Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix — born Johnny Allen Hendrix, later James Marshall Hendrix — American guitarist, singer, and songwriter whose brief career redefined the electric guitar’s vocabulary, died in London, England, on September 18, 1970. He was twenty-seven. Born November 27, 1942, in Seattle, Washington, he learned the instrument in poverty, served briefly in the U.S. Army, backed R&B acts on the Chitlin’ Circuit, and then crossed the Atlantic, where the Jimi Hendrix Experience turned feedback, wah-wah, and left-handed virtuosity into a new American export. Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, and Electric Ladyland fixed his reputation in three studio years. Monterey and Woodstock made the visuals as famous as the sound — the flaming Stratocaster, the Star-Spangled Banner bent into protest and prayer. He absorbed blues, jazz, and psychedelic rock until the guitar seemed to speak in tongues. Peers who thought they knew the fretboard discovered they had been speaking a dialect; Hendrix had rewritten the grammar. The ending was abrupt and still disputed in its details: he died in a Notting Hill flat after a night that ended in aspiration of vomit while unconscious, a young American whose body failed before the music did. Seattle claimed him in burial; the world claimed him in imitation. Every subsequent rock guitarist still argues with his shadow. He died in London on September 18, 1970. The records still sound unfinished in the best sense — as if the next solo might walk into the room. Hendrix’s gift was invention under pressure — making noise into language and language into freedom. Notice Nearby keeps the death date so September 18 remembers the Seattle-born American who changed how a nation hears electricity.