(Credits: Far Out / Marjut Valakivi / Public Domain)
Sun 22 February 2026 4:30, UK
Tea rooms, Victorian architecture, and middle-class ramblers trekking across acres of untameable moorland; these are just some of the things you can expect to see if you visit the Yorkshire spa town of Ilkley today. Back in 1967, though, it played host to the psychedelic revolution of a rock and roll god, Jimi Hendrix.
Yorkshire itself boasts a vast musical heritage befitting a county of its size and stature, spanning the spectrum from the classical compositions of the Bradfordian Frederick Delius to the Britpop rock revolution of Sheffield’s finest, Pulp.
Ilkley’s musical heritage, on the other hand, rather stretches beyond the admittedly endearing folk song ‘On Ilkla Moor Baht ‘at’. Back in 1967, though, the hippie revolution brought the vibrant colours of Carnaby Street to the sleepy spa town, temporarily replacing flatcaps and pints of bitter with flared trousers and psychedelics.
As part of a particularly brief UK tour, which saw him play three dates across the north of England before heading off to Hamburg, Jimi Hendrix arrived in Ilkley on March 12th, 1967, which – as the Hendrix historians among you might have already realised – was a few months before his masterpiece debut, Are You Experienced, was released.
Nevertheless, the rebellious youth of Ilkley had clearly already been alerted to the gospel of this musical master. Reportedly, Hendrix had made the diversion to Ilkley after performing to a depressingly sparse crowd in Leeds that same evening. While the crowds of Leeds hadn’t paid much attention to the guitarist, the hordes in Ilkley would arguably swing too far in the other direction.
(Credits: Far Out / Wikimedia)
The Troutbeck Hotel, where Hendrix was due to play, could typically accommodate around 250 people – not a bad capacity for a rural music venue. However, the building became overrun with as many as 900 people turning up to catch a glimpse of this psychedelic visionary. There were more people than even the band themselves had expected, and more than the spa town could handle.
While there has certainly been some debate over the specific number of people in attendance, there were enough young people packed into the small venue for the local police to shut down the show almost as soon as it had begun. Reportedly, Hendrix continued playing while Ilkley’s local police force attempted to usher everybody out, resulting in a kind of rock and roll riot that had been the stuff of local legend ever since.
Much like the attendance, the riotous end to the evening is a similarly contentious topic. Peter Crowther, who was there on that fateful night, once told the BBC, “I don’t actually think there were 900 but it just felt like it. […] They hit an opening chord and, ‘Sorry folks the police are closing this event down, everyone out!’” He added, “I certainly do not remember a riot but hundreds of disappointed fans very not happy.”
If there was, in fact, a riot, then it wasn’t one that resulted in many arrests or extensive damage to the picturesque surroundings of Ilkley. Either way, though, Hendrix’s visit to the town certainly captured the cultural shift that his psychedelic offerings ushered in during the late 1960s, offering up an entirely new world to Britain’s post-war youth, and one which the older generation were utterly baffled by.
Today, Jimi Hendrix’s doomed Ilkley gig is still the stuff of local legend, although it isn’t likely that many future rock gods will visit the town anytime soon, if only for the fact that the Troutbeck Hotel has since been converted into a nursing home – where, presumably, the residents are a lot less rowdy than a guitar hero and his following of 900 angry young hippies.