Jimi Hendrix died in London on 18 September 1970, aged 27. Born in Seattle in 1942 as Johnny Allen Hendrix and later known as James Marshall Hendrix, he had played in backing bands before moving to Britain in 1966, where he formed The Jimi Hendrix Experience with Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell.

Singles including “Hey Joe”, “Purple Haze” and “The Wind Cries Mary” quickly drew attention, and the debut album “Are You Experienced” appeared in 1967. “Axis: Bold as Love” and “Electric Ladyland” followed. His international career at the highest level lasted less than four years — a short span next to his later influence on rock, blues, funk and jazz.

Hendrix treated the electric guitar, amplifier, pedals and studio as a single instrument. Distortion, feedback and recording techniques were not isolated displays of virtuosity but part of melody and atmosphere. His performance of the American national anthem at Woodstock in 1969 became an emblematic sequence of the era’s rock culture, not a summary of the whole discography.

The British inquest recorded an accidental death by asphyxia in the context of barbiturate use. Sensational claims that appeared later should be treated with caution. This article does not reproduce lyrics and does not fill biographical gaps with rumour.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame lists The Jimi Hendrix Experience among its inductees; reference biographies, including Encyclopaedia Britannica, keep career facts separate from the mythology around his death. The Metropolitan Museum in New York holds, separately, objects linked to the electric guitar and to the popular culture of the period.

Fifty-six years after his death, the anniversary belongs to a musician whose recording career ended abruptly, not to a cult built on speculation. The sources below are the starting point for dates, albums and context, not for theories about his last hours.

Image: Jimi Hendrix memorial / Wikimedia Commons. A commemorative monument, not a 1970 stage photograph. Cropped to 16:9.

Source consulted: Jimi Hendrix | Encyclopaedia Britannica; The Jimi Hendrix Experience | Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.