According to Examiner.com, tomorrow (Thursday, July 26th), Small World Books (1407 Ocean Front Walk) in Venice, CA is hosting a talk and signing by LEON HENDRIX for his new book, JIMI HENDRIX: A Brother’s Story. Leon, younger brother of the late, great Jimi Hendrix, is also a guitarist and songwriter. After a lengthy legal battle with stepsister Janie Hendrix, Leon won the right to use his brother’s name and likeness, allowing him to release his biography of Jimi in time to commemorate what would have been the rock legend’s seventieth birthday.

According to a book description, Leon Hendrix takes us back to the days before Jimi’s amazing rise to fame, beginning with their tough childhood in Seattle, when their fascination with science fiction and UFOs helped them escape a difficult family life. (Jimi insisted his family call him Buster, after Flash Gordon actor Buster Crabbe.) The author reveals Jimi’s early fascination with sound, from his experiments with plucking wires attached to bedposts to the time when he got in trouble for taking apart the family radio (“I was looking for the music,” he explained) to Jimi’s purchasing his first guitar—a Sears, Roebuck and Co. acoustic, from a neighbor.

Leon recounts Jimi’s early days performing on the “Chitlin’ Circuit,” when Jimi would call from the road to play early versions of tracks for the classic album Are You Experienced, and illuminates the biographical roots of Jimi’s most well-known songs. Readers learn about the heady days of sex and drugs that came with Jimi’s skyrocketing fame and how Leon felt Jimi’s management isolated him from the rest of the family. The author speaks of his own heartbreak, learning of his brother’s sudden death while incarcerated in Washington State’s Monroe Reformatory.

Commemorating what would have been Jimi's seventieth birthday, Leon Hendrix’s poignant and captivating account sheds new light on a music legend.