I was very familiar with the song "Hey Joe" - both the Jimi Hendrix version and what I thought was the "original" by The Leaves. Turns out that the song has a very long and complicated history and was THE go-to cover for any 60's garage band. The author does a great job going into the history of the song, including both the question of who really wrote it ( and following the ups and downs of those two songwriters over the years) and its place among other murder ballads such as "Stagger Lee" and "Frankie and Johnny" The book threatens to become a list of all the covers after Hendrix at one point but there are enough worthwhile interviews to keep it on track, especially Living Color leader Vernon Reid's take on the violence against women implicated in the lyrics, and the on-point observation of the Vibrators' John "Eddie" Edwards - "Yeah, it's simple, but it's also dangerous and powerful. You can make it as easy or as difficult as you want. I's just a good song to play. It just works."

It's a very fast and fun read and a thorough history of a song that has a very colorful past. If I have any knock against the book, it's that the author's casual tone at points seems more suited to a blog post that a full non-fiction book. But that aside, I would highly recommend Hey Joe to rock music fans, especially those who enjoy reading about the history of a song's creation and evolution in the hands of artists over the years.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Riverdale Avenue Books for the advanced reading copy for this review. ( )

Book received from NetGalley.

This is something that you definitely need to read if you're a classic rock fan, enjoy Jimi Hendrix, or just enjoy an esoteric history book. Going into reading this I just thought it would be about the song Jimi Hendrix made popular and it would just focus on him. It ended up being much more than that for such a short book. It went into the other groups who played the song prior to it being a hit for Hendrix and those who covered it after. Also why it is still so popular today. It was an unusual history but a really interesting one. I think I like it the most just because of how different the subject was for a history. ( )