September 18, 1970 – Guitarist Jimi Hendrix Died

SEPTEMBER 18, 1970 – Guitarist/singer/songwriter/producer JIMI HENDRIX (b. November 27, 1942 in Seattle, Washington as Johnny Allen Hendrix) was pronounced dead on arrival at St. Mary Abbot’s Hospital in London at the age of 27 after choking in his sleep at the Samarkand Hotel, 22 Lansdowne Crescent, Notting Hill in London, England.One of the most influential guitarists of the 1960s, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as “arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music.” Hendrix expanded the range and vocabulary of the electric guitar into areas no musician had ever ventured before. His boundless drive, technical ability and creative application of such effects as wah-wah and distortion forever transformed the sound of rock and roll.”Jimi Hendrix did not die of a heroin overdose as was initially printed in some publications as the cause of death. In the days prior to his demise, Hendrix had been in poor health, due in part to fatigue caused by overworking, a chronic lack of sleep, and an illness assumed to be influenza-related. Insecurities about his personal relationships and disillusionment with the music industry had also contributed to his frustration. Although the details of his final hours and death are disputed, Hendrix spent much of his last day with girlfriend Monika Dannemann, a German figure skater and artist.Although Dannemann’s story often changed from telling to telling, according to her, Hendrix was sleeping when she left for cigarettes. When she returned, she found him having difficulty breathing, but alive when he was placed into the back of the ambulance, and he died en route to the hospital.What is certain is that she called for an ambulance at 11:18 a.m. and he was taken to St Mary Abbot’s Hospital where an attempt was made to resuscitate him. He was pronounced dead at 12:45 p.m. by Dr. John Bannister. Police said that some sleeping pills were missing from a bottle in Miss Danneman’s flat, which she had rented in mid-August for six weeks, and that she claimed Hendrix had taken some when he retired the night before. They took the rest of the pills as evidence.Hendrix had left the message “I need help bad man” on his managers answer phone earlier that night. Rumors and conspiracy theories grew up around Hendrix’s death. Some theorists contend that Hendrix’s death was the result of a government conspiracy involving Dannemann, while others include the speculation that Hendrix committed suicide, or that he simply asphyxiated after overdosing on barbiturates. The Animal’s lead vocalist Eric Burdon claimed Jimi had committed suicide, but that’s contradicted by reports that he was in a good frame of mind. In 2009, a former Animals roadie published a book claiming that Jimi’s manager Mike Jeffery (allegedly connected to underground organizations) had admitted to him that he arranged the murder of Hendrix, since the guitarist wanted out of his contract. Another version of the story claims that Hendrix was killed by Dannemann, as a scarf was wrapped tightly around his neck when he was placed on the ambulance. Various versions of this story seem to suggest that those in the ambulance did not properly attend to Hendrix.This suicide theory is supported by the doctor who performed the autopsy, who believed the amount of wine found in Hendrix’s body would be impossible for one person to have consumed. Some think his death was a suicide due to a sad poem found written in his hand, and others believe in a government conspiracy to murder the voice of a disillusioned generation. Each of these reports has been refuted by a number of individuals.The post-mortem examination concluded that Hendrix aspirated his own vomit and died of asphyxia while intoxicated with barbiturates and wine. At the inquest, the coroner, finding no evidence of suicide and lacking sufficient evidence of the circumstances, recorded an open verdict. Dannemann stated that Hendrix had taken nine of her prescribed Vesparax sleeping tablets, 18 times the recommended dosage.The last time he had appeared before an audience was when he joined Burdon and War on stage at Ronnie Scott’s Club in London for a jam session. “I know he had been in a bad state for a year,” said Burdon. “He came out of his shell on Tuesday and came over to the club and asked if he could play with us [War] the next night, the 16th, which he did. At first he played like an amateur, real bad, using stage tricks to cover up. Then he came on with a solo which was up to scratch, and the audience dug it. He went off stage and came back, playing the background to ‘Tobacco Road.’ That song was his last.”According to Burdon, Hendrix left behind for the girlfriend in whose apartment he died what Burdon called a “suicide note” which was a poem several pages in length. The poem is now in the possession of Burdon, the last musician with whom Hendrix played before he died.Said Burdon: “The poem just says the things Hendrix has always been saying, but to which nobody ever listened. It was a note of goodbye and a note of hello. I don’t think Jimi committed suicide in the conventional way. He just decided to exit when he wanted to.”Burdon went on BBC television September 21st, three days after Hendrix’s death, to say Jimi “killed himself.” He made no mention then of the poem he told Rolling Stone about two days earlier. The inquest was to have been held September 23rd, but the day after Burdon appeared on television, it was postponed one week. (Burdon refused to show the poem to anyone.)“I don’t believe it was suicide,” answered Jeffery. “I just don’t believe Jimi Hendrix left Eric Burdon his legacy for him to carry on. Jimi Hendrix was a very unique individual. I’ve been going through a whole stack of papers, poems and songs that Jimi had written, and I could show you 20 of them that could be interpreted as a suicide note,”he continued.After Hendrix’s body had been embalmed, it was flown to Seattle, Washington, on September 29, 1970. After a service at Dunlop Baptist Church on October 1st, he was interred at Greenwood Cemetery in Renton, Washington, the location of his mother’s gravesite. Hendrix’s family and friends traveled in twenty-four limousines and more than two hundred people attended the funeral, including several notable musicians such as original Experience members Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding, as well as Miles Davis, John Hammond, and Johnny Winter.In the aftermath, Dannemann claimed she and Hendrix had been engaged, that he’d planned on leaving his girlfriend of three years, Kathy Etchingham. Thus began a “26-year cat fight” between Dannemann and Etchingham. Dannemann did tons of media interviews, met Hendrix’s family in Seattle, traveled to numerous Hendrix conventions and published a book in 1995 titled “The Inner World of Jimi Hendrix: The Real Jimi – and the Truth about His Death – Revealed by His Fiancee.”Meanwhile, Etchingham, who produced her own memoir, “Through Gypsy Eyes,” maintains that Dannemann had probably known Hendrix only a few days. She criticized the inconsistencies in Dannemann’s accounts about that night, and in 1992 compiled a dossier that raised enough troubling questions to prompt Scotland Yard to re-open the investigation into his death. A subsequent inquiry by Scotland Yard proved inconclusive, and in 1993, they decided against proceeding with the investigation.The question of whether Hendrix’s death was accidental or contributory will probably never be answered. The deaths of Jeffery in a mysterious mid-air collision over France in 1973 and the suicide of Monika Dannemann in 1996 leave very few people who were present at the time of Hendrix’s death able to offer information.Two years before he released his groundbreaking 1967 debut album “Are You Experienced,” Hendrix recorded a self-mythologizing song called “The Ballad of Jimi” that not only elevated the subject of the song (some dude named Jimi) to a sort of heroic status, it seemed to also predict his death. The slow, bluesy cut (which Hendrix recorded with R&B artist Curtis Knight) never showed up on an album, but fans are more than aware of it, especially since the song is “dedicated to the memory of Jimi.” Lines like ”Many things he would try / For he knew soon he’d die,” ”Now Jimi’s gone, he’s not alone / His memory still lives on” and ”Five years, this he said / He’s not gone, he’s just dead” appears to weirdly parallel the path of his own career and predict the legend’s own death and legacy five years later. The loss of Hendrix, his talent, and his charisma was the inspiration for the Bad Company song “Shooting Star.”

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