Jimi Hendrix's Favorite Books Explore UFOs and More

Jimi Hendrix’s guitar-playing style was, one might say, a form of poetry in itself. So many meanings exist in those lines of feedback and raw emotion. Unsurprisingly, given the depth of his creativity and the wide array of mystical and mythical themes in his music, Hendrix loved reading and learning. In particular, he favored science fiction texts that opened up portals into other worlds, and echoes of those alternate realities and new dimensions can be heard in his music.

As a child, Hendrix’s imagination was vast. He carried around a broomstick before he could afford to buy his own guitar, pretending to play the wooden imitation of an instrument he would later shred on before thousands. He loved Flash Gordon and other sci-fi legends. He even claimed to have seen a UFO outside his house as a child, and often mentioned believing in aliens and seeing ships in the sky throughout his short but dazzling career. 

He also penned his own sci-fi film, Moondust, which was partly inspired by that UFO encounter. The 38-page script, which unfortunately never made it to the screen, involved a young girl who hears a rock band playing and envisions the music as dragons fighting in the sky, among other surrealistic scenes. 

Hendrix even occasionally mentioned being from space himself. He once said “that he felt he had come from an asteroid belt off the coast of Mars, and that he was tuning people to energy that had just arrived here,” at least according to Chuck Wein, a director who lived with Hendrix in Maui and created the film Rainbow Bridge, which features footage of Hendrix weeks before his death. 

In addition to his own close encounters, Hendrix read widely, exploring science fiction, fairy tales, and religion. His work helped lay the groundwork for Afrofuturism and music’s love affair with science fiction in the decades to come, something that Hendrix tragically wouldn’t be around for due to his death at just 27—unless, of course, you take some of his many lyrical claims about reincarnation, being from another planet, and the like to heart.

Here are eight books and stories Hendrix is known to have drawn inspiration from.

1. Earth Abides by George Stewart
2. “Lot” by Ward Moore
3. Night of Light by Philip José Farmer
4. Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde Songbook 
5. The Tibetan Book of the Dead
6. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
7. Complete Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen
8. Secret Places of the Lion: Alien Influences on Earth’s Destiny by George Hunt Williamson
9. The Urantia Book

Earth Abides by George Stewart

Soon after starting his professional career, a young Hendrix stayed with his future manager Chas Chandler, who had a bookshelf full of sci-fi texts. “I had dozens of science fiction books at home,” Chandler said in the book Ultimate Hendrix by John McDermott and Eddie Kramer. “The first one Jimi read was [by George Stewart’s] Earth Abides.” 

That 1949 text is a post-apocalyptic story set in a world almost entirely decimated by a pandemic. It follows one of the few survivors, who finds himself tasked with rebuilding the world anew. “It wasn’t a Flash Gordon type. It’s an end-of-the-world, new-beginning, disaster-type story,” Chandler added. The book sparked a fresh love for sci-fi in Hendrix, who “started reading through them all.”

“Lot” by Ward Moore

Another post-apocalyptic sci-fi tale that Hendrix plucked from Chandler’s shelves is this short story by Ward Moore, which describes a family trying to stay alive in a world decimated by a nuclear disaster. The story draws inspiration from the biblical story of Lot escaping Sodom, superimposing that onto a version of California amid a nuclear holocaust—something that had seemed like it could very much become a reality in the 1950s when Hendrix was a child.

Night of Light by Philip José Farmer

Perhaps no book played a larger role in Hendrix’s actual discography than this one. Philip José Farmer’s sci-fi book Night of Light describes a planet that becomes covered in a surreal purplish brilliance for two weeks every seven years. During this time, reality reorganizes itself, people transform into trees, statues come to life, and good and evil confront each other. This surrealistic and psychedelic story was first published as a novella in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and it later found its way to Hendrix.

After reading the book, Hendrix reportedly had a dream about being lost in a purple fog until a radiant vision of Jesus Christ came to save him. He later turned the idea into a song, originally titled “Purple Haze, Jesus Saves.” He later removed the song’s more religious references.

The track has since become an iconic counterculture anthem that is heavily associated with various types of drug use, but Hendrix never actually said it was about drugs or substances of any kind. Instead, he more frequently spoke of its link to mythical journeying and the haze of youthful infatuation, though he once also claimed it was about a woman who had put a voodoo spell on him.

Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde Songbook 

Hendrix was deeply inspired by Bob Dylan, and one of his most famous songs is a cover of Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.” Hendrix also owned a copy of Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde songbook and was photographed reading it, likely poring over its poetic, enigmatic lyrics. “Dylan really turned me on,” Hendrix said in March 1968. “Not the words or his guitar, but as a way to get myself together.”

The Tibetan Book of the Dead

According to Chuck Wein, Hendrix’s bookshelves contained an “underlined” copy of this book. This is a classic Buddhist text that is traditionally read aloud, and it is designed to help the dying prepare to navigate stages of consciousness that exist after death, and eventually to reach rebirth or liberation. 

Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne

Hendrix once opened up to a journalist about his love of fairy tales, including A. A. Milne’s classic Winnie-the-Pooh. “Fairy tales are full of fantasy, and they appeal to your imagination,” he said of the classic children's books.

Complete Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen

In the same interview, Hendrix mentioned enjoying Hans Christian Andersen’s Complete Fairy Tales, a famous 19th-century collection that includes stories such as “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Red Shoes,” and “The Little Mermaid.” These stories are often much grimmer and more violent than the ones featured in Disney movies. 

Secret Places of the Lion: Alien Influences on Earth’s Destiny by George Hunt Williamson

First published in the 1950s, Williamson’s book describes his theory that aliens have actually visited Earth many times across history, typically arriving to dispense key wisdom and waiting to see how it influences humanity.

This book was given to Hendrix by Chuck Wein in Maui, according to Charles R. Cross’s Hendrix biography Room Full of Mirrors. While Hendrix never directly mentioned reading it, it’s not hard to imagine that someone as interested in UFOs and aliens as Hendrix was might have explored its pages.

The Urantia Book

This book is a massive Christian philosophical text that claims to have been channeled by spiritual beings looking to help humanity access the wisdom of Jesus Christ. According to Charles R. Cross’s Room Full of Mirrors, Hendrix carried around a copy and spoke about it to friends. The book was also read by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. 

Hendrix is known to have had a rich spiritual life, using the phrase “electric church” to describe his belief that music could deeply connect with people’s souls. He did not follow an organized religion but rather drew from many, and at one point said, “my religion is music.” Still, he often drew from a tapestry of esoteric religious beliefs, and it’s not hard to see parallels between this book’s mention of other worlds and rebirth and some of Hendrix’s own lyrics.