#vale is show where i am is show the regulations are good for the show

[moonshynecybin]

i love it when athletes understand that they are actors in a little play

[jaunes-erotic-world]

D'Va transfers to Beacon to be with her friend/lover Jaune and ends up partnered with a melee specialist named Bridgette. Bridgette is curious about her new friend's boyfriend. She ends up in bed with both of them.

When Hana got permission to go to Beacon she was over the moonshe could spend time with people her own age not to mention Jaune she was sohype. It was even better one of her only friends from Atlas was coming withher. Her name was Brigitte, her dad was one of the mechanics that did stufffor the testing center she worked at. She was super pretty and strong, girl wascut like a diamond.

“Hana you ready to go,” Brigittesaid poking her head into Hana’s room. The northeastern Altisian was dressedcomfortably in a a sleeveless shirt, showing off her guns, and her overalls orrather half of her overalls.

“Yea I just have a bit moreto go,” Hana was wearing a new favorite piece of clothing. When she met Jaunelast time she was so mad that he had won that limited edition Pumpkin Petehoodie, thus she made her own. Where his was black hers was light blue, hisorange hers pink and of course instead of Pete she used her own bunny. She hadjust finished packing the last box of games she had.

The two girls loaded up theirgear and set out for Beacon. Brigitte was almost frightened by how excited herfriend was, she understood that a friend from when she was a kid went there butstill. It was a long trip full of Hana playing her Swap and Brigitte tinkeringand eating some of her mom’s baked goods. But soon out the window they sawBeacon’s famous tower. Then Hana started to gyrate in excitement again. Whenthey landed they were met with Beacon’s headmaster, Ozpin, and DeputyHeadmistress, Glynda Goodwitch.

“Welcome to Beacon Academy,ladies we are very happy to have you joining our hallowed ranks,” he said. “Dueto your mid semester enrollment we do not have a team for you to join. However,I believe we will be getting more soon, so stand pat. Now we have a dormprepared for you so we will have people bring it there for you, while we goover your new life here.”

“This way ladies,” Glyndasaid ushering them to walk with Ozpin and herself. They talked about classes,campus rules and regulations, the full spiel. At his office their scrolls weregiven key passcodes for their lockers and the key for their dorm.

“Well that was an ordeal ehHana,” Brigitte said stretching her arms above her head. But instead of ofanswer she heard her partner squeal loudly in excitement and saw her beeline toa tall blonde in armor.

“Jaaaaaaauuuuuuunnnnnne,” thedark-haired girl said jumping at the boy. She almost knocked him down but hemanaged to keep his balance and catch her.“Ha-,” he was cut off to andhis and Brigitte’s surprise when the gamer wrapped her arms around his headmashed her lips onto his.

It caused Brigitte to blushwhen her friend began to moan while kissing the boy. Finally, they parted lipsa small strand of droll still connecting them. “Haaaheeew,” she inhaledheavily. “Surprise Babe, guess who goes to Beacon now.”

“I’m assuming you,” hechuckled pulling her closer to hug her tightly.

After a bit of hugging thatseemed like it wouldn’t end Brigitte coughed to get their attention, “ Hana areyou going to introduce me?” She asked

“Oh right,” Hana said gettingdown from the boys grip. “Jaune this is Bridgette, she is my friend andpartner. Brigitte this is Jaune the guy I told you about.”

“Hi nice to meet youBrigitte,” he smiled extending his hand.

She grasped it and shook it.“Nice to finally meet you I’ve heard much about you, except the part where youand Hana are together,” she looked over at Hana.

“I didn’t? Oops,” she saidclosing one eye sticking her tongue out and bopping herself on the head. “Wellit doesn’t matter show us around Jaune.” She dragged his arm with her.

The next two weeks weremellow but fun. Getting to know new people, exploring Vale and Beacon. The twogirls were settling in nicely to their new average lives until one day.

Brigitte was returning to thedorm from the gym when she heard Hana talking to Jaune. “Eeerrrr it’s so hardJaune,” Brigitte could here Hans say through the door in squeaky grunts.

Hana could get legitimatelyfrightening when she was mad over a game. Brigitte didn’t want to go in but shewas drenched in sweat and needed a shower and change of clothes. So, she openedthe door a crack to watch for a good point to sneak past but when she did hereyes went wide.

The Northeastern Altisiangirl couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Her friend and partner Hana were intheir dorm almost completely naked riding her boyfriend. ‘I mean they’re datingthem having sex isn’t that big a stretch but it is literally a big stretch,’she thought. By big stretch she meant Hana’s slim and petite body was taking ahuge cock inside her.

“Jaune you feel so good mypussy is so wet,” Hana moaned out bouncing up and down on Jaune’s sword.

“You’re the same babe,” hesaid between grunts, “your pussy is so tight and the way you move your hipsit’s driving me insane.”

“Oh, you mean like this,” shesaid going down to the hilt and moved her hips around drawing of course,circle, triangle, square, and X. They both made pleasured noises during this.

Just outside the door theirsole audience member was transfixed on the scene before her. She didn’t evenrealize it till now that her panties were wet, nipples were hard and clitunhooded. Her hands moved unconsciously one to her chest where she groped herbreasts and flick her nipples. The other between her legs inside her nowunbuckled pants. She fingered her flower and rubbed her clit hard with herthumb.

More minutes of this thedarker haired soon bit her right thumb, her left hand played with her chest andJaune squeezed her ass tightly as he bounced her harder and harder. “J-JauneI’m I’m cuuuummmmming,” she cried out her tongue lolling out her back and headarching backwards. But she wasn’t the only one who did.

Outside the room Brigitte’seyes shut tight and her jaw clenched as her orgasm arrived juice pooled on thefloor and squatting body fell over into the door gap. “Brigitte?!” Hana saidlooking at her friend. She was shocked at what was happening her partner hadseen her having sex with Jaune, from her appearance and ‘elegant’ entrance shehad been masterbating to them and that her watching turned her on. She walkedup to her and looked down at her.

“I am so sorry,” she saidstanding up “I was coming back from the gym and then I-ahhhmmm,” Brigitte startedto say when Hana locked lips with her and started to squeeze her chest. Brigitteblue screened in confusion even after she had stopped being kissed by herpartner. Hana led her over to her bed. Where she stripped her of her top andblack sports bra.

“My my it seems that youliked being a voyeur Bridgette. Tell me what part you liked the best,” Hanasaid feeling the squire up. Brigitte always had a feeling the gamer was bi butthis confirmed it.

“He was so big and your pussyis so small it was just so hot,” she moaned as her chest was being felt up.

“That is pretty hot,” Hanasaid and thinking of an idea. “Something else that’s unfortunately small aboutme is my chest so I can’t do something I’ve wanted to. However, your tits arenice and big so how about you help.”

Jaune had been watching thiswhole time his cock pulsing hard and red. Then Hana had Brigitte on her stomachin front of him then putting her breasts around his cock. Brigitte began totitfuck him her warm breath on his cock head. Every so often Hana would kiss/suck the head but she mostly spent her time fingering and spanking the Herpartner’s toned ass.

Soon the stimulus to herpussy caused the brown-haired girl to cum. When she did she had squeezed hertits together hard and then she arched her back fast giving Jaune just theamount of pleasure to cum as well. He erupted on her face and breasts then sherolled over beside Jaune. She was trying to catch he breath before she shiveredas Hana licked the cum off her.

“Thanks for helping me withthat I think you deserve a reward,” the gamer said to the squire. She pulledher and got her on her hands and knees. She grabbed the other girl’s hips andshook her ass at Jaune. “You know what to do babe,” she winked.

Hana covered her boyfriend’scock in lube while he lined up. “This may hurt at first so bear with it,” Jaunetold her. He then pressed slowly into her cavern. Thankfully due to hertraining her hymen was in a state where bleeding and intense pain wasn’t aproblem, though there was still mild pain. When he was in all the way he waitedfor her to adapt to his size. When she felt she was ready she wiggled her rearas a signal. He started pumping slow to her used to the act but he got fasterand harder as time went on. When she began to feel it she began to moan andswear in pleasure. At one point due to the fact that it was arm day, the twolimbs gave out leaving her solely on her knees, face down ass up. The blondefucked her faster and faster all the while Hana made out with him and both ofthem spanked her sexy ass.

Her pussy clenched over andover every time she came, it trying to milk his ball for all they were worth.After several minutes her tongue had fallen out of her mouth her headsurrounded by pool of drool, that’s when she felt a throb and heard a groan.She felt her partner’s hands groping/massaging her ass. “Here it ‘cums’,” shechuckled as she was filled by the eruption of Jaune’s hot sperm. The hot rushcaused her to cry out again.

She felt Jaune exit her witha pop his cum flowing out. She heard Hana sucking him off. Brigitte then passedout a smile on her face ‘Beacon is the best’

[cecilspeaks]

127 - A Matter of Blood, Part 1

Sleep like there’s nobody watching. Welcome to Night Vale.

Mayor Dana Cardinal, now in her fourth year on the job, has gotten comfortable with the responsibilities and powers of the position. She issued a statement in casual conversation with your intrepid host just yesterday, while we happened to be next to each other in line at the Missing Frog Salad Bar. Saying she believes she could bring about some lasting positive change with her position. As such, she will be instituting a number of programs to radically expand the power and oversight of the Mayor, putting her directly in charge of the agents of the Vague yet Menacing Government agency, who spy on her every moment, as well as the Sheriff’s Secret Police, who regulate our every waking breath. She said by taking on full control of all areas, she will be able to make sure everything is run more justly, more humanely, and with less imprisoning dissidents for life in the abandoned mine shaft outside of town.

But, she said, this change will be difficult for a lot of people, and so she asked me not to… tell anyone just yet. Oops. So this has been Cecil’s Fiction Corner, in which I write fan fiction about real people in town. None of that was true. Onto actual news now.

Astronomers and astrologists alike were excited to announce we will soon experience a rare cosmological event. The Blood Matter from space! Once every 500 years, our region experiences blood matter from space, and experts believe this might be the largest such event in recorded Night Vale history. Although specifying that with any certainty is tricky, the experts say. The problem is that most of recorded Night Vale history has been covered over with a sloppy black ink scribble and the note: “Sorry, top secret. Love, the government”, scrawled on every page. Sometimes those same government employees will arrive at important events while they’re still happening, and start shoving wadded-up socks into people’s mouths while shouting: “Lalalala I can’t hear you!” in order to get a jump on censoring history.

Anyway, for those space heads and star geeks who are excited by the upcoming blood matter from space, it appears the best viewing will be from literally anywhere in the region. It’s gonna come down hard on us, and there’s no hiding from it. Carlos and I will be holding our own viewing party here at the station, and it’s open to the public. Please bring one potluck item, one bundle of dried herbs to mollify Station Management, and of course, galoshes. You’re going to need galoshes. Can’t wait!

And now a segment I like to call Cecil Gershwin Palmer’s Theater of the Mind.

Please, with your mind’s eye, travel into a theater. You are in a theater. You print your tickets at home, annoyed that for unfathomable reasons, this theater doesn’t do will call. Then you forget the tickets you printed out, so you have to argue with the guy in the box office for a bit before it turns out, they can in fact print your tickets there, they just don’t want to. That sorted, you enter the lobby. It smells like wet velvet. The paint is peeling a bit, but you can see that once this theater was really something. It’s still something, you suppose, just a very different kind of something.

You don’t have to pee, but you think you probably should just in case. The bathroom is tiny and it has a long line, so you decide not to pee. Except of course now that you thought about it, you do have to pee. You sit in your seat and hope the first act isn’t too long, and mentally trace out the route you’ll speed-walk the moment the lights come up for intermission, so you’ll be one of the first at the bathroom.

Finally, some ten minutes after the show was supposed to start, the curtain opens.

That’s it for this installment of Cecil Gershwin Palmer’s Theater of the Mind. Next time, we’ll get into the actual show, so look forward to that.

Controversy has arisen about Dana’s plans to radically expand her mayoral power, which were leaked to the public through – some unknown channel. No really, it could have been anyone who told. The City Council was the loudest voice of protest. Their lungs are huge, and they can make their voice deafening. “The machinery of Night Vale government is delicate,” the City Council screamed loud enough that it woke even Larry Leroy out on the edge of town, who was asleep because it was 4 AM. “This policy shift can only upset the checks and balances inherent in our system. For instance, we the City Council check and balance everything and ultimately make all the decisions. That’s how civic government is supposed to work.” And then they keened for several hours and we all gave up and got out of bed, because none of us were getting any more sleep that night.

Joining the dissent, Tamika Flynn - local armed teen militia leader and the sole member of the City Council who is not a single-bodied, multi-voiced, inhuman entity - expressed concern about government overreach. She said: “If the government ever tries to overreach me, I’ll grab that arm they’re reaching with and do a series of self defense maneuvers to disable the overreaching government. Sorry,” she continued, “that metaphor kind of got away from me. What I’m saying is, while Dana is a good person and a friend of mine, expanding government power on the assumption that the government will always be run by well meaning people is a dangerous gamble.” Dana herself did not alleviate these concerns, as many people reported her acting strangely in public throughout town. She burst into many local businesses, demanding to know if they knew where she was. They would tell her she was in their store and she would get angry and storm out. She was also spotted standing across from City Hall, monitoring the front doors with binoculars.

Perhaps this is part of a social program we just don’t understand yet. Or perhaps she is annoyed at a big-mouthed friend of hers who is very, very sorry. More on this story as I’m it’s going to develop.

And now, traffic. A businesswoman sits in an airplane, mid-flight, staring out the window. She pretends she is doing this because she is bored. She is actually doing this because she is nervous. The plane is shaking and she is looking out the window to see what is causing this, but of course she cannot see what is causing this. Instead, what she sees is a miracle, unimagined in thousands of years in human science and theology. What she sees is the top side of the clouds. Here is the place that her species, since the start of it, have projected worlds onto. Have looked up at and told stories, some based on what was observed, some based on what was felt, but all based on never being able to see the top side of the clouds.

