Did Jimi Hendrix predict his own death?
There has never been another guitar player like Jimi Hendrix. Many people can play what Hendrix played, but they sure as hell can’t play it like Jimi. Hendrix had cut his teeth playing first on the Tennessee circuit with the likes of the Isley Brothers and briefly with Little Richard.
In 1966, Hendrix moved to London, and he found an affinity with the English capital. He formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience with Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding, and soon he was catapulted into being one of the best rock musicians of the 1960s. Tragically, Hendrix died at the age of 27 in 1969 after sleep-induced asphyxiation.
Hendrix appears to have known all along that he would be met with a tragic and untimely fate, which perhaps slightly eases the fact that he departed this world all too soon and left his fans with a gaping hole where his dominating presence once was. During a 1969 trip to Morocco, Hendrix visited a clairvoyant.
During the tarot session, the clairvoyant flipped over the death card. Hendrix’s response was to turn to his friend who had accompanied him on the trip to the North African country and say: “I’m going to die before I’m 30.” Then, just two days before his death, Hendrix had run into the journalist Sharon Lawrence at Ronnie Scott’s in London and told her: “I’m almost gone.”
Then there was also the fact that Hendrix had recorded ‘The Ballad of Jimi’ two years before his Are You Experienced? album. The song details a young man called Jimi, who believed that he was going to die in less than five years. The lyrics read, “Many things he would try, For he knew soon he’d die. Now Jimi’s gone, he’s not alone. His memory still lives on. Five years, this he said. He’s not gone, he’s just dead.”
Hendrix’s final words indicate that he knew he was in dire straits too. On September 17th, 1969, he had been out for a drink with friends before returning home with his girlfriend, Monika Dannemann. Hendrix’s last known words were recorded on an answerphone message to his manager, Chas Chandler. He told Chandler: “I need help bad, man.”
At around 11pm, Dannemann and Hendrix shared a bottle of wine before heading out to hang out with some friends. Hendrix went to sleep at approximately 7am. Come 11am, Dannemann found him unconscious and unresponsive. Hendrix was pronounced dead at 12:45pm on September 18th by Dr. John Barrister. However, it appears that Hendrix knew he was on his way out all along.
