In an age when so many museums and exhibitions seem to feel the need to dumb down and/or succumb to commercial pressures, it was a much more than pleasant surprise to visit the new Hendrix museum in central London.
Based in Jimi's old flat in Brook Street, it has the right balance of information, music and relevant artefacts.
The high points are his old acoustic on which he worked on most of his classics, including his iconoclastic version of Bob Dylan's 'All Along The Watchtower'; audio clips of him in the studio; and the reconstruction of his tastefully exotic bedroom.
Most of the furnishings are brilliantly sourced substitutes, but the mirror over the fireplace is the one that was there originally. And there is something decidedly spooky about looking into a mirror that you know Hendrix also looked into.
Then there is his record collection, perhaps the best mirror of all of the man. Everything he had is catalogued here, and in some cases there are the original album sleeves too. Above all, Hendrix was a blues man – the evidence here is in countless records by Lightning Hopkins, plus Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, and the classic Albert King record 'Live Wire/Blues Power'. He also had, not surprisingly, pretty much everything by Dylan.
I bought my copy of 'Are You Experienced' in Paris in 1967 and so managed to get the psychedelic Barclay sleeve (below), rather than the extremely straight UK version. It was nice to find that Hendrix, too, had the French version in his collection rather than the English one, and that his was here on display.
It was also touching to find that when Jimi discovered that Handel had lived in the same building, he went down to the local record store and got a couple of the man's albums to check him out. The sleeves of those are here too – as is the Handel museum, next door.
Book to see them both - you will not be disappointed.
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