And oh, there were those in the mountains who could see the top side of low-lying clouds, but that’s not the same at all, is it? Nothing like going to the top layer of clouds and breaking through until there is only space above and clouds below. And here she is, nervously sipping a Sprite and looking out the window and worrying about what will happen when she lands. Which is that she’ll lose her job. Although she doesn’t know that yet, because she’s still in the air, looking down at the top side of the clouds. This has been traffic.

And now a word from our sponsors. Pay no attention to the vase in your backyard. All human beings die. This is unrelated to the vase in your backyard. You don’t remember purchasing that vase. Certainly it does not seem like your style. It wouldn’t go with any of your things, and that is not a color you buy glasswork in. You are, just in this moment, realizing you have opinions about the color of glasswork, and this is causing you to reassess in some small way your sense of self. But pay no attention to that vase in your backyard. We all get slower, get sick, and then we pass on. This is unrelated to the vase in your backyard. The vase in your backyard did not cause this. It is an inornate vase, not of any recognizable era or culture. Perhaps you should plant climbing vines or thick shrubs around the vase, so that eventually, you won’t have to see it anymore. It will be covered over with greenery, as you will some day be covered over with greenery. Everything will eventually be covered over with greenery, until the greenery goes too. But pay no attention to the vase in your backyard. All human beings die. This is unrelated to the vase. This message was brought to you.

Worries continue to rise about the Mayor’s controversial initiatives. The Sheriff was especially put out by the planned shifting of the Secret Police to the perview of the Mayor’s office. “Over my dead body,” said the Sheriff. “And I was told by a psychic once that I would never die, and we all know that lying is illegal, and so my dead body will never exist for anything to be over. The point is it’s not happening.”

There are, however, those who are in favor of the plan. Like green market owner Tristan Cortez who said, “We all know, as citizens of Night Vale, that our government is a difficult beast. Doing just about any activity requires tons of forms and waiting in lines and puts us at risk of being devoured by the beings that run City Hall. As a tax payer, I welcome a shakeup in our government. Plus, I’ve been in the Sheriff’s Secret Prison since my daughter and I got caught committing robbery and fraud this fall, so really any change seems good to me.” Well, this is a complex issue and – oh my god. Oh no. What is, what…? Um, listeners, I’ve just been handed a report. It-it seems that a secret parking enforcement officer struck up a conversation with Dana, as she sat across from City Hall, watching it through binoculars. Dana had stared at the officer without replying, and when the officer took a step towards her in order to give her a friendly pat on the arm, she – she, she killed him. I don’t understand, but I am being asked to tell you that our Mayor and my friend, Dana Cardinal, is wanted for murder.

Let me… let’s just go to the weather.

[Weather: “J'Accuse” by Mucca Pazza. http://www.muccapazza.com]

This story, already concerning, has gotten both more confusing and more frightening. I’ve received a recorded statement from our Mayor, Dana Cardinal, and it’s… well, you should listen for yourself.

Dana: Once there came a sandstorm. This was years ago. So much of what we’ve lived through now was put into motion for us long before. But by the time the consequences come, we’ve set aside the inciting incident as agent history.

Once there came a sandstorm, and with it came our doubles. When my double came, she attacked me. Or I attacked her. I don’t remember who acted first. We struggled. It was a brutal fight that could have ended badly for either of us. But the result was that I murdered my double with a stapler. It was as slow and gruesome as you imagine. Or I think I murdered my double. It’s possible I am my double, and I murdered my original self. If we both had the same memories leading up to that moment, how would I know which of us I was? I am Dana, or I am her double. I will live forever with that doubt. I believe in what I am trying to do with my position as Mayor. Why else would I have been given a job so onerous in its responsibility, if I wasn’t meant to use that responsibility for the greater good?

So that is what I am trying to do, Night Vale. I am trying to work for the greater good. But I know not everyone is with me.

I have felt followed for the last few days. Threatened. I thought the groups who are opposed to my vision for Night Vale were trying to physically stop me. This has, as you know, happened before. And now these false murder charges. I have been framed, obviously. I mean, I know that I just admitted to killing someone years ago, but trust me that I didn’t do this one. It’s a setup to throw even more obstacles in the way of making the role of Mayor one which actually does good for this town. Or that is what I thought. I no longer know what to think. Because right now, I am staring at myself. There is another me. She is in my living room. Her hair is shorter than mine. Her face is hard and furious. And her hands – they are covered in blood. But she is me. I have come for myself.

I’m going to run now. I’m going to hide. But this isn’t over. I will make Night Vale a better place, if it kills me. Or if I kill me. I will keep in touch. If you see me, don’t approach. It is me but not me, and I don’t know what I am capable of. Stay safe.

Cecil: Well. I certainly do remember the day of the sandstorm, and the day of the doubles. It was actually a pretty traumatic time, if I’m honest. So I appreciate what Dana is going through, but – murder is a serious charge. Especially at a time when such controversial changes are going on over at the Mayor’s office. For their part, the Sheriff has said that Dana Cardinal is wanted for murder, and they don’t care which Dana they get. “Any Dana,” the Sheriff said waving their hand breezily. “If we see a Dana, we will arrest her, and Bob’s your uncle, into jail she goes.” When questioned whether this had anything to do with Mayor Cardinald’s current effort to take over the Sheriff’s Secret Police, the Sheriff huffed a bit and said things like, “Well I never,” and then hung up without answering the question.

What does it mean if the doubles are back? And what is going on with Dana Cardinal? None of those questions answered now, because stay tuned next for Bubblegum Hour, the hour devoted for reviewing the chewing sounds of popular varieties of bubblegum, hosted by today’s celebrity chewer, Mr. Tom Hanks.

Good night, Night Vale, Good night.

Today’s proverb: Hey, what’s your sign? Mine’s a stop sign. I stole it from an intersection, and I hold it up every time someone tries to talk to me.

[euroman1945-blog]

The Daily Tulip

The Daily Tulip – News From Around The World

Thursday 14th June 2018

Good Morning Gentle Reader….  We have arrived in our summer pattern of weather in the south of Spain, mild temperatures at night and from now, progressively getting warmer in the day time.. June, July, August and September bring the heat and sunshine that Spain is the resort of choice for many families in Europe and recently China and japan, but Bella and I don’t see many people let alone people from China and Japan at 4:00am so we wander the streets alone, just an old man and his friend…

BANGOR UNI TEAM TACKLES TOAD INVASION OF MADAGASCAR…. An invasive species of Asian toad could devastate wildlife on Madagascar, according to biologists at Bangor University. They are part of an international team which says the toad's poisonous skin will kill animals preying on them. It is thought they only arrived on the African island around 2010 as "stowaways" on ships. South-east Asian predators have evolved immunity to the toxin, which animals in the closed Madagascan ecosystem lack. Whilst the toads are yet to have a major impact, the team's study has confirmed that all but one of Madagascar's native predators lack the gene which renders the toxin harmless.

SOUTH AFRICAN COMPANY APOLOGISES FOR SEXIST BEER CAMPAIGN…. A South African company has apologised for the branding of its new range of craft beers, which sparked an outcry, especially among women. Vale Bru ran a marketing campaign for the beers with names such as Filthy Brunette‚ Easy Blonde‚ Raven Porra and Ripe Redhead. Easy Blonde came with the tagline: "All your friends have already had her". After being criticised for being sexist, the company promised to remove the labels and names. The social media campaign advertised Filthy Brunette as: "When gushing and moist are used to describe something‚ then you know." While the Raven Porra was described as, "a porter with the best head in town". According to South Africa's Times Live, Porra is a derogatory term for someone of Portuguese origin. Thandi Guilherme, author of the platform Craft Geek, wrote on Instagram that Vale Bru "should be absolutely ashamed of yourselves. Crass, sexist, misogynistic branding and labelling". The Johannesburg-based company issued its first apology, which has since been deleted, on Instagram. It said: "Our attempt at making you‚ and ourselves‚ uncomfortable‚ worked. However‚ we never meant to belittle or degrade you." "If those keyboard crusaders want to carry on‚ feel free," it added. Ms Guilherme later wrote on her blog: "#Metoo, Rape culture and Trump's 'locker room' misogyny are not funny. These are real problems that society is trying to deal with. Don't go there." "I understand that sex sells‚ but these names don't hint at respectful sex," wrote South African blogger Lucy Corne. "Maybe they should have asked themselves whether these are things that they would appreciate people saying about their little sister." In a new apology, Vale Bru said it took "full accountability for our actions and we plan on making things right." "We were insensitive and wrong, for which we apologise unreservedly," it added.

FLORIDA ALLIGATOR ATTACK: DOG-WALKER FEARED DEAD…. A dog-walker who was attacked by an alligator in the US state of Florida is believed to have been killed by the reptile, state wildlife officials say. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) says Shizuka Matsuki was bitten by a 12.5 ft (3.8m) alligator. A necropsy was performed on the reptile after it was captured. It dragged Ms Matsuki, 47, into a lake in the town of Davie, 25 miles (40km) north of Miami, a witness said. The incident occurred at about 09:45 (13:45 GMT) on Friday. "The FWC believes that the victim is deceased and we will continue recovery efforts on the lake with local authorities," the agency said in a statement. "This tragedy is heartbreaking for everyone involved," the FWC added. Local media earlier reported that officers found a dog on a leash but no signs of the woman at Silver Lakes Rotary Nature Park. "Divers are searching," Davie Police Maj Dale Engle was quoted as saying by the Sun Sentinel newspaper. "Her dogs won't leave the pond. One of her dogs got bit by the gator."

CLIMATE CHANGE: POPE URGES ACTION ON CLEAN ENERGY…. Pope Francis has said climate change is a challenge of "epochal proportions" and that the world must convert to clean fuel. "Civilisation requires energy, but energy use must not destroy civilisation," he said. He was speaking to a group of oil company executives at the end of a two-day conference in the Vatican. Firms present included ExxonMobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Norway's Equinor and Pemex of Mexico. Modern society with its "massive movement of information, persons and things requires an immense supply of energy", he told the gathering. "But that energy should also be clean, by a reduction in the systematic use of fossil fuels," he said. "Our desire to ensure energy for all must not lead to the undesired effect of a spiral of extreme climate changes due to a catastrophic rise in global temperatures, harsher environments and increased levels of poverty." The world needed to come up with an energy mix that combated pollution, eliminated poverty and promoted social justice, he added. As many as one billion people still lack electricity, he said. Under Pope Francis' leadership, the church has moved to confront the business world on a range of subjects from poverty to tax havens and complex financial securities.

AIRBNB CANCELS THOUSANDS OF BOOKINGS IN JAPAN…. Travelling to Japan in June? If you've made a booking with Airbnb, you may have to find alternative accommodation. The online home-sharing giant has had to cancel thousands of reservations after Japan's government put in place a new law around home-sharing. The law regulates Airbnb's most popular destination market in the Asia Pacific region. Airbnb said changes to the guidance around its implementation meant reservations would now be affected. Under the new law, hosts are required to register their listing and display their licence number by 15 June to remain active. But the Japanese government said on 1 June that any host without a licence number had to cancel upcoming reservations that were booked before 15 June. Airbnb said it would therefore cancel any reservation made by a guest arriving between 15 June and 19 June at a listing in Japan that does not currently have a licence. "We know this stinks - and that's an understatement," Airbnb said. "Japan is an incredible country to visit and we want to help our guests deal with this extraordinary disruption." Airbnb also said it had set up a $10m fund to help those incurring any additional expenses related to having to make alternative travel plans because of cancellations.

Well Gentle Reader I hope you enjoyed our look at the news from around the world this, morning… …

Our Tulips today are from the Winner of Plant and Flower Close Up - Rebecca Reeve - Tulips at the Philly Flower Show

A Sincere Thank You for your company and Thank You for your likes and comments I love them and always try to reply, so please keep them coming, it's always good fun, As is my custom, I will go and get myself another mug of "Colombian" Coffee and wish you a safe Thursday 14th June 2018 from my home on the southern coast of Spain, where the blue waters of the Alboran Sea washes the coast of Africa and Europe and the smell of the night blooming Jasmine and Honeysuckle fills the air…and a crazy old guy and his dog Bella go out for a walk at 4:00 am…on the streets of Estepona…

All good stuff....But remember it’s a dangerous world we live in

Be safe out there…

Robert McAngus

[maritimemac-blog]

Map of Points of Interest for Saint John

If I had been the young man from the cruise ship in my story Your Travel Wish List Should Include…, what points of interest would make me want to say, “I can’t wait to get to Saint John?” This was my three day list:

Find the breakwater to Partridge island – done

See the Hula mural on the pier – done

Climb up to the Saint John sign

Find hanging place of James Cane (murderer of Maggie Vale) behind old courthouse – done

Locate remnants of the 1877 great fire in King’s Square – done

Go to Miller Brittain art studio AKA Brits Pub – done

See Deanna Musgrave’s murals – done

Get photos of the harbour lighthouse and Coast Guard lighthouse – done

Walk the alleys in the city of stone, especially the building along Prince William Street – done

Get photo of Trinity Anglican Church, a national historic site – done

Locate Fort Charnisay national historic site

Go to Barbour’s General Store. and sit with John Hooper’s People Waiting sculpture – done

Find the Three Sisters Gas Light – done

Have lunch at the Reversing Falls restaurant

Hike to the caves in Rockwood park

Go to Netherwood School, where the movie Children of a Lesser God was filmed.

I squint at my scribbled list of must-see places. I still have 3,  11, 14, 15, and 16 to complete. It snowed overnight, and I am going to start the day with a hike through the fresh powder.

