An evening at Jimi Hendrix’s house
The other evening, I was at Jimi Hendrix’s house, with no need of a Doctor Who police box. I took the London Underground, emerged from the depths at Bond Street Station, and walked ten minutes, perhaps less. London in 2024 remains captivating and inviting on a Friday night, with the feeling that it’s time to enter a pub and not leave for the next two hours, even in January, the gloomiest month of the year. Instead, I head to 23 Brook Street, to the Handel and Hendrix Museum. The first, George Frideric Handel, a baroque composer from the eighteenth century, and the second, Jimi Hendrix, the guitarist and rock icon — an icon in the truest sense of the word, among the ten most famous faces in the history of music in the last hundred years. They had lived in the same house, in different eras and on different floors, with Hendrix on the top floor, maybe to be closer to the stars.
I go there on that specific Friday night to attend a mini concert by Ese with a scaled-down version of her Vooduu People, and in a bedroom style. The bedroom in question is Jimi Hendrix’s bedroom, kept and recreated just as it was when Jimi lived there between 1968 and 1969. The Seattle guitarist in those years surely did not have, said with a positive connotation, a regular address except for this one in London, just steps away from Soho, and recognised as the only official residence of the guitarist, literally on the entire planet. At times, I can’t say how often, whether weekly or daily, I think about what London has been for humanity, at least for the Western part of it. Hendrix wouldn’t have had that fertile ground to blossom along with many others, and there wouldn’t be this uniquely well-kept civic number. Ese wouldn’t be a rising star, and I, strictly speaking, wouldn’t have the chance to tell you about it. I don’t know what it is; the history of a place requires explanations that probably include anthropogeography, dominations, the distribution of seas and mountains, perhaps even orography. London, as a result, I don’t believe has equals in the collective imagination. In the meantime, I’ve arrived at the museum, the warm welcome from the staff is equal to the atmosphere I found inside the building. Hendrix’s area is on the top floor, while the first two are dedicated to Handel, and rightly so.
Dim lights, antique furniture, exquisitely complete with a canopy bed. Everything so well-maintained, spacious despite the not gigantic rooms. It’s undeniable for me not to feel the sensation of actually being in a private citizen’s house, not a museum. As I climb the stairs leading to the upper floors, I think about when Hendrix allegedly went mad with joy and curiosity knowing that a famous baroque composer had lived in those rooms. Again, the choice of lights fascinates me. Warm, sincere, orange tones. Here behind me, some notes of the cello (a moment later I discover the instrument is actually a viola da gamba) resonate from the previous concert that had just taken place in Handel’s dining room on the first floor. The musician was explaining the instrument to some onlookers, and as those graceful notes fill the walls, the house itself seem like a resonant chamber. I am escorted to the top floor, where three other rooms clearly present the beautiful predictable leap into the Sixties. Vintage footage, the Jimi Hendrix Experience popping up in every corner. A second room displays Jimi’s record collection, those he probably bought in some Berwick Street store, and then we enter the heart of the matter, the Wild Man of Borneo’s bedroom. Full of details, the black hat resting on a small cabinet, the fiery red blanket, shades of purple everywhere. I find it pretty and lovely, visually smelling of psychedelia, music, creativity, but all with kindness, without excess. I think of “Burning of the Midnight Lamp” and some passages of his on the guitar, the smoother and more inspired moments, like some from “Third Stone from the Sun”. The bedroom starts to fill up, friendly faces, people of all ages, outside London is starting to buzz for the weekend, but inside those simple windows keep out every noise. We gather, sit on the floor on colourful cushions, I believe we won’t be more than forty of us, as it’s still a bedroom, albeit quite a spacious one. Ese enters, beautiful in all-black attire and velvet trousers, and despite being petite, she almost doesn’t find space for herself among the small crowd now.
She decides to play seated on Jimi’s bed, a small amplifier with her and a black Stratocaster, a microphone she shares with her backing vocalist Sheena Ross. Sitting on the floor, the talented percussionist Kissangwa Mbouta adds a bit of spice, just the quantity and quality needed for the occasion. A few cables are laid down on the floor among the people, it really feels like being at a private party, an unexpected pleasant flavour for the evening. I wouldn’t be surprised if sandwiches suddenly were brought in for everyone now or if someone suggested making some spaghetti or pasta, on the spot, asking where the kitchen is. I write down some notes and meet Kevin, Ese’s manager, sitting next to me by pure chance. Ese starts, somehow calm and shy as usual, and it doesn’t take her long, maybe the time of a song, to transform the air in the room, completely grabbing everyone’s ears and eyes. More magnetic than usual, she sings and plays a short set of about ten of her songs, and she does it so naturally yet charismatically that in an instant you forget you are “at Jimi’s house”, but we could all be at Ese’s place in East London. Her hands dance confidently on the Stratocaster; her voice comes out sincere and effective. As I listen, I imagine that if someone unaware of the show were to enter at that moment, they would probably think that the woman sitting on the bed is the Seattle idol’s granddaughter, and such deduction would make perfect sense. Now I can even picture Jimi strumming a new song, explaining it to Noel Redding, and together analysing the bluesy structure of some phrasing or the main riff. We are in 1968 now, Ese is the channel, Jimi the message. Even the room resonates so well, I think all of us are gently pulsating with good vibes, like the eyelids of some quiet sleepy flowers, neither more nor less. The mini-concert ends, some say hello to Ese, some take photos here and there, and some go explore the rest of the museum, which at that moment had essentially paused for just over half an hour, gathered like an oyster around the pearl. I walk down the steep stairs of the house for the last time, at least for that evening; I peek once again into Handel’s rooms, and in an instant I’m outside, just a few steps away from loud and shiny Oxford Street.
It’s eight o’clock in the evening, and I have to find a way to get to Hackney in the blink of an eye, to attend another gig. But I don’t feel any real hurry: those last two hours spent in those rooms, introduced by the museum staff, those lights, with time adorned by excerpts and instances of immortal music, have given me a clear mix of comfort, bliss, and joy — just like the main theme of Jimi’s “Third Stone from the Sun”.
(translated and adapted from the original Italian one, written and published here for SpazioRock — by Ivan Perilli)
