Ezy Rider
06-16-12, 01:31 AM
http://steveroby.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/interview-with-stella-douglas-october-2007-by-steven-roby/ (thanks to Dino77)
Interview with Stella Douglas – October 2007 by Steven Roby
http://steveroby.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/img_0030.jpg?w=487 (http://steveroby.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/img_0030.jpg)
In 1969, Jimi Hendrix met Stella Douglas who ran a boutique on East 9th Street in New York. Her husband was Alan Douglas, who ran the jazz record company Douglas Records. Both remained his friend, and happened to be with him only hours before he died in London.
In 2007, I’d met Stella’s sister Luna, who in turn introduced us. The following interview was conducted at Stella’s home in Los Angeles, California.
Steven Roby: When was the first time you met Jimi Hendrix?
Stella Shapiro: I met him in a club in 1969. It was a small club, maybe the Salvation. I was with a girlfriend, and he probably just got into New York. I had seen him before, accidently, at a club called the Cheetah. He was dressed so wonderfully well. He was tuned into style. I told my girlfriend, “That is Jimi Hendrix,” and she said, “Who?” She turned around to look at him and he smiled at us. We were listening to a band. It could have been Joe Cocker. The first second our eyes made contact I could feel something profound. Jimi had that quality when he looked into someone’s eyes. The soul of the poet was exalted in him. He got up from the table of people he was with and asked if he could join us, and we said yes. We went to my girlfriend’s house. We had some tea and coffee, and spoke for quite a long time.
Can you explain what you mean by the soul of the poet?
I realize this more now more than I did then. There was something charming and moving about him. He was extremely gentle, soft-spoken, and I never heard him scream. He was composed, but shy, and extremely magical.
How did your friendship develop?
From that day forward, we stayed in touch almost daily. I was married to Alan Douglas at the time, he was a producer, and Jimi became our friend. I think he was living in the basement of his manager’s place. I don’t want to make that sound like it was a bad thing or he was victim. He had all of his equipment there. He took us over to see it, and I told him, “You can’t stay here. You don’t have enough air,” so we found him a place off Sixth Avenue. I think it was on 12th Street. It was a block away from where Alan and I lived. He liked it and moved in. We helped furnish his place in the style of those days. Everything was from Morocco.
You owned a boutique at that time with your friend Collette. Did Jimi drop by?
He would come by almost everyday when he was in town. There was a picture I recently found with Collette, Miles Davis’ wife, and me outside of it. The photo depicts so much of the culture and flair of the era. We were wearing the appropriate “costumes” for the picture.
What was the place called?
The boutique had no name printed on the front of it. Alan, Jimi, Collette, and I were at our apartment one night and we wanted to come up with a name for the store. We came up with some silly and serious names. Jimi came up with Band of Gypsys, but the one he liked the most was The Nudist Colony. We all thought it was funny that a clothing store would be called that, but we went with it. We never got around to putting the name on it. The outside of the store was painted a red burgundy and the display window was filled with beautiful things. Miles Davis was our first customer and he bought a beautiful amber-beaded necklace my sister Luna made. It was one her first pieces. I introduced Jimi to Miles at the shop, you know. I remember clearly that Devon was there too. Jimi looked over and saw Miles, and they looked up in surprise, as if to say, “Oh, you?” They started teasing each other.
Those were such fun times.
In those days fame was not commercial like it is today. I don’t remember people running after Jimi for autographs when he walked in the streets. No screaming girls running after him like the Beatles. It was a magical time of revolution, but not in a political sense. It was the end of a cycle and the start of a new one, you know, like the sign of the infinite and the crossing point or crossroads was a revolution, going from one cycle to another. We had choices we could make, to either go with this new culture, or not. Many people never went with it. I was told that in the days of Elvis Presley, parents forbid their children to look at him.
Because he might corrupt them?
Yes, either their moral or religious beliefs… social, sexual, whatever. My mother told me that when she was a young girl she always wanted to have short hair, but it was not permissible in her environment. Through all generations you’ll see there is a proclivity to carry on what your parents have told you to do, and it was respectful to do that. I think one of the things that brought us so close together with Jimi was that he was completely respectful to me and people around him. Once in awhile there were some male groupies that used to dress like him, standing in the hallway following us, or when we went into a club. The club owner would say to Jimi, “Weren’t you just here a few minutes ago?” I heard Andy Warhol would do that. Having people wear the white wig and go to parties for him. We didn’t have paparazzi back then… nobody pushed him around.
How do you think people perceive Jimi Hendrix today?
Through the years I’ve heard people say that Jimi was a junkie, and I’ve decided I’m going to stand up for him. The people who say or repeat those rumors were probably given wrong or distorted information. As a councilor today, I can assure you he was not a junkie. A junkie is a person who uses drugs in a constant manner, and admits that the drug is the higher power. That was the era of drugs, and they were around everywhere. In Jimi’s case, I never experienced him coming late to dinner or when we went to listen to someone play because a dealer was coming by. In alcoholism there are different stages and phases of it. For example like a social drinker that has one or two drinks, but three or four years later he has fifteen drinks, then that pre-stage was an alpha stage. I’m not saying he didn’t use drugs, but there were people around us that became junkies. We had a small group of friends then, and we knew him toward the end of his life.
