This Day In History

September 18: Jimi Hendrix Dies

We all know about the music, and can listen to it any time we like.  But here's what is known about the last day of Jimi Hendrix's life. The last full day of his life — Thursday, September 17 — began when he woke up late in German ice-skater Monika Dannemann's hotel room in Lansdowne Crescent, Notting Hill. That afternoon a car drew up while they were shopping. The young man inside, who had two girls with him, invited Jimi to tea. He was Philip Harvey, the son of a former Tory MP. At around 5.30pm they arrived at Harvey’s flash Kensington home. They sat on pillows, smoked hash and drank tea and wine.

At around 10pm Monika stormed out, saying: “I’ve had enough.” Jimi went outside to fetch her. Harvey could hear her screaming: “You fucking pig.” Later that night Jimi arrived alone at a party where he complained to friends about his many problems, particularly the slog of touring. He took at least one amphetamine tablet and, considering his reckless drug use already that month, in all likelihood consumed several other drugs. Within 30 minutes Monika rang the intercom and said she was there to pick him up. Hendrix asked his friends to fob her off but eventually left with her.

Only Monika witnessed Jimi’s next few hours. She asserted that at around 4am, after drinking some wine, Jimi asked for some sleeping pills and she refused, saying he should try to sleep naturally. Monika had 50 tablets of a powerful German sedative called Vesparax. The dose was supposed to be only half a tablet. She took one herself and fell asleep. Despite having complained of exhaustion for two weeks — in fact, he’d been pleading exhaustion for two years — sleep still eluded Jimi. At some point early that morning he took nine Vesparax. In all likelihood he was under the impression that the pills were weaker than American pharmaceuticals and, desperately needing rest, took a handful. If he had intended to kill himself, as was later assumed, it was odd that he left 40 pills, more than enough to have assured an easy and virtually immediate death. As it was, the nine pills he swallowed would have made him lose consciousness quickly. Some time during the early hours, the combination of the Vesparax, the alcohol in his system and the other drugs he’d used that night caused Jimi to heave up the contents of his stomach. What he brought up — mostly wine and undigested food — was then aspirated into his lungs, causing him to stop breathing.

If Monika had been awake, and had heard him gasp, she might have cleared his airway. Jimi’s reckless mixing of drugs and alcohol had become so commonplace the previous year that his girlfriends regularly woke up hearing him gasping and had to clear his windpipe on several occasions. But there were to be no angelic rescues on the overcast morning of September 18, 1970. Around the time when the rest of London was waking up, he died. He was 27, and it was six days short of the fourth anniversary of his arrival in London.