Two Riders Were Approaching: The Life & Death of Jimi Hendrix

Jimmy was a down-at-heel guitarist in New York, relying on his latest lovers to support him while he tried to emulate his hero Bob Dylan. A black guy playing white rock music, he wanted to be all things to all people.

But when Jimmy arrived in England and became Jimi, the cream of swinging London fell under his spell. It wasn''t that Jimi could play with his teeth, play with his guitar behind his back. It was that he could really play.

Journeying through the purple haze of idealism and paranoia of the sixties, Jimi Hendrix was the man who made Eric Clapton consider quitting, to whom Bob Dylan deferred on his own song ''All Along the Watchtower'', who forced Miles Davis to reconsider his buttoned-down ways - and whose ''Star Spangled Banner'' defined Woodstock.

And when his star, which had burned so brightly, was extinguished far too young, his legend lived on in the music - and the intrigue surrounding his death.

Eschewing the traditional ro