#3 — Saint John has a famous landmark sign on a hill above the city, just like Hollywood. It was my feature image My Quest for the Forbidden in Saint John. Approximately a five-kilometre drive from downtown, it is visible to all the cruise ships in the harbour. I park in a snowbank just off Osborne Street and hike upward. I’m laying down the first tracks in the snow and I feel like a kid. I’m half tempted to plunk down and do a snow angel. Fort Howe national historic site is also at the top of the hill.  I pass the blockhouse and stone cairns of the historic plaque. I have taken pictures of both in warmer weather. Today they are covered in snow.

    Fort Howe Plaque, Indian treaty Plaque, Majour Gilford Studholm honoured plaque

Fort How Block House

When the path divides, I take the southern branch. I am excited to see the sign up ahead. It is very big — I wouldn’t be able to get a selfie alongside it.  The fence is very close to the edge of the cliff and the snow is hiding the footing so I stand safely back a few feet and admire the view of the city. The cloud cover has a silvery tint and the sun is trying to make an appearance. I have arrived at a good time.

Saint John sign

City view from the Saint John sign.

#4 — I  didn’t tell you in my last post, The Art of Saint John, that I looked behind the old courthouse to see if there was a dedication or plaque marking the spot where James Cane was hanged for murdering Maggie Vale.  The area is fenced off and under construction so finding #4 is a scratch. Here is the courthouse in pictures I took on a previous visit; the photo on the left is the front of the building, right is the back of the building

    The Old Court House a National Historic site the rear of the building is fenced off and Inaccessible, just a bit pile of dirt.

read of The Old Court House a National Historic site the rear of the building is fenced off and Inaccessible, just a bit pile of dirt now

#5 — In King’s Square there is a blob of melted metal that is said to be all that remains of a machine of some sort found in a hardware store.  You can see gears, nuts and bolts within the mass. History buffs like myself will find the blob underwhelming, but imagine that so little proof remains of a fire so catastrophic that it levelled the town.

Plaque reads: This mass of metal was found in a hardware store following the Great Fire of 1877

#6 — I told you about this one in The Art of Saint John. Miller Brittan was a famous Canadian artist from New Brunswick, and his former studio is now Britts Pub and Eatery.

    Britt’s Pub

#13 — After my pint at Britts pub  I headed down  Prince William Street to walk off the beer buzz and to check off #13, The Three Sisters Gas Light. The light was placed to help sea captains safely find their way into the harbour. The light aligned with the steeple of Trinity Church. If all three globes were visible, the approach into the harbour was correct; if only one or two were visible, captains knew they needed to adjust their course for safe passage.

Three Sisters Gas Light at the end of Prince William Street.

#9 and #10 — I strolled around the alleys and streets looking at the stone buildings of the Prince William cityscape, and I also got a look at the Trinity Anglican Church, which was mentioned in my story On The Trail of Loyalists.  

After the great fire 140 years ago, all new buildings were required to be built of stone, brick and mortar. The regulations were meant to prevent such a catastrophe from happening again, but it makes for a lovely old-world appearance.

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#7 — Back to the pedway at Market Square to see Deanna Musgrave’s newest mural, Nest. The pedway passes over Chipman Hill Road which is very helpful when strong winds blow onshore and it gets really cold downtown. Deanna’s second mural, Clouds, is located in the Hans W. Klohn commons at the University of New Brunswick-Saint John Campus, which is where I finish my first day.

  Deanna Musgrave’s Mural Nest inside the pedway from Market Square.

Clouds by Deanna Musgraves In the Hans W. Klohn Commons at the University of New Brunswick Saint

Day 2: Just four places left

#11 — Old Fort Charnisay is widely unknown to the general public, but it too is a national historic site and the last one I need in order to have seen all those in the Saint John area.  Last night I asked my hostesses at my Air BNB if they knew where it was located. I brought up a picture of the plaque on my tablet, and showed them. One of the women promptly told me the gazebo is in front of the Carleton Community Center. That is where I am headed next.  I have passed it many times but it is sitting at the end of the road — not where I expected.  I sweep off the snow and read the plaque, which states:

In 1645 D’Aulay de Charnisay built a small wooden fort near here before seizing and destroying Fort La Tour…

Old Fort Charnisay, a national historic site located in the front garden area of Carleton Community Center

It is not on my list today but just down the street in Queen Square is the celebration monument of Pierre Dugua Sieur de Mons (1558-1628). He was founder the first permanent French — or Acadian — settlement in Canada.  He was the first governor of Acadia in 1604 along with cartographer Samuel de Champlain. I am sure I came across a similar plaque with Michel LeNeuf  De La Valliere, Seigneur of Chignecto, also claiming to be first governor of Acadia at Tonge Island (see my post Searching Around Sackville Part 2).

Celebration of Pierre Dugua Sieur de Mons, first governor of Acadia, 1604 monument located in Queens Square, west Saint John.

Carleton Martello Tower National Historic Site is also nearby. It is currently under restoration and you can’t go into the tower,  but you can still walk the grounds and get some great photos.  I love the historic stone architecture and it has great views in all directions. This photo is from 2016.

Carleton Martello Tower national historic site.

#14 — It is nearing noon, so I’ll scratch lunch at the Reversing Falls Restaurant off my list.

Reversing Falls is a beautiful place. It is at the confluence of the Saint John River and the Bay of Fundy, so when the tide is low the river runs out to the ocean, but when the tide comes in it is higher than the river’s discharge, so rapids, whirlpools and eddies form.  I walked into the restaurant and, since the place was empty, I asked the server if I could look around.  She says, “For sure, take your time!”

The view to the river and bridge is excellent. I take the best seat in the house, table number 106.  I order a bowl of squash soup and a veggie wrap.  I say, “Isn’t this view amazing?”  My waitress nods in agreement and says, “Sometimes we stand here and watch the harbour seals.” She says she never gets tired of the view. Who could? This video is from my seat looking at the transition from slack tide to high tide.

Reversing Falls 

With my appetite satisfied,  I head to Rockwood Park. I mentioned the sculpture Sunshine and Moon Light Over Saint John by sculpture Hiroyuki Asano of Japan located in the park  in my story It All Started With Love. The park has seasonal camping,  canoeing on the lake, and is park of the UNESCO GEOPARKs of New Brunswick. There is a sculpture for unions outside the Frank Hathaway Center, year-round hiking and mountain bike trails. and wildlife viewing.

Ducks resting in the snow on side of the partially frozen pond

Board walk along the lake of the UNESCO GEO PARK location

Deer on the trail in Rockwood Park

The lady at the interpretive center tells me if I follow the Fresh Air trail, when I cross the bridge over the brook I should be able to see a series of small openings into a crevasse that is an underground cave system.  “It was the last place to find resident bats up till two years ago, the white nose fungus has killed them off.” She mentioned they don’t tell people about the caves, they don’t want people spelunking in them. I promise I am not a cave dweller, but having something to look for while snowshoeing will make for an interesting adventure.

I park in the busy lot and strap on my snowshoes.  There are lots of ducks at the feeder and several people feeding them.  Deer had been here with in the last fifteen minutes.   A skier has broken a trail, so I start a snowshoe trail off to the side.  Half a kilometre in I start to see the openings,  where the snow has collapsed down inward..

Cave opening through the snow cover

Cave openings

Now that I know where there are, I may return in the summer to have a better look.

#16 — After snowshoeing, I set off for the Netherwood School in Rothesay, the set location of the 1986 movie Children of a Lessor God starring William Hurt and Marlee Matlin.  The snow in the trees looks very pretty. I drive up the curved road and see an enormous mansion. The building are posh and I feel out of place. I snap a quick picture of the school sign and leave.

Rothesay Netherwood School

On the way, I pass a park by the water, it looks beautiful and I have to stop.

East Riverside Kingshurst Park, Rothesay

East River side Kings Hurst Park

All in all, it was another great day of searching around Saint John.  I am sure next trip I will have another full list of points of interest to see. This time I was lucky to find everything but the gallows location behind the courthouse. Cheers to the rest of the story of Saint John and happy travels from Maritime Mac.

  Saint John: The Rest of the Story Map of Points of Interest for Saint John If I had been the young man from the cruise ship in my story…

[stinkfart-blog]

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Jimi Hendrix: ‘You never told me he was that good’

On the eve of the 40th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's death, Ed Vulliamy speaks to the people who knew him best and unearths a funny, if intense, superstar

On the morning of 21 September 1966, a Pan Am airliner from New York landed at Heathrow, carrying among its passengers a black American musician from a poor home. Barely known in his own country and a complete stranger to England, he had just flown first class for the first time in his life. His name was James Marshall Hendrix.

On 18 September 1970, four years later, I picked up a copy of Londons Evening Standard on my way home from school, something I never usually did. There was a story of extreme urgency on the front page and a picture of Hendrix playing at a concert still ringing in my ears at the Isle of Wight festival, only 18 days earlier. The text reported how Hendrix had died that morning in a hotel in the street, Lansdowne Crescent in Notting Hill, in which I had been born, and a block away from where I now lived.

During those three years and 362 days living in London, Hendrix had conjured with his vision and sense of sound, his personality and genius the most extraordinary guitar music ever played, the most remarkable sound-scape ever created; of that there is little argument. Opinion varies only over the effect his music has on people: elation, fear, sexual stimulation, sublimation, disgust all or none of these but always drop-jawed amazement.

The 40th anniversary of Hendrixs death next month will be marked by the opening of an exhibition of curios and memorabilia at the only place he ever called home a flat diagonally above that once occupied by the composer George Frideric Handel, on Brook Street in central London, in the double building now known as Handel House. The flat will be opened to the public for 12 days in September and there is talk about plans for a joint museum, adding Hendrixs presence to that already established in the museum devoted to Handel. Involved in the discussions is the woman with whom Hendrix furnished the top flat of 23 Brook St, and with whom he lived: the only woman he ever really loved, Kathy Etchingham.

In a rare interview by telephone, (she has moved abroad), Ms Etchingham explains: I want him to be remembered for what he was not this tragic figure he has been turned into by nit-pickers and people who used to stalk us and collect photographs and evidence of what we were doing on a certain day. He could be grumpy, and he could be terrible in the studio, getting exactly what he wanted but he was fun, he was charming. I want people to remember the man I knew.

When she met Hendrix (the same night he landed in London), he had already lived an interesting, if frustrating, 23 years. He was born to a father who cared, but not greatly, and a mother he barely knew she died when he was 15 but adored (shes said to be the focus of two of his three great ballads, Little Wing and Angel). He had always been enthralled by guitar playing a natural, immersed in R&B on the radio and the music of blues giants Albert King and Muddy Waters. When he was 18, he was offered the chance to avoid jail for a minor misdemeanour by joining the army, which he did, training for the 101st Airborne Division.

His military career was marked by friendship with a bass player called Billy Cox from West Virginia, with whom he would play his last concerts, and a report which read: Individual is unable to conform to military rules and regulations. Misses bed check: sleeps while supposed to be working: unsatisfactory duty performance.

Hendrix engineered his discharge in time to avoid being mobilised to Vietnam and worked hard as a backing guitarist for Little Richard, Curtis Knight, the Isley Brothers and others. But, arriving in New York to try and establish himself in his own right, Hendrix found he did not fit. The writer Paul Gilroy, in his recent book Darker Than Blue, makes the point that Hendrixs life and music were propelled by two important factors: his being an ex-paratrooper who gradually became an advocate of peace and his transgressions of redundant musical and racial rules.

Hendrix didnt fit because he wasnt black enough for Harlem, nor white enough for Greenwich Village. His music was closer to the blues than any other genre; the Delta and Chicago blues which had captivated a generation of musicians, not so much in the US as in London, musicians such as John Mayall and Alexis Korner, and thereafter Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page among many others.

As luck would have it, the Brits were in town and Linda Keith, girlfriend of the Stones Keith Richards, persuaded Chas Chandler, bass player of the Animals, to go and listen to Hendrix play at the Cafe Wha? club in the Village. Chandler wanted to move into management and happened to be fixated by a song, Hey Joe, by Tim Rose.

It was a song Chas knew would be a hit if only he could find the right person to play it, says Keith Altham, then of the New Musical Express, who would later become a kind of embedded reporter with the Hendrix London entourage. There he was, this incredible man, playing a wild version of that very song. It was like an epiphany for Chas it was meant to be.

To be honest, remembers Tappy Wright, the Animals roadie who came to Cafe Wha? with Chandler that night, I wasnt too impressed at first, but when he started playing with his teeth, and behind his head, it was obvious that here was someone different.

Before long, Hendrix was aboard the plane to London with Chandler and the Animals manager, Michael Jeffery, to be met by Tony Garland, who would end up being general factotum for Hendrixs management company, Anim. When he arrived, recalls Garland now, sitting on his barge beside the canal in Maida Vale, west London, where he now lives, I filled out the customs form. We couldnt say hed come to work because he didnt have a permit, so I told them he was a famous American star coming to collect his royalties.

It is strange, tracking down Hendrixs inner circle in London. His own musicians in his great band, the Experience Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell are dead. Likewise, his two managers, Chandler and Jeffery, and one of his closest musician friends, the Rolling Stone Brian Jones; the other, Eric Burdon of the Animals, declined to be interviewed. But some members of the close-knit entourage are still around, such as Kathy Etchingham and Keith Altham, wearing a flaming orange jacket befitting the time of which he agrees to speak, in defiance of a heart attack only a few days before.

Music in London had reached a tumultuously creative moment when Hendrix arrived and was perfectly poised to receive him. The performers were just your mates who played guitars, recalls Altham. It was tight everyone knew everyone else. It was just Pete from the Who, Eric of Cream, or Brian and Mick of the Stones, all going to each others gigs.

