|
Hendrix nostalgia plays on, 30 years after death
19/09/2000 09:55 - (SA)
Braden Reddall
London - A psychedelic, green silk jacket will go on sale at Sotheby's in London on Tuesday, 30
years and a day after the left-handed guitar genius who wore it died in his flat in the city's West End.
James Marshall Hendrix, or just plain Jimi to fans, was born in Seattle and is now worshipped at home and abroad. But he first made it big on this side of the Atlantic, after forming the Jimi Hendrix Experience with two English musicians.
The auction house expects to fetch up to 20 000 pounds ($28 250) for the tight-fitting jacket, which he gave to a friend when visiting London before the Experience's second British tour in 1967.
Emblazoned with dragons in a landscape of pagodas, trees and flowers, it is reminiscent of the man who crooned about a lover preoccupied with "butterflies and zebras and moonbeams and fairy tales" in his romantic set-piece guitar solo Little Wing.
Some view Hendrix as just a drugged-up dreamer. Others see him as a guitar-burning wild man.
But both views fail to account for his very real ability - one that impressed several famous guitarists, including Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, and inspired many more to pluck their
first chords.
Hendrix may not dominate the modern radio waves like other acts of his day, but his distorted riffs and mind-bending solos resonate through the decades for his many adoring fans, both music-lovers and accomplished musicians alike.
The award-winning British violinist Nigel Kennedy, another musician often more renowned for his unorthodox style than for his music, is a fan who has reworked many of Hendrix's songs.
"I like to take a lot of Hendrix's music into an acoustic direction because it's quite a fallacy to associate Jimi with setting guitars on fire and playing loud. It's one of the things he did but there's a lot of very personal elements to
it," the 'punk violinist' once told a Hendrix fan magazine.
"And he did take that kind of melodic and searing quality of the guitar - he invented it really. Other people have taken it in their own directions now, which is great," he added.
Interest in Hendrix memorabilia alone has confirmed his place among the contemporary music elite. A Marshall stage speaker used by Hendrix at the height of his fame fetched 16 100 pounds in July at a Bonhams entertainment sale in
London.
And 10 years ago, Sotheby's sold the Fender Stratocaster guitar he played at the Woodstock Festival for 198 000 pounds. Newspapers said it tripled in value within five years, changing
hands in the private collectors' market for 750 000 pounds.
On Tuesday, Sotheby's will offer, along with the jacket, a photograph of Hendrix and a letter from his friend Judith Vernon - wife of the manager of rock band Fleetwood Mac - confirming that he gave her the jacket.
London days, Purple Haze
Mixing in his distinctive electric guitar with blues and jazzy undertones, all against a backdrop of late 1960s psychedelia, Hendrix challenged many musical boundaries.
But at 27 years old, it all came to an end. He was found dead in a Mayfair flat on September 18, 1970, having inhaled vomit after overdosing on sleeping tablets.
Nonetheless, London represented more to the guitarist than where he just spent his final days.
Besides playing over a rhythm section of bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, who were both born in towns outside London, rock legend has it that Hendrix wrote Purple Haze while staying in a purple house in Notting Hill, west London.
He first arrived in September 1966 before the Experience had its first hit single, Hey Joe, in December. His family has said that he enjoyed some of his best times in the city.
England controversially acknowledged Hendrix's unique contribution to both music and London history by granting his final residence on Brook Street with its first commemorative plaque dedicated to a contemporary musician. Only 760 plaques have been fixed, according to English Heritage, the body responsible for them.
It caused a stir three years ago because it is next door to the former residence of the renowned classical composer, George Frederick Handel. The Handel Society reportedly viewed the Hendrix plaque as a "dumbing down", but gave its assent anyway.
Two streets away from London's main shopping thoroughfare Oxford Street, perhaps it is not surprising that the earthenware plaque reading "Jimi Hendrix, 1942-1970, Guitarist
and Songwriter, lived here 1968-1969" now lies above a lingerie shop.
- Reuters
|
