Midnight Lightning

Book excerpt: Incorporating extensive interviews with black Americans who can shed light on Hendrix's complicated racial relationsips, this book explores, among other issues, how Hendirx exploded our complacently segregated world to emerge as an icon for white boys ; why we never hear his songs on black radio ; why black people once viewed him as a hippie Uncle Tom ; his connection to the Black Power movement ; how he electrified soul music and made the electric guitar supplant the human voice ; how he revolutionized the use of technology in popular music ; how he redefined rock fashion ; his sex appeal, especially with black women ; why nobody was mad at him for sleeping with white women ; and how he has subverted and destabilized black masculine stereotypes, changing the way we think not only about black music, but about black identity itself.