Greil Marcus compared 77 rock 'n' roll deaths of the 1970's and ranked them according to an only half-sarcastic calculus of the deceased's musical value and manner of death. The winner was Jimi Hendrix.
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It would be difficult to overstate Hendrix's influence on rock in the 1960's and 70's. The arrival of his volcanic, bottomlessly sensual guitar playing was one of the seismic events of rock in that era. The music that followed his debut in England in 1966 includes Led Zeppelin, the heaviest sounds of Cream and the Who, and the whole of heavy metal; by comparison, everything before him sounds like Herman's Hermits.
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Spirited off to England seven weeks later, Hendrix started turning heads at jam sessions within hours of his arrival. Soon he had a band, and in some of the book's most entertaining passages, mobs of the biggest British rock stars of the era line up for humbling. During one early gig attended by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and others, the singer Terry Reid ran into Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones outside the bathroom. Jones told him it was all wet up front. What? ''It's wet from all the guitar players crying,'' Jones said.
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