For reasons never quite explained, the blues both in their acoustic Delta form, and Chicago blues plugged into an amplifier had captivated this generation of English musicians more deeply than their American counterparts. Elderly blues musicians found themselves, to their amazement, courted for concerts, such as an unforgettable night at Hammersmith with Son House and Bukka White. Champion Jack Dupree married and settled in Yorkshire. People [here] felt a certain affinity with the blues, music which added a bit of colour to grey life, Altham continues. And as Garland points out: White America was listening to Doris Day black American music got nowhere near white AM radio. Jimi was too white for black radio. Here, there were a lot of white guys listening to blues from America and wanting to sound like their heroes.

Things happened at speed after Hendrix landed. Come down to the Scotch, Chas told me the day Jimi arrived and hear what I found in New York, recalls Altham. Jimi couldnt play because he had no work permit, but he jammed that night, and my first impression was that hed make a great jazz musician. That was the night, his first in London, that Hendrix met Kathy Etchingham. It happened straightaway, she recalls. Here was this man: different, funny, coy even about his own playing.

A short while later, recalls Altham, Chas took me to hear him at the Bag ONails club [in Soho] for one of his first proper gigs, turned to me and said, Whatya think? I said Id never heard anything like it in all my life. At a concert in the same series, remembers Garland, Michael Jeffery put an arm round Chas, another round me and said, I think weve cracked it, mate. They had: Kit Lambert, according to Altham, literally scrambled across the tables to Chas at one of the shows and said, in his plummy accent, he had to sign him. Chas needed a record contract, Decca had turned Hendrix down (along with the Beatles) and Lambert was about to launch a new label, Track Records, with interest from Polydor: The deal was done, on the back of a napkin, says Altham.

Hendrix had formed his band at speed: a rhythm guitarist from Kent called Noel Redding who had applied to join the Animals but to whom Hendrix now allocated bass guitar and Mitch Mitchell, a jazz drummer seeking to mould himself in the style of John Coltranes great percussionist, Elvin Jones. With a stroke of genius, Jeffery came up with the only name befitting what was to follow: the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Is there any line in rocknroll more assuredly seductive as: Are you experienced?/ Have you ever been experienced?/ Well, I have (from 1967s Are You Experienced)?

Paul McCartney, John Lennon and the other Beatles quickly converged to hear this phenomenon, along with the Stones and Pete Townshend. Arriving one night at the Bag ONails, Altham met Brian Jones walking back up the stairs with tears in his eyes. I said, Brian, what is it? and he replied, Its what he does, it chokes me only he put it better than that.

There was also curiosity from the emergent powerhouse of British blues: Cream and Eric Clapton. There was a particular night when Cream allowed Jimi to join them for a jam at the Regent Street Polytechnic in central London. Meeting Clapton had been among the enticements Chandler had used to lure Hendrix to Britain: Hendrix blew into a version of [Howlin Wolfs] Killing Floor, recalls Garland, and plays it at breakneck tempo, just like that it stopped you in your tracks. Altham recalls Chandler going backstage after Clapton left in the middle of the song which he had yet to master himself; Clapton was furiously puffing on a cigarette and telling Chas: You never told me he was that fucking good.

With a reputation, a recording contract and the adoration of his peers, Hendrix was allocated a flat belonging to Ringo Starr, in Montagu Square, in which he lived with Etchingham, Chandler and Chandlers Swedish girlfriend, Lotta. It was not ideal, but base camp for an initial tour as opening act for Cat Stevens and Engelbert Humperdinck, with the Walker Brothers topping the bill.

Something was needed, Chandler thought, whereby Hendrix could blow the successive acts off the stage and Altham had the beginning of an idea. He said: Its a pity that you cant set fire to your guitar. There was a pregnant pause in the dressing room, after which Chas said, Go out and get some lighter fuel. Garland remembers: I went out into Seven Sisters Road [in north London] to buy lighter fluid. At first, it didnt make sense to me there were too many things going on to worry about lighter fluid but it all became clear in the end.

Altham borrowed a lighter from Gary the third Walker brother and drummer and that night, at the Astoria theatre in central London, Hendrix set his guitar ablaze for the first time. One of the security guards said, Why are you waving it around your head? recalls Altham. Cause Im trying to put it out, replied Jimi. Actually, he only did it three times after, says Altham, but it became a trademark.

The touring began in earnest during that winter of 1966-7: around working mens clubs and little theatres in the north of England. Thats when I remember him at his very best, recalls Etchingham. And at his happiest. The small clubs in regional venues. When he was desperate to make a name for himself, but was also playing for himself. In the working mens clubs, they just wanted some music to enjoy while they drank their beer. In the small theatres, people had come to hear him. But that was his best music ever played for its own sake. None of these crazy expectations, no one hanging on just the people he knew, liked and trusted, and his own music.

But what was this music, this singular, uplifting, otherworldly, menacing, exotic and erotic sound? Hendrix was a magpie, says Altham. He would take from blues, jazz only Coltrane could play in that way and Dylan was the greatest influence. But hed listen to Mozart, hed read sci-fi and Asimov and it would all go through his head and come out as Jimi Hendrix. Then there was just the dexterity he was left-handed, but I remember people throwing him a right-handed guitar and Hendrix picking it up and playing it upside down.

And dont forget, says Tappy Wright, who acted as roadie at first, then joined the management team, we were using the cheapest guitars. These were no Fenders or Stratocasters. These were Hofners we bought for a few quid. Very basic, but stretched to the fucking limit.

The most precious insight comes from Etchingham. People often saw Jimi on stage looking incredibly intense and serious. And suddenly this smile would come across his face, almost a laugh, for no apparent reason, she says. Well, I remember that very well, sitting on the bed or the floor at home in Brook Street. Sometimes, he would play a riff for hours, until he had it just right. Then this great smile would creep across his face or hed throw his head back and laugh. Those were the moments he had got it right for himself, not for anyone else.

Touring ran concurrent with work in the studio first the singles: Hey Joe, the inimitable Purple Haze and The Wind Cries Mary, written for Kathy when Hendrix was left alone at home after she had stormed out from an argument, so the story goes (Mary is her middle name). I never realised quite how hard he worked, says Sarah Bardwell, director of the Handel House Museum, researching her new charge. The Experience would finish a concert up north, drive south, record between 3am and 9am, then return north for two more shows each day. LSD had yet to play a major role if the Experience were on amphetamines, it was to keep the schedule.

In various studios, ending up at west Londons Olympic, work began. I used to ring them up to book time, recalls Etchingham. Thirty quid an hour and theyd want the cheque there and then. Chandler was aware of this and would occasionally hasten things along by taking what the band thought was a warm-up to be the finished product. What? the band would say, recalls Altham. Thats it, Chas would reply. Now for the next one.

But the soundscape unique to Hendrix, pushing the technology to its limits, was not serendipity, nor was it only about Hendrixs genius: there was science behind the subliminal magic. This was not psychcolergic, as Eric Burdon used to call it, says Garland. Hendrix knew exactly what he was doing. And this process began with a man called Roger Mayer.

We call this the Surrey blues Delta, says Mayer, with a wave of his arms across the crazy-paving pathways of Worcester Park, near Surbiton. Eric over here, Keith down the road, the Stones from there. Mayer was an acoustician and sonic wave engineer for the Admiralty, a civil servant in the Ministry of Defence, but also an inventor of various electronic musical devices, including an improved wah-wah pedal and the Octavia guitar effect with its unique doubling effect. Id shown it to Jimmy Page, but he thought it was too far out. Jimi said, the moment we met, Yeah, Id like to try that stuff. One of my favourite memories of all, says Etchingham, is Jimi and Roger huddled together over the console and the instruments, talking about stuff way over my head, and then this glorious thing happening.

We started from the premise that music was a mission, not a competition, says Mayer, who describes himself as a sonic consultant to Hendrix. That the basis was the blues, but that the framework of the blues was too tight. Wed talk first about what he wanted the emotion of the song to be. Whats the vision? He would talk in colours and my job was to give him the electronic palette which would engineer those colours so he could paint the canvas.

Let me try to explain why it sounds like it does: when you listen to Hendrix, you are listening to music in its pure form, he adds. The electronics we used were feed forward, which means that the input from the player projects forward the equivalent of electronic shadow dancing so that what happens derives from the original sound and modifies what is being played. But nothing can be predictive it is speed-forward analogue, a non-repetitive wave form, and that is the definition of pure music and therefore the diametric opposite of digital.

Look, if you throw a pebble into a lake, you have no way of predicting the ripples it depends on how you throw the stone, or the wind. Digital makes the false presumption that you can predict those ripples, but Jimi and I were always looking for the warning signs. The brain knows when it hears repetition that this is no longer music and what you hear when you listen to Hendrix is pure music. It took discussion and experiment, and some frustrations, but then that moment would come, wed put the headphones down and say, Got it. Thats the one.

But I take none of the credit, insists Mayer. You can build a racing car just like the one that won the 1955 grand prix. But if you cant drive like Juan Manuel Fangio, youre not going to win the grand prix. Jimi Hendrix only sounds like he does because he was Jimi Hendrix.

Everyone knows that Hendrix had hundreds of women, often concurrently but that is not as interesting as the fact that, says Altham, Kathy Etchingham was the love of his life. Mayer recalls them oozing affection, even when there was a row he needed her very badly indeed. Hendrix called the flat into which he moved with her in 1968 the only home I ever had.

We knew we wanted Mayfair, says Etchingham, so we could walk to the gigs, but the prices were high, even though it was a little seedy 30 a week. The couple furnished the split-level, top-floor apartment together with prints and wall hangings from Portobello Road. When Hendrix found out that Handel had lived downstairs, he went round to HMV or One Stop Records to get Messiah, says Sarah Bardwell. What is so interesting is that they were both musicians from abroad, who came to London to make their name in this building.

It feels extraordinary now to walk over the venerable floorboards past a replica of Handels harpsichord, portraits of the composer and the score of Messiah in the room in which it was composed, then up a wooden staircase to Hendrixs whitewashed sitting room and bedroom above. Sarah Bardwells aim is for a joint Handel-Hendrix house museum of some kind. Blue English Heritage plaques accompany each other on the wall outside; Hendrix was added in 1997, a labour of devotion by Kathy Etchingham, who recalls English Heritage balking at the fact that the shop front below was a lingerie shop, all mannequins wearing suspenders and knickers, which needed covering up while the plaque was unveiled.

Now, it is the posh Jo Malone perfumery, though in our day it was Mr Loves cafe, she recalls fondly. On the corner of Oxford Street. And there was an Indian tea shop wed go to in South Molton Street, and always HMV or One Stop and wed walk to the gigs along Regent Street or across Hanover Square, and maybe take a taxi home.

The memories of the people who actually knew him overshadow the tragic, antiheroic Hendrix of popular imagination. Etchingham and Keith Altham recall a man with a sense of humour. If things were getting tense in the studio, says Altham, hed just play Teddy Bears Picnic. Adds Tony Garland: If I told Jimi to kiss my arse, hed answer, Youve got a rubber neck, do it yourself with a sly grin. You always knew you were with someone quicker-witted than yourself.

Altham also talks about Hendrix saying nothing to reporters, or contradictory things, on purpose. He would pat his fingers against his lips mid-sentence and go, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, in order to say, in effect, nothing. He wanted the music to speak. He also had this way of saying things that made you do a double take: Did he really say that? Such as, just before he went on to play with Clapton, who was his idol, for the first time, he told me, I want to see if he is as good as he thinks I am which is not at all the remark you first think it is.

But many of those who comprised Hendrixs inner circle in London now talk about some demise in his mental agility once he became popular in his native US, a mass commodity caught between the triangle of his own racially transgressive music, his blackness and the black power movement, and his overwhelmingly white audience. Even then, though, Hendrix closed the 1969 Woodstock festival with a version of The Star-Spangled Banner, which became the anthem for both the movement against the war in Vietnam and Hendrixs own complicated empathy with the young American fodder sent to fight it, as a former military man himself. Many of his childhood friends were over there, some never to return. The anthem made Jimi famous worldwide, veering into a vortex out of which emerged Purple Haze, a glorious, lyrical dirge for something, for everything; an endpiece not only to Woodstock but to so many dreams.

Chas Chandler would come into the studio and find two women in his chair, recalls Tappy Wright. Get out of my chair! hed say. And then, well, there were drugs, drugs, drugs. I never took any, because I had to make sure everyone got out of bed in the morning but they were around, too much around. Altham says that Chandler told him that he gave Jimi an ultimatum: Either I go or the hangers-on go. But there was no getting rid of them, so Chas quit and Jimi was left with Michael Jeffery.

Jimi was at his best when the fame never got in the way of the music, says Etchingham, and at his worst when the fame took over, when people who hardly knew him suddenly became his best friends. He had this thing, says Altham, of not being able to say no to people and this became a problem.

Even the flat on Brook Street became an open house, to journalists, anyone. Its funny, says Sarah Bardwell. Here we are trying to contact his old friends who are now superstars for our events and exhibition, and its like laying siege to Fort Knox! Yet Hendrix was available to anyone, perhaps almost too much so.

