Who was Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Foxey Lady’?
For whatever reason, rock ‘n’ roll stars tend to leave the identity of their lovers unspecified. Perhaps it’s the mystery. It’s undoubtedly the case that the opening line of ‘Foxey Lady’ wouldn’t sound quite so romantic had Jimi Hendrix sung: “You know, you’re a cute little heartbreaker, Deborah.” Today, we’ll be attempting to establish the identity of the woman who held Hendrix’s desire in the palm of her hand, unleashing an obsessive jealousy in the young guitarist.
Many have assumed Hendrix’s ‘Foxey Lady’ was Kathy Etchingham, who met Hendrix at the Scotch of St James nightclub in London. “There were stairs winding down to the basement, and everybody was leaning over the bannisters to listen to this guy sitting in the corner of the club playing,” Etchingham told the BBC. “They were enthralled.” After being introduced to Hendrix by his manager, Chas Chandler, the pair got talking. “He just looked unusual – stunning, really,” Etchingham recalled. “He was fresh, and he had a very soft sort of American accent.” Hendrix leaned closer: “I think you’re beautiful,” he whispered in her ear. An hour later, they were back at his hotel.
Etchingham would go on to recall that Hendrix was an “experienced and imaginative” lover. He was also, as she discovered, something of a womaniser. The next morning, they were interrupted by another woman, who “burst into the room at about 11 in the morning, screaming, swearing and calling him a bastard. “She grabbed a guitar, lifted it by the neck and was poised to bring it down on our heads while we were in bed.”
But Etchingham, it would appear, is not the woman behind ‘Foxey Lady’. That would be the wonderfully named Lithofayne Pridgon, who knew Hendrix when he was still spelling his name with an extra “m” and a “y” instead of an “i”. Seduced by Sam Cooke at the age of just 16, she was desired by a host of iconic music artists. Friend to the likes of Jackie Wilson, Etta James, Marvin Gaye, Ike Turner and James Brown, she was, according to cultural critic Greg Tate, “nobody’s concubine,” a street-wise and fiercely intelligent woman with a penchant for star-studded parties.
Pridgon met Hendrix in 1963. The jobbing guitarist was hanging around the stage door of The Apollo theatre looking to meet Sam Cooke. Though the lights were low, she recognised him, having encountered him a year earlier at a Fat Jack concert. “I liked skinny, raw-boned, over-fucked, underfed-looking guys,” she told The Guardian, noting that Hendrix was just her “type”. On bumping into the guitarist a second time, Pridgon found herself intensely attracted to him. They took a walk from the Apollo back to her mother’s flat near Central Park, where they spent hours poring over blues records. Later that night, they travelled to the Cecil Hotel to rent a room. From that point on, she recalled, they were “inseparable.”
According to Pridgon, Hendrix was not yet a womanizer but a very sensitive, if rather jealous romantic. He fell in love with Lithofayne immediately. “Folks say that we lived together,” she recalled. “I don’t feel like we lived together, but I would stay for maybe a few weeks at a time, and I’d get my knees in the breeze.” Hendrix was convinced they were a couple, but Lithofayne had always been opposed to having a boyfriend. “My mother even told Jimi, ‘Pay Faye no mind because she falls in and out of love every week.’ And I did, I loved that love rush.”
Still, Pridgon nurtured Hendrix’s talent, giving him the confidence to pursue his ambitions. “This might sound crazy to you, but he was almost like my baby,” she said. “He was a sweetheart, and it’s as simple as that.” Young and infatuated, Hendrix was intensely jealous, a jealousy that terrified Pirdgon and made its way into his lyrics for Foxy Lady’. “You’ve got to be all mine,” he sings, “all mine.” Things came to an end in 1966 when Hendrix relocated to London. His unflinching adoration of Lithofayne was subsequently immortalised in the opening track of his debut album with The Jimi Hendrix Experience, ‘Foxey Lady.’
