Through Gypsy Eyes Ben Valkhoff Examines Jimi's Actual Tenure
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Jimpress Issue 107 Spring 2016 Street Brook 23 Brook Street – Through Gypsy Eyes Ben Valkhoff examines Jimi's actual tenure February 10th saw the opening of the restored flat at 23 Brook Street in London, advertised as "Jimi Hendrix’s first home in the UK," the place where he lived during 1968 and 1969. But was this really Jimi’s home? And did he really live there for a period of two years, as the plaque on the front of the building suggests? High time for a closer look. Until January 1968 Jimi Hendrix and his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham had lived as a couple at manager Chas Chandler’s house in Upper Berkeley Street. Jimi and his management moved their operation permanently to the U.S. when The Jimi Hendrix Experience started touring in early February of that year, leaving Kathy behind in England. When Chandler quit being Jimi’s manager at the end of the U.S. tour in the spring of 1968 following an argument, he returned to England for good and told Kathy to find herself and Jimi a new place to live. Kathy: “Chas and Jimi had put me in this position and they would just have to pay. I had to have somewhere to live.” For Jimi this would not have been a problem, because from then on he only visited the UK when work demanded it. Being accustomed to living in hotels, a permanent UK home was not necessary for Jimi. Besides, as one of the highest earning artists of his time, finding a temporary place to stay was not an issue for Jimi. For Kathy however, being evicted from the Upper Berkeley Street address meant looking desperately for other means of accommodation. Finally, in late June 1968 she found a flat in 23 Brook Street which was for rent at thirty pounds a week. Just in time, as Jimi arrived at London Heathrow Airport on July 4th. Kathy: “Now that I had a roof over my head, the only problem was furniture. We didn’t even have a bed of our own at that stage, let alone carpets and curtains and all the other things that first-time homeowners suddenly find they have to acquire. I had never put my mind to buying furniture before and I wasn’t sure where to begin. It seemed like the sort of thing we should do as a couple, so when Jimi arrived back from America in July I booked us into the Londonderry Hotel in Park Lane for a couple of days and we set off to do a bit of shopping. We got a bed delivered and went to choose all the basics that we needed, which included turquoise velvet curtains and flame-coloured carpets - very unusual colours at the time. Jimi enjoyed choosing the colours and textures and discussing them with the sales staff. Other shoppers stopped and stared in amazement, not expecting to see Jimi Hendrix discussing patterns in the curtain department of John Lewis’s.” The flat was only partly furnished and needed painting, so it seems unlikely that the couple stayed there for the first two weeks of July. There was not very much time for shopping anyway. Jimi played the Woburn Music Festival on the 6th, and was gone again on the 15th – eleven days later – this time to Mallorca. A whole group made the trip: 47 Jimpress Issue 107 Spring 2016 Jimi, Mitch, Noel, both roadies Gerry and Eric, and reporter Keith Altham. Whatever the reason, Kathy stayed in London, perhaps to get things fixed for the new flat. The travellers returned to London on the 19th of July. All in all, Jimi spent 17 days in Brook Street Brook London in July 1968. It is not known if he actually stayed at the Brook Street apartment during those days. The place needed decorating [see photo] and had no furniture so it seems unlikely that Jimi would have wanted to live in the flat under those conditions. Jimi's [unknown] friend decorating the Brook Street flat, 1968. Photo: Tony Brown collection. Kathy: “Jimi left me with £1,000 to pay for everything, which seemed like a fortune, while he went back to the States to resume his tour.” Indeed, on the 25th of July – six days after he returned from Mallorca – Jimi left again for New York, only to return to London the following year. With Jimi gone to America, Kathy set off to decorate the flat, under the impression that Jimi would at some point live there together with her as a couple. But Jimi had set up camp permanently in the U.S. and had no plans to move to England at all. Kathy: “Angie and I decorated the flat together once Jimi had gone back to America. We bought a sofa from a second-hand shop and a table. We got in a decorator and hung all our pictures on the walls. We were like a couple of kids playing house. It was lovely. [...] We pinned Jimi’s Victorian shawl to the ceiling above the bed as a canopy and used a colourful Persian wall hanging as a bedspread. Jimi and I had bought black, red, and orange cotton sheets.” Jimi spent the next four months touring the U.S. and recording. Finally, the Experience played their last concert of that year on the 1st of December in Chicago. One would have expected Jimi to rush off to London to get some rest at his new "home." But he had other plans. With no commitments for the rest of the month Jimi spent all of December relaxing and clubbing in New York. He even refused to fly out to the Netherlands to appear at a pop festival held on December 28th and 29th. Eventually he returned to London at the very last moment on the 2nd of January 1969, just two days before he had to appear on the BBC’s Lulu show. Whatever the reason, it seemed that Jimi was unsure if he was welcome in his new London home. 48 Jimpress Issue 107 Spring 2016 Street Brook Trixie Sullivan (secretary of Michael Jeffery): “Jimi arrived and instead of going to the hotel he went to the flat as he says ‘to pick up some clothes’ but I think he wanted to see how the land was lying. It seems that Kathy cooked a meal for him, and I know she cleaned the flat so thoroughly just before he arrived, that he decided to stay” (Letter to Michael Jeffery, 10 January 1969). Note: this comment was left out of the Brook Street exhibition. Jimi seemed okay with the arrangement. Kathy had done her best to make him a comfortable home and Jimi may have thought it was a better arrangement than staying in an impersonal hotel room. Even though Kathy created a warm environment for Jimi, he knew already by then it would not be permanent. Maybe Kathy knew this too, or avoided that thought. Or perhaps she was not let in on Jimi’s future schedule. Jimi would not have been able to stay as he had an upcoming U.S. tour in April, there were plans for new recording sessions, and he was involved in the construction of the newly bought Electric Lady Studios in New York. Kathy: “He was absolutely delighted with everything we had done. ‘This is my first real home of my own,’ he said, and I knew just how he felt. For two and a half months we revelled in having our own little place where Jimi could get off the roller coaster of fame and fortune and hide himself away.” As it turned out those two and a half months were cut short by one month, with Jimi being abroad or busy elsewhere. Jimi arrived 2 January, but left again on the 8th to do a European tour. His homecoming on the 24th was a short one, as he left again on the 30th to New York for meetings with Eddie Kramer and architect John Storyk about the conversion of the Generation Club, returning to London on 12 February. In fact there would be very little time left for the couple to ‘hide away’ and ‘revel’. Those 39 days (we counted them) which Jimi actually spent in London were packed with interviews, photo calls, filming sessions, a TV show, recording sessions, press parties, rehearsals, and jam sessions galore. During an interview on January 6th with Don Short for the Daily Mirror, Jimi made his relationship with Kathy public. The article, as well as the photos taken the next day by Eric Harlow, paint a picture of a happy couple. However, while on tour in Europe the next two weeks, Jimi spent time with several other girls. No less than four days after the Mirror interview he met up with a Swedish girl named Eva Sundquist at his concert in Stockholm. That night the pair conceived their son James in room 405 of the Carlton Hotel. On top of that, Monika Dannemann – a girl Jimi had met in Düsseldorf – arrived in London on the 26th of February and put grit in the works by dating Jimi in March and claims that he slept at her hotel one night. To make matters even worse, he bought her rings and told people later that night at The Speakeasy club they were engaged. Clearly these were confusing times for all involved. 49 Jimpress Issue 107 Spring 2016 On the 12th of March Jimi moved out of the 23 Brook Street apartment, never to return there.