heavier Than Heaven,” a 2001 bio of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, was a New York Times best seller. He based this one on nearly four years of research, including access to Hendrix’s letters and diaries, along with military records provided by a collector Cross won’t name.

Cross focuses on Hendrix’s complex personal life and psyche more than his music. “It’s not how much I know about Jimi’s B-sides; it’s how much I know about the emotional arc of his life,” Cross said.

The portrait that emerges is similar, in many ways, to that of Cobain. Both men grew up in poverty in Washington state, dreamed from an early age of becoming rock stars, found themselves with more fame than they knew what to do with, and eventually retreated into a haze of drug use.

Cross, who lives just north of Seattle, describes Hendrix’s troubled childhood in the city’s Central District, then the only neighborhood in the city where blacks could buy homes.

Jimi’s father, Al Hendrix, and mother, Lucille, both had drinking problems. Al, a landscaper, rarely found decent-paying jobs and frequently split with Lucille. Jimi and his siblings were often left by themselves, or in the care of family friends. Jimi eventually flunked out of Garfield High.

The reason for Jimi’s discharge from the military is the biggest bombshell in “Room Full of Mirrors.” No curators at the Experience Music Project in Seattle had even heard a rumor to that effect.

On his way to the Monterey Pop Festival in summer 1967, Jimi was mistaken for a bellhop by a woman at the Chelsea Hotel during a layover in New York. It was a cold reminder of his racial status, Cross writes.