I never got the impression Jimi was much of a drinker.
I’d seen him drink some wine once, and he made a remark that he didn’t digest it well. He didn’t like it. You must remember the people that smoked cannabis sativa, pot, whatever you want to call it, didn’t drink. We were socially two separate groups. And the code of ethics we had back then was, we wouldn’t hang out with people that drank. They were violent, less than charming… it was a cultural stand that we had.
I understand you helped expose him to different foods, fine art, and a culture he’d never experienced while growing up in Seattle.
I lived the way I did. He was sensitive, observant, and had a fantastic flare for fashion. He was a prince in the true definition of the word. There was something very elegant in the way he moved, dressed, and the way he ate. He had something gracious about him. Our house was elegant and he was attracted to that lifestyle. He came to my house almost every night because I love to cook Moroccan food. In those days we had a great Moroccan table on the floor, and velvet cushions from my grandmother’s cellar. The Rolling Stones were into this type of decoration for their homes too. It was what was happening. Some people said we were hippies, but we were definitely hippies deluxe.
Tell me about your trip to Morocco with Jimi in 1969.
There have been so many things printed in books about our trip that it isn’t true. For example we didn’t spend nine days. I don’t think we stayed more than a week… maybe six days. Jimi came after my friend Collette was there with a friend of his. I’m not willing to disclose any names because I don’t think this appropriate. I’m not here to talk about anybody’s experience with Jimi, but I can tell you we had a wonderful time. We took Jimi to the restaurants, we walked through the streets of Morocco, we stayed in the best hotel in town. Each one of us had our own rooms. He paid for his. We paid for ours. We were a little band of gypsies. We stayed at the hotel in Monsieur. We took him inside the Medina to eat, at a Jewish Moroccan Kosher restaurant, and we made him eat things that were absolutely outrageous. Afterwards we told him what they were. It was delicious and he loved it. We took him to a girlfriend’s house one night. We went to Marrakesh one night, to the Hotel Mamunia (correct spelling?). We even went to the nightclub, which was totally deserted, and we all danced… all together, like kids dancing. We came back towards Casablanca, and then south to a town then called Mogodor, and now it’s called Essaouira. I don’t think we slept there, but there are so many people that have said they’d seen us, been with us, and all that… Not true!
So, was it a private getaway?
Not in the sense we were looking for privacy. On the beach we met some people from the Living Theater. There’s not much I can say other than we talked for a few minutes with them and they were friendly. There was one called Agnitum (spelling? Correct name?), like the king of the eighteenth century dynasty. And there was a lady whose name I forgot now… Scarlet something… she looked like a mythological person… she was tall with long red hair and had a flowing robe. There was respect for the time we spent in front of that hotel, the Hotel DePlaige (spelling?) or something like that. Nobody really bothered anybody. These people knew he was Jimi Hendrix, but they didn’t come and talk. They just came up and said, “Hello, man. How are you?” People communicated more with smiles and vibes than political conversations or anything.
Tell me about the acoustic guitar Jimi played while he was there.
He played guitar for my sister for a long time. She never spent very much time with him, but he got to know her well.
Didn’t he write poetry for her?
Yes he did. It was pretty strange because he asked her what she wanted to hear on guitar, and she said Flamenco. I wish I had a recording of that so I could hear it again. He played the “Bolero de Ravel,” “Bolero,” and he played it in like a hundred different versions. The song is repetitious, but his version was so wonderful. Since we were by the sea, it was in the background, so we couldn’t hear it all that well. But once in a while I got close, and there was Jimi playing for Luna. I asked Luna if she remembered that, and she said vaguely (laughs). Like a meeting with a god.
It sounds like Jimi’s mood in Morocco was very playful.
Yes he was. Jimi came with no problems and left with no problems.
I was curious about his reaction to the African culture.
I don’t know if you can consider Morocco part of Africa’s culture. It’s more Middle Eastern.
I asked because I think many historians try to make connections to his African roots.
Well, they are horribly mistaken. Jimi was definitely colorblind. He was a very evolved spiritual being, and he didn’t see people through their color… favor blacks because he was black… it never came up or an issue. I used to tell him a lot of stories from the One Thousand And One Nights book (a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales). I am a storyteller and Jimi was a quiet person.
There was a story that Jimi had his Tarot cards read while he was in Morocco, and that he was not happy with the results. Is that true?
No, not at all. I’d never seen Jimi consult a psychic or a Tarot card reader. Now, maybe somebody in our group took him to such a person, but I was unaware of that. If he were upset he would have said something. Where did you get that information?
I found it in a book called Room Full Of Mirrors. The story was that one of the cards was a star and another was death, and after seeing that one he panicked that he was going to die soon.
Oo-la-la. Over dramatized. Jimi said that he could die young, but I have lots of friend that have said that and they’re now in there 50s and 60s. What does Neil Young say, “Rust never sleeps.” When we’re young the idea of getting old is not very appealing, but as you grow older you change your mind about it. You choose a path that you want to work on, and it’s great. I think Jimi’s death was accidental, personally.
