Jimi Hendrix in his apartment at 23 Brook St. in Mayfair, London, now a museum
At 12:45 p.m. on a hungover Friday morning 50 years ago today, Jimi Hendrix was declared dead at St. Mary Abbot's hospital in London, where he was transferred after being found unconscious – according to the autopsy, already deceased. in room 507 of the Samarkand Hotel in Notting Hill, London. Overdose? (it is the official version) Pulmonary emphysema? (what the latest research indicates) Suicide? (She was a tortured soul who had failed to manage his success) Murder? (One far-fetched theory points to the Nixon administration, the FBI, his sinister manager Mike Jeffrey, and even his then-girlfriend Monika Dannemann, whose statements to the police were wildly contradictory.) He was only 27 years old.
We will probably never know for sure, but what nobody doubts is that on that Friday, September 18, 1970, the world lost one of the best –if not the best– guitarists of all time. and today we want pay tribute to him by traveling to places and settings where his chords still resonate: from his hometown Seattle, until London, where the legend was created, going through Harlem and Greenwich Village of New York, the coast of Essaouira (Morocco) and the Hawaiian island of Maui.
Precisely about his visit to Maui in 1970, where he traveled –at all levels, since he was well loaded with psychedelic drugs– with his band (Jimi Hendrix Experience) to give a mythical concert on the slopes of the Haleakala volcano and participate in the filming from one of the most disastrous films of all time –Rainbow Bridge (Chuck Wein, 1971)–, is the documentary Music, Money, Madness… Jimi Hendrix In Maui, which will be presented next November 20 and will be accompanied by a double CD and a triple LP with previously unreleased material.
But let's start at the beginning or, almost better said, at the end-end.
THE FIRST YEARS IN SEATTLE
In a marble mausoleum Greenwood Memorial Park Cemetery of the town of Renton, 21 km southeast of Seattle, Washington state (USA), the remains of James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix rest next to those of his father Al. The grave, which changed its location in 2002 and is always surrounded by photos, flowers, handwritten songs, guitars and other gifts, attracts about 14,000 fans a year and it is one of the most visited in the world.
Ready to rock!
Hendrix was born in Seattle on November 27, 1942. and he spent all of his childhood and youth in the neighborhood of the Central District –or CD, as the locals call it–. Two blocks from what was his home, next to the Northwest African American Museum, has been located since 2017 Jimi HendrixPark (2400 South Massachusetts Street), of little more than one hectare. Apart from a space for concerts, the park has just released an art installation somewhat disconcertingly titled Shadow Wave Wall which aims to **reflect the fluidity of the electric soundscapes created by the guitarist. **
Although Jimi never graduated and, interestingly, he used to fail in music, he went through numerous colleges and institutes. One of them was Garfield High (400 23rd Ave.), where Quincy Jones and Bruce Lee also studied. In the library there is a bronze bust that you can visit if you go during school hours and you ask for permission in the secretariat of the institute.
Not much evidence survives of Hendrix's life in Seattle. For example, the Myer's Music store where Jimi bought his first electric guitar closed in 1984 and the commemorative plaque and mural were removed in 1999. Gone are the legendary jazz clubs on Jackson Street and the speakeasy known as the Bucket of Blood where his mother worked. Nevertheless, MoPOP, the Museum of Pop Culture, displays the largest collection of Jimi Hendrix memorabilia in the world. The museum, housed in a wacky Frank Gehry-designed building (325 5th Ave N.), It was created in 2000 by Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, an excellent guitarist and the person who financed Jimi's father the more than four million dollars he needed to acquire the copyright to his son's music.
Jimi first got on a stage in the basement of the Temple De Hirsch Sinai Synagogue (1511 E Pike St.), but after achieving success, he only performed four times in his hometown, two of them at the Seattle Center Colliseum, now called KeyArena (305 Harrison St.), and one, the last, in **the old Sick's Stadium, now converted into a department store. **
Another of the places of pilgrimage it is life-size bronze statue depicting the musician playing a left-handed Fender Stratocaster guitar with the neck reversed. Is located at the intersection of Broadway and Pine Street, in the Capitol Hill neighborhood , and it is almost impossible to pass by without someone taking a photo.
Jimi Hendrix statue in Seattle
FROM HARLEM TO GREENWICH VILLAGE
After briefly enlisting in the Army to escape a prison sentence and trying to make a living as a musician in Nashville, where he learned to play the guitar with his teeth, Jimi, who was still called Jimmy, came to Harlem in the exciting early '60s. He settled in the Hotel Theresa (125th Street and 7th Ave.), a hotbed of culture and political activism of the black community of the time. known as the "Waldorf of Harlem", Everyone has passed through the Theresa: from Josephine Baker and Ray Charles to Malcolm X and Muhammed Ali; including Fidel Castro when he traveled to New York for the opening session of the United Nations in 1960. The hotel closed in 1970 and a year later it became the office and apartment building it is today. In 1993 it was declared a New York City landmark.
