BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET

Forty years since the untimely death of JIMI HENDRIX. Kris Needs charts the traumatic final months and investigates the mythical fourth studio album

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1970: It’s all over the evening news that Jimi Hendrix has died at the age of 27. ‘JIMI HENDRIX DEATH RIDDLE’ bellow next morning’s tabloids, declaring: ‘Police were last night probing the mystery death of Jimi Hendrix, the fuzzy-haired Wild Man of Pop, a victim of the pop-and-drugs culture he helped perpetuate’. This wide-eyed 16-year-old Hendrix fanatic found this news unimaginable and immensely difficult to handle, especially when Eric Burdon wrongly called it suicide.

Ever since his December 1966 TV debut on Ready Steady Go!, Jimi had soundtracked mine and many other adolescences, to the point of an obsession which evolved into lifelong questing, collecting and celebrating.

Writing about Hendrix now is still fuelled by the same deep-rooted gut emotions experienced by Member Number 100 of the Jimi Hendrix Experience Fan Club, but since tempered and informed by countless records, books, films, documentaries, writings, bootlegs and websites.

Thanks to the long-running underground collectors network, high-profile market machinations of Experience Hendrix, and now evergrowing YouTube discoveries, there is more of his music available than ever before. Jimi’s creative supernova raged for barely four years, but he rarely stopped playing, and the tape was always running.

For every …

by Kris Needs
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