The blessed guitar Keith Richards unintentionally bestowed upon Jimi Hendrix
There was never any doubt that Jimi Hendrix was an exceptional guitar player and a huge talent. When he came to London, his rise to fame was the result of people talking about his exceptional live shows. There was no clever marketing or album rollouts, just people seeing Jimi Hendrix and telling everyone they knew that they, too, should go and see him.
Of course, while his guitar-playing ability was unquestionable, it’s one thing to be a good musician but another thing to be someone that people could market. A lot of managers went to watch Hendrix perform before anyone actually agreed to work with him, and many didn’t think that Hendrix was a musician they could sell to people.
One of the most famous managers who rejected Jimi Hendrix was Andrew Loog Oldham, most commonly known as the man responsible for the Rolling Stones. Nobody knew the music business better than Oldham, as he saw the popularity of The Beatles and decided the Rolling Stones could capitalise on it by being the antithesis of them. He had a good musical mind and knew the business well.
For instance, when the Rolling Stones were becoming more popular for playing Muddy Waters covers, Oldham knew that for them to be successful, the band would have to start making their own music. He made the drastic decision to lock Keith Richards and Mick Jagger in a kitchen and didn’t let them out until they’d written something.
While the track they ended up writing wasn’t the best, it got the creative juices flowing, and the two ended up writing some amazing songs. Sometimes, bands need to be pushed in a certain direction in order to succeed, and Oldham was good at spotting the direction they should be pushed in.
When he went to see Jimi Hendrix, though he decided not to work with the Seattle-born guitarist, there will have certainly been an element of him that reminded him of Rolling Stones Keith Richards. No, it wasn’t his playing style; it was the guitar he played as he took to the stage with a borrowed Keith Richards Stratocaster.
“I couldn’t believe nobody had picked up on him before, because he’d obviously been around,” said Linda Keith, who was Keith Richards’ fiancé at the time. “Jimi was astonishing – the moods he could bring to music, his charisma, his skill and stage presence.” Keith was a big fan of Hendrix, and when she found out Oldham was going to see him and thinking of working with him, she wanted to make sure he had the best guitar possible to impress the manager.
Keith Richards was on tour elsewhere in America, and she knew he had a spare Stratocaster in his hotel, so she took it and let Hendrix use it for the gig. Hendrix was such a big fan of the guitar that he continued using it and became renowned for playing it.
“I must admit the circumstances were less [than] savoury,” said Linda Keith, “I never actually told Keith that I had taken the guitar because he was away on tour. Jimi used that guitar for [the auditions] and thereon in. I doubt Keith ever knew it was missing.”