Despite the distractions, there was one project consistently dear to Hendrixs heart: the state-of-the-art Electric Lady Studios in New York, opened with a party on 26 August 1970, the night before he was due to fly back to England to play the Isle of Wight festival. Only Hendrix was almost too shy to appear and, when he did so, he retreated to the steps outside, where he met a young singer-songwriter too shy to enter the fray Patti Smith. It was all too much for me. Johnny Winter in there and all, recalled Smith in a past interview with the Observer. So I thought, Ill just sit awhile on the steps and out came Jimi and sat next to me. And he was so full of ideas; the different sounds he was going to create in this studio, wider landscapes, experiments with musicians and new soundscapes. All he had to do was get over back to England, play the festival and get back to work…

It had been a long weekend on the Isle of Wight and, for me, an exciting one. I was compelled not disgusted, as is the official history by the determination of French and German anarchists to tear down the fences so that it be a free festival. I loved the fact that Notting Hills local band, Hawkwind, played outside the fence in protest at the ticket prices. The strange atmosphere added to the climactic moment, after the Who and others: the one set, at 2am on the Monday, for which it was imperative to get down from among the crowds on Desolation Row and force a way right to the front and concentrate or, rather, submit to hypnosis. The set by Jimi Hendrix.

It is written in the lore of Hendrixology that this was a terrible performance. Hendrix had arrived exhausted, by the previous months events, the upcoming tour, the days violence and by walkie-talkie voices that somehow made their way into the PA system. But all I remember, having just turned 16, is a dream coming true: the greatest rock musician of all time (one knew this with assurance) dressed in blazing red and purple silks, actually playing the version of Sgt Peppers about which I had read so much in NME, playing Purple Haze, Voodoo Chile and a long, searing Machine Gun, just yards away. I remember the sound the sounds, plural bombarding me from the far side of some emotional, existential, hallucinogenic and sexual checkpoint along the road towards the rest of my life. I remember him playing the horn parts to Sgt Peppers on his guitar! I remember the deafening and painful silence after he finished his fusillade and in the crowd a mixture of rapture, gratitude, enlightenment and affection.

Afterwards, Hendrix went on a reportedly disastrous tour of Scandinavia and Germany (failing to meet one of his two children, by a Swedish girlfriend the other he had sired in New York and also never met), before returning to the Cumberland hotel and the room in which he gave his last ever interview, to Keith Altham. (To mark the anniversary, the Cumberland has designed and decorated these rooms in a swirl of colour, stocked it with Hendrix music and called it the Hendrix Suite, in which people can stay.)

There were two women in the room, recalls Altham. One of them was a girlfriend called Devon Wilson and she was dodgy she dealt him drugs and I can say that now because shes dead. But he knew me well by this time and he seemed better than Id seen him previously. The interview is a remarkable one, utterly devoid of all the nonsense that would ensue about suicide and a death wish. On the tape, Hendrix laughs and jokes; he tells Altham about plans to re-form the Experience and tour England again.

On the night of 16 September, Hendrix went to Ronnie Scotts without his guitar, hoping to jam with Eric Burdons new band, War. Burdon considered him unfit to play. The following night, he returned and joined his friend on stage. I was tired, I missed it, says Altham, though, of course, I regret that now. It was the last time Hendrix ever played the guitar.

Hendrix went on to a party with a German woman, Monika Dannemann, and back to her rooms at the Samarkand hotel in Lansdowne Crescent. There are so many accounts of exactly what happened next, but all converge on the fact that he had drunk a fair amount, taken some kind of amphetamines (Black bombers, I think, given to him by Devon Wilson, surmises Altham) and some of Dannemans Vesparax sleeping pills, not knowing their strength. He vomited during the deep ensuing sleep, insufficiently conscious enough to throw up; Danneman panicked, and telephoned Burdon, who urged her to call an ambulance. But the greatest guitarist of all time was dead upon arrival at St Mary Abbots hospital, aged 27. (Sadly, Danneman took her own life in 1996.)

So it was, back in September 1970, that I made my way up Lansdowne Rise and round the corner to the Samarkand hotel after reading the news today, oh boy. I was amazed to have the pavement outside the address at which Jimi Hendrix had died that morning all to myself for a good couple of hours not a soul. I went home, got some chalk, and wrote: Scuse us while we kiss the sky, Jimi on the flagstones (OK, but I was only 16) and retreated to watch. Nothing happened and after another hour, a man came out and washed the words away and I returned home to write a lament in my diary, which I still have, the Standards front page folded at the date.

Speculations about suicide and murder are too ridiculous to contemplate most of them are probably concocted in order to dramatise and distract from the awful reality of such a genius dying in this way but what does matter are Kathy Etchinghams reflections. Jimi died because the simple things got complicated. He was born to a father who was an alcoholic and a mother who died and he died because he was in that flat in Notting Hill with a complete stranger who gave him a load of sleeping pills without telling him how strong they were. Its as simple and as complicated as that.

Im older and wiser now, she says. I enjoy culture and the fine things in life. I can look back and see all that more clearly than I did at the time I was so young, only 24. Of the compelling memoir she has written, Through Gypsy Eyes, she says: Id like to go over it again, fill in a few things, but what I want now, most of all from this anniversary, is for people to understand that it was in Britain that he was welcomed, it was there he was happy and such fun to be around yes, grumpy at times, and a handful but such a man. Id like the young people to know that.

Lets face it, says Tappy Wright, if Jimi had stayed with Kathy, hed probably be alive and playing still. Plus, he always said he wanted to be buried in London, not Seattle, where he was born and his family lived. It wasnt just me he told that, it was plenty of people that this was home. Still, says Etchingham, at least weve got the plaque, the Handel House Museum, and Im looking forward to seeing everyone in September. They were great times and well take a trip down memory lane. Only 40 years is a long time and Jimi wont be there.

The Hendrix in Britain exhibition runs at Handel House museum, 25 Brook Street, London W1, from 25 Aug-7Nov. Hendrixs rooms will be open from 15-26 Sep

source http://allofbeer.com/2017/07/15/jimi-hendrix-you-never-told-me-he-was-that-good/ from All of Beer http://allofbeer.blogspot.com/2017/07/jimi-hendrix-you-never-told-me-he-was.html

[samanthasroberts]

Jimi Hendrix: ‘You never told me he was that good’

On the eve of the 40th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's death, Ed Vulliamy speaks to the people who knew him best and unearths a funny, if intense, superstar

On the morning of 21 September 1966, a Pan Am airliner from New York landed at Heathrow, carrying among its passengers a black American musician from a poor home. Barely known in his own country and a complete stranger to England, he had just flown first class for the first time in his life. His name was James Marshall Hendrix.

On 18 September 1970, four years later, I picked up a copy of Londons Evening Standard on my way home from school, something I never usually did. There was a story of extreme urgency on the front page and a picture of Hendrix playing at a concert still ringing in my ears at the Isle of Wight festival, only 18 days earlier. The text reported how Hendrix had died that morning in a hotel in the street, Lansdowne Crescent in Notting Hill, in which I had been born, and a block away from where I now lived.

During those three years and 362 days living in London, Hendrix had conjured with his vision and sense of sound, his personality and genius the most extraordinary guitar music ever played, the most remarkable sound-scape ever created; of that there is little argument. Opinion varies only over the effect his music has on people: elation, fear, sexual stimulation, sublimation, disgust all or none of these but always drop-jawed amazement.

The 40th anniversary of Hendrixs death next month will be marked by the opening of an exhibition of curios and memorabilia at the only place he ever called home a flat diagonally above that once occupied by the composer George Frideric Handel, on Brook Street in central London, in the double building now known as Handel House. The flat will be opened to the public for 12 days in September and there is talk about plans for a joint museum, adding Hendrixs presence to that already established in the museum devoted to Handel. Involved in the discussions is the woman with whom Hendrix furnished the top flat of 23 Brook St, and with whom he lived: the only woman he ever really loved, Kathy Etchingham.

In a rare interview by telephone, (she has moved abroad), Ms Etchingham explains: I want him to be remembered for what he was not this tragic figure he has been turned into by nit-pickers and people who used to stalk us and collect photographs and evidence of what we were doing on a certain day. He could be grumpy, and he could be terrible in the studio, getting exactly what he wanted but he was fun, he was charming. I want people to remember the man I knew.

When she met Hendrix (the same night he landed in London), he had already lived an interesting, if frustrating, 23 years. He was born to a father who cared, but not greatly, and a mother he barely knew she died when he was 15 but adored (shes said to be the focus of two of his three great ballads, Little Wing and Angel). He had always been enthralled by guitar playing a natural, immersed in R&B on the radio and the music of blues giants Albert King and Muddy Waters. When he was 18, he was offered the chance to avoid jail for a minor misdemeanour by joining the army, which he did, training for the 101st Airborne Division.

His military career was marked by friendship with a bass player called Billy Cox from West Virginia, with whom he would play his last concerts, and a report which read: Individual is unable to conform to military rules and regulations. Misses bed check: sleeps while supposed to be working: unsatisfactory duty performance.

Hendrix engineered his discharge in time to avoid being mobilised to Vietnam and worked hard as a backing guitarist for Little Richard, Curtis Knight, the Isley Brothers and others. But, arriving in New York to try and establish himself in his own right, Hendrix found he did not fit. The writer Paul Gilroy, in his recent book Darker Than Blue, makes the point that Hendrixs life and music were propelled by two important factors: his being an ex-paratrooper who gradually became an advocate of peace and his transgressions of redundant musical and racial rules.

Hendrix didnt fit because he wasnt black enough for Harlem, nor white enough for Greenwich Village. His music was closer to the blues than any other genre; the Delta and Chicago blues which had captivated a generation of musicians, not so much in the US as in London, musicians such as John Mayall and Alexis Korner, and thereafter Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page among many others.

As luck would have it, the Brits were in town and Linda Keith, girlfriend of the Stones Keith Richards, persuaded Chas Chandler, bass player of the Animals, to go and listen to Hendrix play at the Cafe Wha? club in the Village. Chandler wanted to move into management and happened to be fixated by a song, Hey Joe, by Tim Rose.

It was a song Chas knew would be a hit if only he could find the right person to play it, says Keith Altham, then of the New Musical Express, who would later become a kind of embedded reporter with the Hendrix London entourage. There he was, this incredible man, playing a wild version of that very song. It was like an epiphany for Chas it was meant to be.

To be honest, remembers Tappy Wright, the Animals roadie who came to Cafe Wha? with Chandler that night, I wasnt too impressed at first, but when he started playing with his teeth, and behind his head, it was obvious that here was someone different.

Before long, Hendrix was aboard the plane to London with Chandler and the Animals manager, Michael Jeffery, to be met by Tony Garland, who would end up being general factotum for Hendrixs management company, Anim. When he arrived, recalls Garland now, sitting on his barge beside the canal in Maida Vale, west London, where he now lives, I filled out the customs form. We couldnt say hed come to work because he didnt have a permit, so I told them he was a famous American star coming to collect his royalties.

It is strange, tracking down Hendrixs inner circle in London. His own musicians in his great band, the Experience Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell are dead. Likewise, his two managers, Chandler and Jeffery, and one of his closest musician friends, the Rolling Stone Brian Jones; the other, Eric Burdon of the Animals, declined to be interviewed. But some members of the close-knit entourage are still around, such as Kathy Etchingham and Keith Altham, wearing a flaming orange jacket befitting the time of which he agrees to speak, in defiance of a heart attack only a few days before.

Music in London had reached a tumultuously creative moment when Hendrix arrived and was perfectly poised to receive him. The performers were just your mates who played guitars, recalls Altham. It was tight everyone knew everyone else. It was just Pete from the Who, Eric of Cream, or Brian and Mick of the Stones, all going to each others gigs.

For reasons never quite explained, the blues both in their acoustic Delta form, and Chicago blues plugged into an amplifier had captivated this generation of English musicians more deeply than their American counterparts. Elderly blues musicians found themselves, to their amazement, courted for concerts, such as an unforgettable night at Hammersmith with Son House and Bukka White. Champion Jack Dupree married and settled in Yorkshire. People [here] felt a certain affinity with the blues, music which added a bit of colour to grey life, Altham continues. And as Garland points out: White America was listening to Doris Day black American music got nowhere near white AM radio. Jimi was too white for black radio. Here, there were a lot of white guys listening to blues from America and wanting to sound like their heroes.

Things happened at speed after Hendrix landed. Come down to the Scotch, Chas told me the day Jimi arrived and hear what I found in New York, recalls Altham. Jimi couldnt play because he had no work permit, but he jammed that night, and my first impression was that hed make a great jazz musician. That was the night, his first in London, that Hendrix met Kathy Etchingham. It happened straightaway, she recalls. Here was this man: different, funny, coy even about his own playing.

A short while later, recalls Altham, Chas took me to hear him at the Bag ONails club [in Soho] for one of his first proper gigs, turned to me and said, Whatya think? I said Id never heard anything like it in all my life. At a concert in the same series, remembers Garland, Michael Jeffery put an arm round Chas, another round me and said, I think weve cracked it, mate. They had: Kit Lambert, according to Altham, literally scrambled across the tables to Chas at one of the shows and said, in his plummy accent, he had to sign him. Chas needed a record contract, Decca had turned Hendrix down (along with the Beatles) and Lambert was about to launch a new label, Track Records, with interest from Polydor: The deal was done, on the back of a napkin, says Altham.

Hendrix had formed his band at speed: a rhythm guitarist from Kent called Noel Redding who had applied to join the Animals but to whom Hendrix now allocated bass guitar and Mitch Mitchell, a jazz drummer seeking to mould himself in the style of John Coltranes great percussionist, Elvin Jones. With a stroke of genius, Jeffery came up with the only name befitting what was to follow: the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Is there any line in rocknroll more assuredly seductive as: Are you experienced?/ Have you ever been experienced?/ Well, I have (from 1967s Are You Experienced)?

Paul McCartney, John Lennon and the other Beatles quickly converged to hear this phenomenon, along with the Stones and Pete Townshend. Arriving one night at the Bag ONails, Altham met Brian Jones walking back up the stairs with tears in his eyes. I said, Brian, what is it? and he replied, Its what he does, it chokes me only he put it better than that.

