(Credits: Bent Rej)
Fri 7 November 2025 20:15, UK
For all Jimi Hendrix was very much a real person and not just merely a spectral presence of rock and roll, the details of both his life and death can often be shrouded in so much mystery that it can be difficult to discern the truth.
In particular, the timeline of events which took place on the fateful night of September 18th, 1970, has always been open to interpretation, as Hendrix took his final breaths but left a trail of confusion and speculation in his wake as to how, exactly, such a stark tragedy could even happen. Some 55 years later, it very much feels like treading back over old ground, but nevertheless, the case still throws up more questions than it has ever answered.
The crux of the matter – whether the guitarist died intentionally by taking his own life or by sheer medical accident – is, unfortunately, the definitive conclusion that will never be found. Any sort of clues that could be gleaned from the night leading up to this have never been exactly clear, either. But through every version of events, one thing has always remained constant: the woman he spent it with, his then-girlfriend Monika Dannemann.
It seems only fair, in this respect, to class her words with more gravitas than most. She insisted that their final evening together started off in rather mundane fashion – Hendrix had been to dinner with some supposed ‘friends’ he didn’t particularly like, so after around an hour, she went to pick him up and they returned to her room at the Samarkand Hotel in London. There, she made him a tuna sandwich, and he wrote a poem named The Story of Life. Many would come to later argue that this was Hendrix’s version of a suicide note, which Dannemann ultimately agreed with.
Dannemann then took some sleeping pills away from Hendrix before he went to bed, with her following shortly after. But waking up only a few hours later and wanting to buy cigarettes, she realised that the guitarist’s mouth and nose were covered in vomit, although he was breathing normally. She dashed to a nearby shop, however, “When I returned and approached the door of the flat, I sensed something was wrong. The door stuck this time, as it sometimes did, and I became very frightened. Finally I managed to get the door open, and when I rushed into the bedroom, even before I looked at him, I knew something was terribly wrong,” she later told Rolling Stone.
It was almost the sign that the blitzing whirlwind of noise that Hendrix brought into the world had lost its final spark. There was only a lamp burning in the room, because I had turned the ceiling light off after I thought Jimi had gone to sleep,” Dannemann added. “The lamp cast this eerie glow. There was a hush in the room as though time had stood still,” and all in a moment, that dull light became symbolic of not only a man, but an effervescent spirit, which had made its last mark on the universe.
Hendrix’s post-mortem ruled that he had died via the inhalation of vomit combined with drug use, but this still does not precisely dictate whether there was any intention behind this or not. Ultimately, no one will ever know what the truth in this aspect is, but it almost becomes insignificant in knowing that Hendrix was a force taken all too soon. Perhaps it’s best to leave the final words on the matter to him, as he wrote in that final poem, The Story of Life: “The story/ Of life is quicker/ Than the wink of an eye/ The story of love/ Is hello and goodbye/ Until we meet again.”
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