(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Mon 30 March 2026 20:45, UK
Throughout the creative world, there are business people kicking themselves that they didn’t realise the musician they saw was the next big thing until it was too late. That was the case for a lot of bigwigs in America once Jimi Hendrix moved over to the UK.
“I couldn’t believe nobody had picked up on him before, because he’d obviously been around,” said Linda Keith, Keith Richards’ girlfriend at the time. She had seen Hendrix perform plenty of times in the States, and thought that it was crazy no label or manager had ever tried to sign him. “Jimi was astonishing,” she added. The moods he could bring to music, his charisma, his skill and stage presence.”
Hendrix’s lack of success wasn’t due to a lack of trying, as he was constantly playing gigs and taking his flamboyant style across the US. People were certainly entertained by it, but the people in suits weren’t sure it would sell records. Instead, they figured he would be a novelty act for a while and then slip into obscurity. Oh, how wrong they were.
In the US at the time, R&B and rock ‘n’ roll had a very specific style and sound, and Jimi Hendrix simply didn’t fit the bill. He was playing in a way that sounded outside of the norm, and he acted in a way which was way beyond what any other guitarist was doing. We recognise now that he was simply ahead of his time, but that innovative approach to his art meant that labels weren’t willing to take much of a risk on him.
Andrew Loog Oldham, the Rolling Stones manager, went to see him perform and didn’t connect at all with what the guitar player was trying to do. He didn’t believe there was a market for it, and so despite people like Linda Keith trying to convince him that Hendrix had real potential, he wasn’t willing to buy into it.
Ritchie Blackmore spoke about how ahead of his time Hendrix was when he was praising him as one of the greatest musicians to ever pick up a six-string. “Hendrix came out in 1966, and he was probably 20 years ahead of his time,” said Blackmore, “What makes him a genius is his phrasing and his originality; his construction of songs, his very innovative riffs, like those of ‘Purple Haze’ and ‘Manic Depression’; his presence on stage.”
Noel Gallagher also spoke about how people weren’t necessarily ready for Jimi Hendrix, but once they embraced him as a musician, they realised just how talented he was. The Oasis guitarist also said that people who think about the customer too much don’t make history. “The customer didn’t want Jimi Hendrix. But they got him. And it changed the world,” he said, “Fuck the customer. The customer doesn’t know what he wants.”
Hendrix wound up moving to the UK in a bid to try and make a name for himself there, and because of the music scene in London at the time, which was being subject to the early iteration of psychedelic music, and also had flamboyant guitarists like Jeff Beck making a name for themselves, the scene was much more ready for someone like Hendrix. It took him succeeding in London to prove to people in the States that the guitarist had real potential.
Noel Gallagher probably put it best. Nobody really knew that they wanted Hendrix at the time, but once he was given room to move, he changed the world.