There was also curiosity from the emergent powerhouse of British blues: Cream and Eric Clapton. There was a particular night when Cream allowed Jimi to join them for a jam at the Regent Street Polytechnic in central London. Meeting Clapton had been among the enticements Chandler had used to lure Hendrix to Britain: Hendrix blew into a version of [Howlin Wolfs] Killing Floor, recalls Garland, and plays it at breakneck tempo, just like that it stopped you in your tracks. Altham recalls Chandler going backstage after Clapton left in the middle of the song which he had yet to master himself; Clapton was furiously puffing on a cigarette and telling Chas: You never told me he was that fucking good.

With a reputation, a recording contract and the adoration of his peers, Hendrix was allocated a flat belonging to Ringo Starr, in Montagu Square, in which he lived with Etchingham, Chandler and Chandlers Swedish girlfriend, Lotta. It was not ideal, but base camp for an initial tour as opening act for Cat Stevens and Engelbert Humperdinck, with the Walker Brothers topping the bill.

Something was needed, Chandler thought, whereby Hendrix could blow the successive acts off the stage and Altham had the beginning of an idea. He said: Its a pity that you cant set fire to your guitar. There was a pregnant pause in the dressing room, after which Chas said, Go out and get some lighter fuel. Garland remembers: I went out into Seven Sisters Road [in north London] to buy lighter fluid. At first, it didnt make sense to me there were too many things going on to worry about lighter fluid but it all became clear in the end.

Altham borrowed a lighter from Gary the third Walker brother and drummer and that night, at the Astoria theatre in central London, Hendrix set his guitar ablaze for the first time. One of the security guards said, Why are you waving it around your head? recalls Altham. Cause Im trying to put it out, replied Jimi. Actually, he only did it three times after, says Altham, but it became a trademark.

The touring began in earnest during that winter of 1966-7: around working mens clubs and little theatres in the north of England. Thats when I remember him at his very best, recalls Etchingham. And at his happiest. The small clubs in regional venues. When he was desperate to make a name for himself, but was also playing for himself. In the working mens clubs, they just wanted some music to enjoy while they drank their beer. In the small theatres, people had come to hear him. But that was his best music ever played for its own sake. None of these crazy expectations, no one hanging on just the people he knew, liked and trusted, and his own music.

But what was this music, this singular, uplifting, otherworldly, menacing, exotic and erotic sound? Hendrix was a magpie, says Altham. He would take from blues, jazz only Coltrane could play in that way and Dylan was the greatest influence. But hed listen to Mozart, hed read sci-fi and Asimov and it would all go through his head and come out as Jimi Hendrix. Then there was just the dexterity he was left-handed, but I remember people throwing him a right-handed guitar and Hendrix picking it up and playing it upside down.

And dont forget, says Tappy Wright, who acted as roadie at first, then joined the management team, we were using the cheapest guitars. These were no Fenders or Stratocasters. These were Hofners we bought for a few quid. Very basic, but stretched to the fucking limit.

The most precious insight comes from Etchingham. People often saw Jimi on stage looking incredibly intense and serious. And suddenly this smile would come across his face, almost a laugh, for no apparent reason, she says. Well, I remember that very well, sitting on the bed or the floor at home in Brook Street. Sometimes, he would play a riff for hours, until he had it just right. Then this great smile would creep across his face or hed throw his head back and laugh. Those were the moments he had got it right for himself, not for anyone else.

Touring ran concurrent with work in the studio first the singles: Hey Joe, the inimitable Purple Haze and The Wind Cries Mary, written for Kathy when Hendrix was left alone at home after she had stormed out from an argument, so the story goes (Mary is her middle name). I never realised quite how hard he worked, says Sarah Bardwell, director of the Handel House Museum, researching her new charge. The Experience would finish a concert up north, drive south, record between 3am and 9am, then return north for two more shows each day. LSD had yet to play a major role if the Experience were on amphetamines, it was to keep the schedule.

In various studios, ending up at west Londons Olympic, work began. I used to ring them up to book time, recalls Etchingham. Thirty quid an hour and theyd want the cheque there and then. Chandler was aware of this and would occasionally hasten things along by taking what the band thought was a warm-up to be the finished product. What? the band would say, recalls Altham. Thats it, Chas would reply. Now for the next one.

But the soundscape unique to Hendrix, pushing the technology to its limits, was not serendipity, nor was it only about Hendrixs genius: there was science behind the subliminal magic. This was not psychcolergic, as Eric Burdon used to call it, says Garland. Hendrix knew exactly what he was doing. And this process began with a man called Roger Mayer.

We call this the Surrey blues Delta, says Mayer, with a wave of his arms across the crazy-paving pathways of Worcester Park, near Surbiton. Eric over here, Keith down the road, the Stones from there. Mayer was an acoustician and sonic wave engineer for the Admiralty, a civil servant in the Ministry of Defence, but also an inventor of various electronic musical devices, including an improved wah-wah pedal and the Octavia guitar effect with its unique doubling effect. Id shown it to Jimmy Page, but he thought it was too far out. Jimi said, the moment we met, Yeah, Id like to try that stuff. One of my favourite memories of all, says Etchingham, is Jimi and Roger huddled together over the console and the instruments, talking about stuff way over my head, and then this glorious thing happening.

We started from the premise that music was a mission, not a competition, says Mayer, who describes himself as a sonic consultant to Hendrix. That the basis was the blues, but that the framework of the blues was too tight. Wed talk first about what he wanted the emotion of the song to be. Whats the vision? He would talk in colours and my job was to give him the electronic palette which would engineer those colours so he could paint the canvas.

Let me try to explain why it sounds like it does: when you listen to Hendrix, you are listening to music in its pure form, he adds. The electronics we used were feed forward, which means that the input from the player projects forward the equivalent of electronic shadow dancing so that what happens derives from the original sound and modifies what is being played. But nothing can be predictive it is speed-forward analogue, a non-repetitive wave form, and that is the definition of pure music and therefore the diametric opposite of digital.

Look, if you throw a pebble into a lake, you have no way of predicting the ripples it depends on how you throw the stone, or the wind. Digital makes the false presumption that you can predict those ripples, but Jimi and I were always looking for the warning signs. The brain knows when it hears repetition that this is no longer music and what you hear when you listen to Hendrix is pure music. It took discussion and experiment, and some frustrations, but then that moment would come, wed put the headphones down and say, Got it. Thats the one.

But I take none of the credit, insists Mayer. You can build a racing car just like the one that won the 1955 grand prix. But if you cant drive like Juan Manuel Fangio, youre not going to win the grand prix. Jimi Hendrix only sounds like he does because he was Jimi Hendrix.

Everyone knows that Hendrix had hundreds of women, often concurrently but that is not as interesting as the fact that, says Altham, Kathy Etchingham was the love of his life. Mayer recalls them oozing affection, even when there was a row he needed her very badly indeed. Hendrix called the flat into which he moved with her in 1968 the only home I ever had.

We knew we wanted Mayfair, says Etchingham, so we could walk to the gigs, but the prices were high, even though it was a little seedy 30 a week. The couple furnished the split-level, top-floor apartment together with prints and wall hangings from Portobello Road. When Hendrix found out that Handel had lived downstairs, he went round to HMV or One Stop Records to get Messiah, says Sarah Bardwell. What is so interesting is that they were both musicians from abroad, who came to London to make their name in this building.

It feels extraordinary now to walk over the venerable floorboards past a replica of Handels harpsichord, portraits of the composer and the score of Messiah in the room in which it was composed, then up a wooden staircase to Hendrixs whitewashed sitting room and bedroom above. Sarah Bardwells aim is for a joint Handel-Hendrix house museum of some kind. Blue English Heritage plaques accompany each other on the wall outside; Hendrix was added in 1997, a labour of devotion by Kathy Etchingham, who recalls English Heritage balking at the fact that the shop front below was a lingerie shop, all mannequins wearing suspenders and knickers, which needed covering up while the plaque was unveiled.

Now, it is the posh Jo Malone perfumery, though in our day it was Mr Loves cafe, she recalls fondly. On the corner of Oxford Street. And there was an Indian tea shop wed go to in South Molton Street, and always HMV or One Stop and wed walk to the gigs along Regent Street or across Hanover Square, and maybe take a taxi home.

The memories of the people who actually knew him overshadow the tragic, antiheroic Hendrix of popular imagination. Etchingham and Keith Altham recall a man with a sense of humour. If things were getting tense in the studio, says Altham, hed just play Teddy Bears Picnic. Adds Tony Garland: If I told Jimi to kiss my arse, hed answer, Youve got a rubber neck, do it yourself with a sly grin. You always knew you were with someone quicker-witted than yourself.

Altham also talks about Hendrix saying nothing to reporters, or contradictory things, on purpose. He would pat his fingers against his lips mid-sentence and go, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, in order to say, in effect, nothing. He wanted the music to speak. He also had this way of saying things that made you do a double take: Did he really say that? Such as, just before he went on to play with Clapton, who was his idol, for the first time, he told me, I want to see if he is as good as he thinks I am which is not at all the remark you first think it is.

But many of those who comprised Hendrixs inner circle in London now talk about some demise in his mental agility once he became popular in his native US, a mass commodity caught between the triangle of his own racially transgressive music, his blackness and the black power movement, and his overwhelmingly white audience. Even then, though, Hendrix closed the 1969 Woodstock festival with a version of The Star-Spangled Banner, which became the anthem for both the movement against the war in Vietnam and Hendrixs own complicated empathy with the young American fodder sent to fight it, as a former military man himself. Many of his childhood friends were over there, some never to return. The anthem made Jimi famous worldwide, veering into a vortex out of which emerged Purple Haze, a glorious, lyrical dirge for something, for everything; an endpiece not only to Woodstock but to so many dreams.

Chas Chandler would come into the studio and find two women in his chair, recalls Tappy Wright. Get out of my chair! hed say. And then, well, there were drugs, drugs, drugs. I never took any, because I had to make sure everyone got out of bed in the morning but they were around, too much around. Altham says that Chandler told him that he gave Jimi an ultimatum: Either I go or the hangers-on go. But there was no getting rid of them, so Chas quit and Jimi was left with Michael Jeffery.

Jimi was at his best when the fame never got in the way of the music, says Etchingham, and at his worst when the fame took over, when people who hardly knew him suddenly became his best friends. He had this thing, says Altham, of not being able to say no to people and this became a problem.

Even the flat on Brook Street became an open house, to journalists, anyone. Its funny, says Sarah Bardwell. Here we are trying to contact his old friends who are now superstars for our events and exhibition, and its like laying siege to Fort Knox! Yet Hendrix was available to anyone, perhaps almost too much so.

Despite the distractions, there was one project consistently dear to Hendrixs heart: the state-of-the-art Electric Lady Studios in New York, opened with a party on 26 August 1970, the night before he was due to fly back to England to play the Isle of Wight festival. Only Hendrix was almost too shy to appear and, when he did so, he retreated to the steps outside, where he met a young singer-songwriter too shy to enter the fray Patti Smith. It was all too much for me. Johnny Winter in there and all, recalled Smith in a past interview with the Observer. So I thought, Ill just sit awhile on the steps and out came Jimi and sat next to me. And he was so full of ideas; the different sounds he was going to create in this studio, wider landscapes, experiments with musicians and new soundscapes. All he had to do was get over back to England, play the festival and get back to work…

It had been a long weekend on the Isle of Wight and, for me, an exciting one. I was compelled not disgusted, as is the official history by the determination of French and German anarchists to tear down the fences so that it be a free festival. I loved the fact that Notting Hills local band, Hawkwind, played outside the fence in protest at the ticket prices. The strange atmosphere added to the climactic moment, after the Who and others: the one set, at 2am on the Monday, for which it was imperative to get down from among the crowds on Desolation Row and force a way right to the front and concentrate or, rather, submit to hypnosis. The set by Jimi Hendrix.

It is written in the lore of Hendrixology that this was a terrible performance. Hendrix had arrived exhausted, by the previous months events, the upcoming tour, the days violence and by walkie-talkie voices that somehow made their way into the PA system. But all I remember, having just turned 16, is a dream coming true: the greatest rock musician of all time (one knew this with assurance) dressed in blazing red and purple silks, actually playing the version of Sgt Peppers about which I had read so much in NME, playing Purple Haze, Voodoo Chile and a long, searing Machine Gun, just yards away. I remember the sound the sounds, plural bombarding me from the far side of some emotional, existential, hallucinogenic and sexual checkpoint along the road towards the rest of my life. I remember him playing the horn parts to Sgt Peppers on his guitar! I remember the deafening and painful silence after he finished his fusillade and in the crowd a mixture of rapture, gratitude, enlightenment and affection.

Afterwards, Hendrix went on a reportedly disastrous tour of Scandinavia and Germany (failing to meet one of his two children, by a Swedish girlfriend the other he had sired in New York and also never met), before returning to the Cumberland hotel and the room in which he gave his last ever interview, to Keith Altham. (To mark the anniversary, the Cumberland has designed and decorated these rooms in a swirl of colour, stocked it with Hendrix music and called it the Hendrix Suite, in which people can stay.)

There were two women in the room, recalls Altham. One of them was a girlfriend called Devon Wilson and she was dodgy she dealt him drugs and I can say that now because shes dead. But he knew me well by this time and he seemed better than Id seen him previously. The interview is a remarkable one, utterly devoid of all the nonsense that would ensue about suicide and a death wish. On the tape, Hendrix laughs and jokes; he tells Altham about plans to re-form the Experience and tour England again.

On the night of 16 September, Hendrix went to Ronnie Scotts without his guitar, hoping to jam with Eric Burdons new band, War. Burdon considered him unfit to play. The following night, he returned and joined his friend on stage. I was tired, I missed it, says Altham, though, of course, I regret that now. It was the last time Hendrix ever played the guitar.

