Review: Jimi Hendrix seen through a gentle purple haze

1/10

Something of a modern-day Brigitte Bardot, Georgia May Jagger is the youngest daughter of supermodel Jerry Hall and Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Jagger. She’s taken a liking to modeling, with her signature asset: a gap between her two front teeth. (Henry S. Dziekan III / Getty Images for Sunglass Hut)

2/10

Zoe Kravitz took the my-dad’s-a-rock-star-and-I’ll-be-one-too-thing to heart. As the lead singer of Elevator Flight, Zoe and her mates have performed on the same stages as the Roots and the Black Keys. She’s also acted in “X-Men: First Class” (2011), “After Earth” (2013) and “Californication.” ( Ilya S. Savenok / Getty Images for H&M)

3/10

Kelly Osbourne was introduced to the world as a harshly honest, tatted teen on MTV’s reality show “The Osbournes.” She turned to music, launching two albums: “Shut Up” (2002) and “Sleeping in the Nothing” (2005), but has since evolved. She now gives style advice on E!’s “Fashion Police.” (Frazer Harrison / Getty Images for Variety)

4/10

Early on, Lily Collins took an interest in journalism and acting. She wrote the “NY Confidential” column for Elle Girl and was a Nickelodeon TV correspondent. Now an actress, she’s appeared in “The Blind Side,” (2009), “Mirror Mirror” (2012) and “The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones” (2013). (Abraham Caro Marin / AP Photo)

5/10

Kimberly Stewart shot to fame as Paris Hilton’s club-hitting sidekick. These days, she’s a mother to young Delilah, whose father is Puerto Rican actor-producer Benicio Del Toro. (Danny Martindale / Getty Images)

6/10

A paternity test revealed that Daisy Lowe was rock royalty. Since then she’s been handpicked by designer Karl Lagerfeld to walk the Chanel runway and later modeled for Nanette Lepore, Vivienne Westwood and Burberry. She also posed topless for Esquire and nude for Playboy. (Ben A. Pruchnie / Getty Images)

7/10

Fashion designer Stella McCartney didn’t need to lean on her father’s Beatles fame. At 16, she interned with French fashion designer Christian Lacroix and went on to study fashion design in London. Stella became chief designer of French line Chloe and then launched her own popular label. (Peter Kramer / Getty Images for North America)

8/10

Theodora began modeling at 14 years old for a Tommy Hilfiger campaign alongside Mick Jagger’s daughter, Lizzy. Since then she’s been snapped by world-renowned photographers and scored the covers of Glamour Italy, Nylon UK and Rolling Stone. Her younger sister Alexandra plays the model cards as well. (Henry S. Dziekan III / Getty Images for Sunglass Hut)

9/10

Frances Bean Cobain’s mother, Courtney Love, supposedly used heroin during her pregnancy, so Frances was taken away. She also visited her father, Kurt Cobain, in rehab until he died. Love later disowned Frances, and photos of her taken by YSL’s Hedi Slimane also drew a spotlight. (Steve Granitz / WireImage)

10/10

Peaches wrote and starred in a documentary about herself as a teenager, “Peaches Geldof: Teenage Mind” (2005). That was after photos of her using heroin hit the Web. In addition to taking care of her two sons, she hosted TV specials. Geldorf was found dead in her home on April 7. She was 25. ( Mike Marsland / WireImage)

By Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times Television Critic

Nov. 5, 2013 6:30 AM PT

“Jimi Hendrix: Hear My Train A Comin’,” which premieres Tuesday on PBS, inducts the (very) late guitarist, singer and songwriter into the PBS hall of “American Masters.”

It’s a sometimes-enlightening, regularly exciting, always watchable documentary that hits the main points of a short life. Still, viewers not already versed and invested in this music and milieu might want a little deeper context.

Hendrix, who died at 27, has been gone for 43 years now. He was most assuredly a creature of his time, with his headbands and ruffles and psychedelic philosophizing, and yet he exists outside of time, one of those artists like Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis or Bill Monroe you could study forever, profitably, and never crack their secret. Graceful in music, movement and speech, he could make a simple introductory utterance, like “I see that we meet again,” stick in your mind like a song.

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“American Masters” films tend to accentuate the positive, but the effect here is to rob the subject of some of his complexity. In this soft-edged telling — which has the vaguely managed feel of an authorized biography — Hendrix becomes a simple shy kid, a self-effacing, sui generis phenomenon, preternaturally talented but also extremely hard-working, who just wanted to play his music, hang out with women and get a little high. But mostly play his music.

His genius is flatly asserted — invoked but not really evoked — by record executives, publicists, road crew, old girlfriends, family members and bandmates (most of the latter speaking through old clips from beyond the grave). Paul McCartney and Steve Winwood are enlisted to recall Hendrix’s effect on the London scene, where manager Bryan James “Chas” Chandler brought him to get famous — though nothing is heard from Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend or Jeff Beck, his closer counterparts in the transformation of the electric guitar and the foundation of the power trio.

Most valuable is the commentary of Eddie Kramer, who engineered all the albums Hendrix released in his lifetime and a few posthumous ones, and helped build Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios in New York. Kramer plays that now-familiar game of breaking down songs to their component parts, highlighting a triple-tracked guitar part here, a soloed vocal there.

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The overarching narrative is a familiar one: the artist trapped by his own success, whose need for change is stymied on the one hand by audiences who want more of the same and on the other by business associates — who also want more of the same. Hendrix himself, pouring money into Electric Lady, needed to earn, though he spoke repeatedly of needing a rest. And then he died, suffocating on his own vomit while knocked out on wine and sleeping pills.

Some of these images are familiar, Hendrix performances having provided key moments in the films “Monterey Pop” and “Woodstock.” Others — including home movies and some “recently uncovered” footage from the 1968 Miami Pop Festival, with Hendrix looking especially rakish and turning in a tight, assertive and freshened “Foxey Lady” — offer revelations small and huge.

robert.lloyd@latimes.com

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‘American Masters: Jimi Hendrix’

Where: KOCE

When: 9 p.m. Tuesday

Rating: TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14)