Jimi Hendrix London Apartment Is Now a Museum

Forty-five years after his death, Jimi Hendrix’s former apartment at 23 Brook Street has been restored and is now open to the public as a museum. Up until now, the space has only been used to hold special events. Hendrix shared the flat with his girlfriend, Kathy Etchingham, living in the London Mayfair apartment in 1968-69, the period of the guitarist’s life that was heavily depicted in the 2014 biopic: All is By My Side.

“It was barely furnished when we took it but I thought it could be ideal for us,” Etchingham told the BBC, “It really does look the way we fitted it out.”

Etchingham also went on to say that much of the apartment hasn’t changed in the last half century. “The fireplace is the same and the shelves and the cupboard. The windows and the woodchip paper and the wonky floors. It’s all the same.”

According to The Guardian, the recreation of the home was directed by Etchingham so that everything, even his two telephones on the floor and the scallop-shell ashtray, is historically accurate. One room of the museum will even hold a catalogue of Hendrix’s top played records which he had played on a Bang & Olufsen.

Hendrix referred to the flat as “the only home I ever had.”

The flat is right next to the home of another great name in music, 240 years before: Georg Friedrich Handel who lived on 25 Brook Street. The adjoining buildings will be a combined museum for music lovers everywhere. Michelle Aland, the director of the museum, knows that people will come with a higher interest in one of the artists, but she says that they “hope most people will want to learn about both sides of the exhibition.”

Etchingham’s relationship with Hendrix began to fade as his career took off in America. She only stayed in the apartment briefly after Hendrix left for America. Hendrix died in London September 1970 at the age of 27.

The museum will open next Wednesday.