Hendrix went on to a party with a German woman, Monika Dannemann, and back to her rooms at the Samarkand hotel in Lansdowne Crescent. There are so many accounts of exactly what happened next, but all converge on the fact that he had drunk a fair amount, taken some kind of amphetamines (Black bombers, I think, given to him by Devon Wilson, surmises Altham) and some of Dannemans Vesparax sleeping pills, not knowing their strength. He vomited during the deep ensuing sleep, insufficiently conscious enough to throw up; Danneman panicked, and telephoned Burdon, who urged her to call an ambulance. But the greatest guitarist of all time was dead upon arrival at St Mary Abbots hospital, aged 27. (Sadly, Danneman took her own life in 1996.)

So it was, back in September 1970, that I made my way up Lansdowne Rise and round the corner to the Samarkand hotel after reading the news today, oh boy. I was amazed to have the pavement outside the address at which Jimi Hendrix had died that morning all to myself for a good couple of hours not a soul. I went home, got some chalk, and wrote: Scuse us while we kiss the sky, Jimi on the flagstones (OK, but I was only 16) and retreated to watch. Nothing happened and after another hour, a man came out and washed the words away and I returned home to write a lament in my diary, which I still have, the Standards front page folded at the date.

Speculations about suicide and murder are too ridiculous to contemplate most of them are probably concocted in order to dramatise and distract from the awful reality of such a genius dying in this way but what does matter are Kathy Etchinghams reflections. Jimi died because the simple things got complicated. He was born to a father who was an alcoholic and a mother who died and he died because he was in that flat in Notting Hill with a complete stranger who gave him a load of sleeping pills without telling him how strong they were. Its as simple and as complicated as that.

Im older and wiser now, she says. I enjoy culture and the fine things in life. I can look back and see all that more clearly than I did at the time I was so young, only 24. Of the compelling memoir she has written, Through Gypsy Eyes, she says: Id like to go over it again, fill in a few things, but what I want now, most of all from this anniversary, is for people to understand that it was in Britain that he was welcomed, it was there he was happy and such fun to be around yes, grumpy at times, and a handful but such a man. Id like the young people to know that.

Lets face it, says Tappy Wright, if Jimi had stayed with Kathy, hed probably be alive and playing still. Plus, he always said he wanted to be buried in London, not Seattle, where he was born and his family lived. It wasnt just me he told that, it was plenty of people that this was home. Still, says Etchingham, at least weve got the plaque, the Handel House Museum, and Im looking forward to seeing everyone in September. They were great times and well take a trip down memory lane. Only 40 years is a long time and Jimi wont be there.

The Hendrix in Britain exhibition runs at Handel House museum, 25 Brook Street, London W1, from 25 Aug-7Nov. Hendrixs rooms will be open from 15-26 Sep

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/07/15/jimi-hendrix-you-never-told-me-he-was-that-good/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/07/15/jimi-hendrix-you-never-told-me-he-was-that-good/

[allofbeercom]

Jimi Hendrix: ‘You never told me he was that good’

On the eve of the 40th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's death, Ed Vulliamy speaks to the people who knew him best and unearths a funny, if intense, superstar

On the morning of 21 September 1966, a Pan Am airliner from New York landed at Heathrow, carrying among its passengers a black American musician from a poor home. Barely known in his own country and a complete stranger to England, he had just flown first class for the first time in his life. His name was James Marshall Hendrix.

On 18 September 1970, four years later, I picked up a copy of Londons Evening Standard on my way home from school, something I never usually did. There was a story of extreme urgency on the front page and a picture of Hendrix playing at a concert still ringing in my ears at the Isle of Wight festival, only 18 days earlier. The text reported how Hendrix had died that morning in a hotel in the street, Lansdowne Crescent in Notting Hill, in which I had been born, and a block away from where I now lived.

During those three years and 362 days living in London, Hendrix had conjured with his vision and sense of sound, his personality and genius the most extraordinary guitar music ever played, the most remarkable sound-scape ever created; of that there is little argument. Opinion varies only over the effect his music has on people: elation, fear, sexual stimulation, sublimation, disgust all or none of these but always drop-jawed amazement.

The 40th anniversary of Hendrixs death next month will be marked by the opening of an exhibition of curios and memorabilia at the only place he ever called home a flat diagonally above that once occupied by the composer George Frideric Handel, on Brook Street in central London, in the double building now known as Handel House. The flat will be opened to the public for 12 days in September and there is talk about plans for a joint museum, adding Hendrixs presence to that already established in the museum devoted to Handel. Involved in the discussions is the woman with whom Hendrix furnished the top flat of 23 Brook St, and with whom he lived: the only woman he ever really loved, Kathy Etchingham.

In a rare interview by telephone, (she has moved abroad), Ms Etchingham explains: I want him to be remembered for what he was not this tragic figure he has been turned into by nit-pickers and people who used to stalk us and collect photographs and evidence of what we were doing on a certain day. He could be grumpy, and he could be terrible in the studio, getting exactly what he wanted but he was fun, he was charming. I want people to remember the man I knew.

When she met Hendrix (the same night he landed in London), he had already lived an interesting, if frustrating, 23 years. He was born to a father who cared, but not greatly, and a mother he barely knew she died when he was 15 but adored (shes said to be the focus of two of his three great ballads, Little Wing and Angel). He had always been enthralled by guitar playing a natural, immersed in R&B on the radio and the music of blues giants Albert King and Muddy Waters. When he was 18, he was offered the chance to avoid jail for a minor misdemeanour by joining the army, which he did, training for the 101st Airborne Division.

His military career was marked by friendship with a bass player called Billy Cox from West Virginia, with whom he would play his last concerts, and a report which read: Individual is unable to conform to military rules and regulations. Misses bed check: sleeps while supposed to be working: unsatisfactory duty performance.

Hendrix engineered his discharge in time to avoid being mobilised to Vietnam and worked hard as a backing guitarist for Little Richard, Curtis Knight, the Isley Brothers and others. But, arriving in New York to try and establish himself in his own right, Hendrix found he did not fit. The writer Paul Gilroy, in his recent book Darker Than Blue, makes the point that Hendrixs life and music were propelled by two important factors: his being an ex-paratrooper who gradually became an advocate of peace and his transgressions of redundant musical and racial rules.

Hendrix didnt fit because he wasnt black enough for Harlem, nor white enough for Greenwich Village. His music was closer to the blues than any other genre; the Delta and Chicago blues which had captivated a generation of musicians, not so much in the US as in London, musicians such as John Mayall and Alexis Korner, and thereafter Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page among many others.

As luck would have it, the Brits were in town and Linda Keith, girlfriend of the Stones Keith Richards, persuaded Chas Chandler, bass player of the Animals, to go and listen to Hendrix play at the Cafe Wha? club in the Village. Chandler wanted to move into management and happened to be fixated by a song, Hey Joe, by Tim Rose.

It was a song Chas knew would be a hit if only he could find the right person to play it, says Keith Altham, then of the New Musical Express, who would later become a kind of embedded reporter with the Hendrix London entourage. There he was, this incredible man, playing a wild version of that very song. It was like an epiphany for Chas it was meant to be.

To be honest, remembers Tappy Wright, the Animals roadie who came to Cafe Wha? with Chandler that night, I wasnt too impressed at first, but when he started playing with his teeth, and behind his head, it was obvious that here was someone different.

Before long, Hendrix was aboard the plane to London with Chandler and the Animals manager, Michael Jeffery, to be met by Tony Garland, who would end up being general factotum for Hendrixs management company, Anim. When he arrived, recalls Garland now, sitting on his barge beside the canal in Maida Vale, west London, where he now lives, I filled out the customs form. We couldnt say hed come to work because he didnt have a permit, so I told them he was a famous American star coming to collect his royalties.

It is strange, tracking down Hendrixs inner circle in London. His own musicians in his great band, the Experience Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell are dead. Likewise, his two managers, Chandler and Jeffery, and one of his closest musician friends, the Rolling Stone Brian Jones; the other, Eric Burdon of the Animals, declined to be interviewed. But some members of the close-knit entourage are still around, such as Kathy Etchingham and Keith Altham, wearing a flaming orange jacket befitting the time of which he agrees to speak, in defiance of a heart attack only a few days before.

Music in London had reached a tumultuously creative moment when Hendrix arrived and was perfectly poised to receive him. The performers were just your mates who played guitars, recalls Altham. It was tight everyone knew everyone else. It was just Pete from the Who, Eric of Cream, or Brian and Mick of the Stones, all going to each others gigs.

For reasons never quite explained, the blues both in their acoustic Delta form, and Chicago blues plugged into an amplifier had captivated this generation of English musicians more deeply than their American counterparts. Elderly blues musicians found themselves, to their amazement, courted for concerts, such as an unforgettable night at Hammersmith with Son House and Bukka White. Champion Jack Dupree married and settled in Yorkshire. People [here] felt a certain affinity with the blues, music which added a bit of colour to grey life, Altham continues. And as Garland points out: White America was listening to Doris Day black American music got nowhere near white AM radio. Jimi was too white for black radio. Here, there were a lot of white guys listening to blues from America and wanting to sound like their heroes.

Things happened at speed after Hendrix landed. Come down to the Scotch, Chas told me the day Jimi arrived and hear what I found in New York, recalls Altham. Jimi couldnt play because he had no work permit, but he jammed that night, and my first impression was that hed make a great jazz musician. That was the night, his first in London, that Hendrix met Kathy Etchingham. It happened straightaway, she recalls. Here was this man: different, funny, coy even about his own playing.

A short while later, recalls Altham, Chas took me to hear him at the Bag ONails club [in Soho] for one of his first proper gigs, turned to me and said, Whatya think? I said Id never heard anything like it in all my life. At a concert in the same series, remembers Garland, Michael Jeffery put an arm round Chas, another round me and said, I think weve cracked it, mate. They had: Kit Lambert, according to Altham, literally scrambled across the tables to Chas at one of the shows and said, in his plummy accent, he had to sign him. Chas needed a record contract, Decca had turned Hendrix down (along with the Beatles) and Lambert was about to launch a new label, Track Records, with interest from Polydor: The deal was done, on the back of a napkin, says Altham.

Hendrix had formed his band at speed: a rhythm guitarist from Kent called Noel Redding who had applied to join the Animals but to whom Hendrix now allocated bass guitar and Mitch Mitchell, a jazz drummer seeking to mould himself in the style of John Coltranes great percussionist, Elvin Jones. With a stroke of genius, Jeffery came up with the only name befitting what was to follow: the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Is there any line in rocknroll more assuredly seductive as: Are you experienced?/ Have you ever been experienced?/ Well, I have (from 1967s Are You Experienced)?

Paul McCartney, John Lennon and the other Beatles quickly converged to hear this phenomenon, along with the Stones and Pete Townshend. Arriving one night at the Bag ONails, Altham met Brian Jones walking back up the stairs with tears in his eyes. I said, Brian, what is it? and he replied, Its what he does, it chokes me only he put it better than that.

There was also curiosity from the emergent powerhouse of British blues: Cream and Eric Clapton. There was a particular night when Cream allowed Jimi to join them for a jam at the Regent Street Polytechnic in central London. Meeting Clapton had been among the enticements Chandler had used to lure Hendrix to Britain: Hendrix blew into a version of [Howlin Wolfs] Killing Floor, recalls Garland, and plays it at breakneck tempo, just like that it stopped you in your tracks. Altham recalls Chandler going backstage after Clapton left in the middle of the song which he had yet to master himself; Clapton was furiously puffing on a cigarette and telling Chas: You never told me he was that fucking good.

With a reputation, a recording contract and the adoration of his peers, Hendrix was allocated a flat belonging to Ringo Starr, in Montagu Square, in which he lived with Etchingham, Chandler and Chandlers Swedish girlfriend, Lotta. It was not ideal, but base camp for an initial tour as opening act for Cat Stevens and Engelbert Humperdinck, with the Walker Brothers topping the bill.

Something was needed, Chandler thought, whereby Hendrix could blow the successive acts off the stage and Altham had the beginning of an idea. He said: Its a pity that you cant set fire to your guitar. There was a pregnant pause in the dressing room, after which Chas said, Go out and get some lighter fuel. Garland remembers: I went out into Seven Sisters Road [in north London] to buy lighter fluid. At first, it didnt make sense to me there were too many things going on to worry about lighter fluid but it all became clear in the end.

Altham borrowed a lighter from Gary the third Walker brother and drummer and that night, at the Astoria theatre in central London, Hendrix set his guitar ablaze for the first time. One of the security guards said, Why are you waving it around your head? recalls Altham. Cause Im trying to put it out, replied Jimi. Actually, he only did it three times after, says Altham, but it became a trademark.

The touring began in earnest during that winter of 1966-7: around working mens clubs and little theatres in the north of England. Thats when I remember him at his very best, recalls Etchingham. And at his happiest. The small clubs in regional venues. When he was desperate to make a name for himself, but was also playing for himself. In the working mens clubs, they just wanted some music to enjoy while they drank their beer. In the small theatres, people had come to hear him. But that was his best music ever played for its own sake. None of these crazy expectations, no one hanging on just the people he knew, liked and trusted, and his own music.

But what was this music, this singular, uplifting, otherworldly, menacing, exotic and erotic sound? Hendrix was a magpie, says Altham. He would take from blues, jazz only Coltrane could play in that way and Dylan was the greatest influence. But hed listen to Mozart, hed read sci-fi and Asimov and it would all go through his head and come out as Jimi Hendrix. Then there was just the dexterity he was left-handed, but I remember people throwing him a right-handed guitar and Hendrix picking it up and playing it upside down.

And dont forget, says Tappy Wright, who acted as roadie at first, then joined the management team, we were using the cheapest guitars. These were no Fenders or Stratocasters. These were Hofners we bought for a few quid. Very basic, but stretched to the fucking limit.

