American singer-songwriter Jimi Hendrix was BOTD in 1942. Born in Seattle, Washington to a working-class African-American family, he had a turbulent childhood, marked by his parents’ alcoholism and his mother’s early death. He showed an early talent for music, teaching himself to play the ukulele while listening to Elvis Presley songs, and began playing guitar in his teens. He enlisted in the US Army in 1961 but was discharged the following year. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee, playing in Black-friendly venues in segregated Southern states alongside the Isley Brothers and Little Richard. In 1966, he moved to London, where he formed the rock band The Jimi Hendrix Experience, dazzling audiences with his electric guitar-based sound and charismatic on-stage persona. Within three months, he had three UK top 10 hits, Hey Joe, Purple Haze and The Wind Cries Mary. His fame grew in the United States after performing at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, a thrilling theatrical performance culminating with his guitar being set on fire. His next album Electric Ladyland became an international hit, vaulting him to worldwide celebrity. He headlined the 1969 Glastonbury Festival and the 1970 Isle of Wight Festivals. Wiping the floor with other guitarists, he popularised a psychedelic rock sound, utilising feedback, distortion, and tone-altering sound effects to create a bracing new musical vocabulary. He died of an accidental drug overdose in 1970, aged 27. Now regarded as one of the greatest rock musicians of the 20th century, he became the poster boy for a newly liberated Black masculinity. Though rampantly heterosexual, his beauty, flamboyant dress and intensely sexual performance style made him an object of desire for men and women, embodying the provocation and sexual androgyny of rock ‘n roll.