The Theresa Hotel, known as the "Waldorf of Harlem", in the 1960s
After playing with all the musicians ever, the need to grow professionally led him to the clubs of Greenwich Village, where the white public was much more receptive to the virtuosity and creativity of Hendrix's electric guitar. It was usual to see him there on stage at Café Wha?, the venue where Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen made their debut.
Located on the corner of MacDougal Street and Minetta Lane, the Café Wha? is a true survivor and continues to offer live music every night of the week, besides dinners.
Years later, in 1968, Hendrix and his manager Michael Jeffery bought the mythical nightclub in the Village: The Generation (52 W 8th Street) and transformed it into the Electric Lady Studios recording studio, where some of the best albums by Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin or Patti Smith have come from. It is the oldest, most reputable and prosperous recording studio in New York City and, since 2015, it has its own record label.
Facade of the legendary Cafe Wha? concert hall, in New York's Greenwich Village, where Hendrix used to play
JIMI IN LONDON: FROM PORTOBELLO ROAD TO MAYFAIR
Hendrix landed in London on September 22, 1966 from the hand of Chad Chandler, original bassist of The Animals, and the model (and professional groupie) Linda Keith, then girlfriend of Keith Richards. Chandler was the one who took him shopping in the shops and markets of Portobello Road, he polished his style, changed his name to Jimi, introduced him to his manager and helped him form his band: The Jimi Hendrix Experience, with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell.
Two days later he made his stage debut at The Scotch of St James (3 Masons Yard) leaving the audience stunned with his riffs, distortions and way of behaving on stage. Tucked away in an alleyway in posh Mayfair, The Scotch closed its doors in 1980 and reopened in 2012, transformed into a most exclusive venue. Remains the place where we would like to spend a crazy night out in London; The problem is that it is only accessible by invitation. Once inside, prepare to run into Kate Moss, Stella McCartney or Cara Delevingne dancing as if nobody knew them.
Current dance floor of The Scotch at St James, in Mayfair. Here Hendrix performed in London for the first time
If you were in London today we would tell you to run to the number 23-25 Brook Street, in the Mayfair neighborhood, to the small apartment, just one room, where Jimi lived between 1968 and 1969 with the British DJ Kathy Etchingham, his girlfriend at the time. Four years ago, the little flat was rebuilt as it was when Hendrix wrote his Electric Layland album. to the delight of his followers, that we can now move on to the intimacy of what he considered "The only place I could truly call my home and with the only woman I truly loved. It cost them £30 a week, the equivalent of £450 today. Closed for the last few months due to the pandemic, the house-museum will open today with guided tours to commemorate the anniversary of the artist's death.
Interestingly, it is located just above what was the house of another exceptional musician of his time, although much more classical: George Frideric Handel.
The small apartment in Mayfair, London, in which Jimi Hendrix was happy with his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham
Before the apartment on Brook St., between December 1966 and March 1967, Jimi lived in a flat that he rented to Ringo Starr at 34 Montagu Square, in the Marylebone neighborhood. Here he composed the song The Wind Cries Mary.
He also spent more or less long periods and sporadic nights in different hotels in the city, trying to keep his many lovers at a safe distance. However, the Cumberland Hotel, also in Marylebone, and the Samarkand, a discreet little hotel from the 1950s in Notting Hill, where he died that September 18, 1970, were his most common hiding places.
The Cumberland Hotel has been a Hard Rock Hotel for a year and a half and the room in which he gave his last interview to the journalist of the Melody Maker Keith Altham today it is dedicated, with more or less pleasure, to the virtuoso guitarist.
Hard Rock Hotel Suite
HOLIDAYS IN MOROCCO
In the summer of 1969, overcome by fame, drug use and his lovers, Jimi Hendrix ran away to rest on the Moroccan coast: to Essauira and the little town of Diabat, five kilometers to the south, on the banks of the El Kassab riverbed. He only spent eleven days there but, even today, almost anyone over 55 claims to have met him, his portrait presides over a multitude of shops, restaurants, hotels, even private homes, and it seems, if we believe the number of legends generated by his visit, that he also left many children...
Jimi Hendrix did not sleep on the beach, as was said, but stayed with his hippie friends in three different hotels. One of them was the Hotel des Îles, at the gates of the medina of Essaouira, where he spent his days lying in the pool, smoking joints non-stop and listening to the hypnotic Gnaoua melodies of the desert Berbers.
Jimi Hendrix's footprint in Essaouira