The most precious insight comes from Etchingham. People often saw Jimi on stage looking incredibly intense and serious. And suddenly this smile would come across his face, almost a laugh, for no apparent reason, she says. Well, I remember that very well, sitting on the bed or the floor at home in Brook Street. Sometimes, he would play a riff for hours, until he had it just right. Then this great smile would creep across his face or hed throw his head back and laugh. Those were the moments he had got it right for himself, not for anyone else.

Touring ran concurrent with work in the studio first the singles: Hey Joe, the inimitable Purple Haze and The Wind Cries Mary, written for Kathy when Hendrix was left alone at home after she had stormed out from an argument, so the story goes (Mary is her middle name). I never realised quite how hard he worked, says Sarah Bardwell, director of the Handel House Museum, researching her new charge. The Experience would finish a concert up north, drive south, record between 3am and 9am, then return north for two more shows each day. LSD had yet to play a major role if the Experience were on amphetamines, it was to keep the schedule.

In various studios, ending up at west Londons Olympic, work began. I used to ring them up to book time, recalls Etchingham. Thirty quid an hour and theyd want the cheque there and then. Chandler was aware of this and would occasionally hasten things along by taking what the band thought was a warm-up to be the finished product. What? the band would say, recalls Altham. Thats it, Chas would reply. Now for the next one.

But the soundscape unique to Hendrix, pushing the technology to its limits, was not serendipity, nor was it only about Hendrixs genius: there was science behind the subliminal magic. This was not psychcolergic, as Eric Burdon used to call it, says Garland. Hendrix knew exactly what he was doing. And this process began with a man called Roger Mayer.

We call this the Surrey blues Delta, says Mayer, with a wave of his arms across the crazy-paving pathways of Worcester Park, near Surbiton. Eric over here, Keith down the road, the Stones from there. Mayer was an acoustician and sonic wave engineer for the Admiralty, a civil servant in the Ministry of Defence, but also an inventor of various electronic musical devices, including an improved wah-wah pedal and the Octavia guitar effect with its unique doubling effect. Id shown it to Jimmy Page, but he thought it was too far out. Jimi said, the moment we met, Yeah, Id like to try that stuff. One of my favourite memories of all, says Etchingham, is Jimi and Roger huddled together over the console and the instruments, talking about stuff way over my head, and then this glorious thing happening.

We started from the premise that music was a mission, not a competition, says Mayer, who describes himself as a sonic consultant to Hendrix. That the basis was the blues, but that the framework of the blues was too tight. Wed talk first about what he wanted the emotion of the song to be. Whats the vision? He would talk in colours and my job was to give him the electronic palette which would engineer those colours so he could paint the canvas.

Let me try to explain why it sounds like it does: when you listen to Hendrix, you are listening to music in its pure form, he adds. The electronics we used were feed forward, which means that the input from the player projects forward the equivalent of electronic shadow dancing so that what happens derives from the original sound and modifies what is being played. But nothing can be predictive it is speed-forward analogue, a non-repetitive wave form, and that is the definition of pure music and therefore the diametric opposite of digital.

Look, if you throw a pebble into a lake, you have no way of predicting the ripples it depends on how you throw the stone, or the wind. Digital makes the false presumption that you can predict those ripples, but Jimi and I were always looking for the warning signs. The brain knows when it hears repetition that this is no longer music and what you hear when you listen to Hendrix is pure music. It took discussion and experiment, and some frustrations, but then that moment would come, wed put the headphones down and say, Got it. Thats the one.

But I take none of the credit, insists Mayer. You can build a racing car just like the one that won the 1955 grand prix. But if you cant drive like Juan Manuel Fangio, youre not going to win the grand prix. Jimi Hendrix only sounds like he does because he was Jimi Hendrix.

Everyone knows that Hendrix had hundreds of women, often concurrently but that is not as interesting as the fact that, says Altham, Kathy Etchingham was the love of his life. Mayer recalls them oozing affection, even when there was a row he needed her very badly indeed. Hendrix called the flat into which he moved with her in 1968 the only home I ever had.

We knew we wanted Mayfair, says Etchingham, so we could walk to the gigs, but the prices were high, even though it was a little seedy 30 a week. The couple furnished the split-level, top-floor apartment together with prints and wall hangings from Portobello Road. When Hendrix found out that Handel had lived downstairs, he went round to HMV or One Stop Records to get Messiah, says Sarah Bardwell. What is so interesting is that they were both musicians from abroad, who came to London to make their name in this building.

It feels extraordinary now to walk over the venerable floorboards past a replica of Handels harpsichord, portraits of the composer and the score of Messiah in the room in which it was composed, then up a wooden staircase to Hendrixs whitewashed sitting room and bedroom above. Sarah Bardwells aim is for a joint Handel-Hendrix house museum of some kind. Blue English Heritage plaques accompany each other on the wall outside; Hendrix was added in 1997, a labour of devotion by Kathy Etchingham, who recalls English Heritage balking at the fact that the shop front below was a lingerie shop, all mannequins wearing suspenders and knickers, which needed covering up while the plaque was unveiled.

Now, it is the posh Jo Malone perfumery, though in our day it was Mr Loves cafe, she recalls fondly. On the corner of Oxford Street. And there was an Indian tea shop wed go to in South Molton Street, and always HMV or One Stop and wed walk to the gigs along Regent Street or across Hanover Square, and maybe take a taxi home.

The memories of the people who actually knew him overshadow the tragic, antiheroic Hendrix of popular imagination. Etchingham and Keith Altham recall a man with a sense of humour. If things were getting tense in the studio, says Altham, hed just play Teddy Bears Picnic. Adds Tony Garland: If I told Jimi to kiss my arse, hed answer, Youve got a rubber neck, do it yourself with a sly grin. You always knew you were with someone quicker-witted than yourself.

Altham also talks about Hendrix saying nothing to reporters, or contradictory things, on purpose. He would pat his fingers against his lips mid-sentence and go, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, in order to say, in effect, nothing. He wanted the music to speak. He also had this way of saying things that made you do a double take: Did he really say that? Such as, just before he went on to play with Clapton, who was his idol, for the first time, he told me, I want to see if he is as good as he thinks I am which is not at all the remark you first think it is.

But many of those who comprised Hendrixs inner circle in London now talk about some demise in his mental agility once he became popular in his native US, a mass commodity caught between the triangle of his own racially transgressive music, his blackness and the black power movement, and his overwhelmingly white audience. Even then, though, Hendrix closed the 1969 Woodstock festival with a version of The Star-Spangled Banner, which became the anthem for both the movement against the war in Vietnam and Hendrixs own complicated empathy with the young American fodder sent to fight it, as a former military man himself. Many of his childhood friends were over there, some never to return. The anthem made Jimi famous worldwide, veering into a vortex out of which emerged Purple Haze, a glorious, lyrical dirge for something, for everything; an endpiece not only to Woodstock but to so many dreams.

Chas Chandler would come into the studio and find two women in his chair, recalls Tappy Wright. Get out of my chair! hed say. And then, well, there were drugs, drugs, drugs. I never took any, because I had to make sure everyone got out of bed in the morning but they were around, too much around. Altham says that Chandler told him that he gave Jimi an ultimatum: Either I go or the hangers-on go. But there was no getting rid of them, so Chas quit and Jimi was left with Michael Jeffery.

Jimi was at his best when the fame never got in the way of the music, says Etchingham, and at his worst when the fame took over, when people who hardly knew him suddenly became his best friends. He had this thing, says Altham, of not being able to say no to people and this became a problem.

Even the flat on Brook Street became an open house, to journalists, anyone. Its funny, says Sarah Bardwell. Here we are trying to contact his old friends who are now superstars for our events and exhibition, and its like laying siege to Fort Knox! Yet Hendrix was available to anyone, perhaps almost too much so.

Despite the distractions, there was one project consistently dear to Hendrixs heart: the state-of-the-art Electric Lady Studios in New York, opened with a party on 26 August 1970, the night before he was due to fly back to England to play the Isle of Wight festival. Only Hendrix was almost too shy to appear and, when he did so, he retreated to the steps outside, where he met a young singer-songwriter too shy to enter the fray Patti Smith. It was all too much for me. Johnny Winter in there and all, recalled Smith in a past interview with the Observer. So I thought, Ill just sit awhile on the steps and out came Jimi and sat next to me. And he was so full of ideas; the different sounds he was going to create in this studio, wider landscapes, experiments with musicians and new soundscapes. All he had to do was get over back to England, play the festival and get back to work…

It had been a long weekend on the Isle of Wight and, for me, an exciting one. I was compelled not disgusted, as is the official history by the determination of French and German anarchists to tear down the fences so that it be a free festival. I loved the fact that Notting Hills local band, Hawkwind, played outside the fence in protest at the ticket prices. The strange atmosphere added to the climactic moment, after the Who and others: the one set, at 2am on the Monday, for which it was imperative to get down from among the crowds on Desolation Row and force a way right to the front and concentrate or, rather, submit to hypnosis. The set by Jimi Hendrix.

It is written in the lore of Hendrixology that this was a terrible performance. Hendrix had arrived exhausted, by the previous months events, the upcoming tour, the days violence and by walkie-talkie voices that somehow made their way into the PA system. But all I remember, having just turned 16, is a dream coming true: the greatest rock musician of all time (one knew this with assurance) dressed in blazing red and purple silks, actually playing the version of Sgt Peppers about which I had read so much in NME, playing Purple Haze, Voodoo Chile and a long, searing Machine Gun, just yards away. I remember the sound the sounds, plural bombarding me from the far side of some emotional, existential, hallucinogenic and sexual checkpoint along the road towards the rest of my life. I remember him playing the horn parts to Sgt Peppers on his guitar! I remember the deafening and painful silence after he finished his fusillade and in the crowd a mixture of rapture, gratitude, enlightenment and affection.

Afterwards, Hendrix went on a reportedly disastrous tour of Scandinavia and Germany (failing to meet one of his two children, by a Swedish girlfriend the other he had sired in New York and also never met), before returning to the Cumberland hotel and the room in which he gave his last ever interview, to Keith Altham. (To mark the anniversary, the Cumberland has designed and decorated these rooms in a swirl of colour, stocked it with Hendrix music and called it the Hendrix Suite, in which people can stay.)

There were two women in the room, recalls Altham. One of them was a girlfriend called Devon Wilson and she was dodgy she dealt him drugs and I can say that now because shes dead. But he knew me well by this time and he seemed better than Id seen him previously. The interview is a remarkable one, utterly devoid of all the nonsense that would ensue about suicide and a death wish. On the tape, Hendrix laughs and jokes; he tells Altham about plans to re-form the Experience and tour England again.

On the night of 16 September, Hendrix went to Ronnie Scotts without his guitar, hoping to jam with Eric Burdons new band, War. Burdon considered him unfit to play. The following night, he returned and joined his friend on stage. I was tired, I missed it, says Altham, though, of course, I regret that now. It was the last time Hendrix ever played the guitar.

Hendrix went on to a party with a German woman, Monika Dannemann, and back to her rooms at the Samarkand hotel in Lansdowne Crescent. There are so many accounts of exactly what happened next, but all converge on the fact that he had drunk a fair amount, taken some kind of amphetamines (Black bombers, I think, given to him by Devon Wilson, surmises Altham) and some of Dannemans Vesparax sleeping pills, not knowing their strength. He vomited during the deep ensuing sleep, insufficiently conscious enough to throw up; Danneman panicked, and telephoned Burdon, who urged her to call an ambulance. But the greatest guitarist of all time was dead upon arrival at St Mary Abbots hospital, aged 27. (Sadly, Danneman took her own life in 1996.)

So it was, back in September 1970, that I made my way up Lansdowne Rise and round the corner to the Samarkand hotel after reading the news today, oh boy. I was amazed to have the pavement outside the address at which Jimi Hendrix had died that morning all to myself for a good couple of hours not a soul. I went home, got some chalk, and wrote: Scuse us while we kiss the sky, Jimi on the flagstones (OK, but I was only 16) and retreated to watch. Nothing happened and after another hour, a man came out and washed the words away and I returned home to write a lament in my diary, which I still have, the Standards front page folded at the date.

Speculations about suicide and murder are too ridiculous to contemplate most of them are probably concocted in order to dramatise and distract from the awful reality of such a genius dying in this way but what does matter are Kathy Etchinghams reflections. Jimi died because the simple things got complicated. He was born to a father who was an alcoholic and a mother who died and he died because he was in that flat in Notting Hill with a complete stranger who gave him a load of sleeping pills without telling him how strong they were. Its as simple and as complicated as that.

Im older and wiser now, she says. I enjoy culture and the fine things in life. I can look back and see all that more clearly than I did at the time I was so young, only 24. Of the compelling memoir she has written, Through Gypsy Eyes, she says: Id like to go over it again, fill in a few things, but what I want now, most of all from this anniversary, is for people to understand that it was in Britain that he was welcomed, it was there he was happy and such fun to be around yes, grumpy at times, and a handful but such a man. Id like the young people to know that.

Lets face it, says Tappy Wright, if Jimi had stayed with Kathy, hed probably be alive and playing still. Plus, he always said he wanted to be buried in London, not Seattle, where he was born and his family lived. It wasnt just me he told that, it was plenty of people that this was home. Still, says Etchingham, at least weve got the plaque, the Handel House Museum, and Im looking forward to seeing everyone in September. They were great times and well take a trip down memory lane. Only 40 years is a long time and Jimi wont be there.

The Hendrix in Britain exhibition runs at Handel House museum, 25 Brook Street, London W1, from 25 Aug-7Nov. Hendrixs rooms will be open from 15-26 Sep

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/07/15/jimi-hendrix-you-never-told-me-he-was-that-good/