Jimi liked to write songs about his life experiences. Did he ever mention this to you?
He wrote a song for me called “Angel.” I asked Devon about it later and she confirmed it. I asked him why he wrote that for me, and he reminded me about the time he was living in his new apartment in New York. He’d been up the night before recording in the studio, and called me up to say he was starving. He asked if I would bring him a sandwich from a nearby deli. I said, “Are you kidding? Let me make you something.” I was a really good cook. He said, “No, I just want a bologna sandwich on white bread with mayonnaise.” We were just a block away from each other, and there was a delicatessen in between. When I got there he was playing “Foxy Lady” with a little amp on the windowsill, and people on the street were looking up to his apartment.
That’s quite an image of the highest paid rock performer for 1969, and no staff available to get him something to eat. And of all the things he could desire, he simply wants a plain bologna sandwich.
He liked having friends he could trust. He was not entrepreneurial or a businessman, just a true poet. He was a renaissance man and had the ability to turn thoughts into poetry, and I will always see him as that.
Had you seen any political groups approach Jimi?
One time we were stuck in the street in the east Village, and some people who said they were part of the Black Panther group approached us. Jimi just brushed them off and said, “Let’s go.” He was not political. We were smart enough to know about the newspapers of the left and the right, the black and white, but we honestly didn’t care. Even though he’d been in the service, he didn’t care. He never discussed with me his time in the army. Maybe he went through his own revolution.
In 1969, Jimi was busted for hashish and heroin in Toronto. He claimed that a fan threw it in his bag and he was unaware of it. Did he ever mention this to you?
Yes, that’s exactly what happened. Jimi had not used heroin at that time, yet.
You never saw needle marks on his arms?
Never! Like Jimi says on his album, “Are you experienced?,” he’s talking about experiencing LSD. It was about opening the doors of the imagination. The doors of the mythological legends. I don’t think Jimi ever put a needle in his arm. I experienced pot and LSD with him. There were people around him that used heroin. If he tried it, it must have been the most minute quantity and only for the purpose of experiencing it.
I don’t want to name any names, but there was this lady that might have been into the more habitual forms of taking drugs. Drugs were totally recreational. Nobody would sniff cocaine in the middle of the day… Once in a while there was an exotic drug that we had never heard of before that would come up and we would try it. We would wake up, have breakfast, and he would go off to the studio. How you can be that productive and that prolific, and be a junkie too… I mean, think about it? What determines addiction? The term addiction in my field is the continued use of a drug or a substance that you know is bad for you, and knowing that it is bad for you; you still persist in using it. None of that applied to Mr. Hendrix. I’ve never seen people use needles, and I am experienced.
After Jimi got back from Morocco he played the Woodstock festival. Did you go too?
I had no notion that Woodstock was going to be so big, so I stayed in Morocco with my grandmother after Jimi left. My home was in Casablanca. We had a beautiful old Moorish house. My grandmother spoke several languages, knew the proverbs, and was really a remarkable woman.
Tell me about your husband at the time, Alan Douglas.
He was a prolific producer. He never met Jimi in the nightclubs. He would never go out and dance with us. He’s not a dancer… a bit of a hermit.
Can we talk about Jimi’s death?
A little bit, only because it involves a lot of people. We had a dinner together, a small gathering, but not a Pete Cameron’s house, a friend’s house. We just ordered some Thai food. Earlier Devon had rented this big extravagant car, and this girl saw Jimi, because we were standing on the corner waiting for Devon to come back, and this girl really pursued him. Even though he seemed impatient, and was giving me signs to get back in the car, she asked me if she could call him and they could go out while he was in London. I asked Jimi if it was okay to give her his phone number, and he said yes. She called the next night when we were having dinner, and she called and called. I kept telling her that he was not available, because Jimi really didn’t want to see her. I don’t know how she figured out the location, but she was downstairs beeping the horn on her little blue sports car. I could see her from the kitchen window, and it was already eleven o’clock. I went and told Jimi that this same girl was downstairs. She then buzzed the intercom and asked if she could come up. I said no, but then she wanted to know if he was coming down. She was really like a groupie.
So was it about the fascination for her?
I don’t know if that’s the right word, but they were just in the business of getting together with pop stars… that was their agenda. She was not particularly… not… well, her mommy might think so. If she were in a crowd today, I would not recognize her, but I would Devon or Colette. She buzzed the intercom so much that he finally came down and left with her around eleven thirty.
Some reports say he left a little later, like two or three in the morning.
He probably hung out with her in many places after that. She was showing off. She was with Jimi Hendrix, in London, and in her car.
What sort of mood was he in when he left the party?
He was in an extremely positive mood at the time. Not depressed. He was starting his life over again, and wanted to do new things. He was thinking about renting an apartment there. He liked and respected English musicians a lot. He loved people like Junior Wells, who played the harp. He loved Aretha Franklin too. He was not into any particular color of music. Jimi and Alan had been talking, not on a business level, but on an artistic approach to a new type of music with people like John McLaughlin and Miles Davis.
What happened next?
We all made plans for the next day to go visit some friends who had an antique shop. We agreed to meet around one p.m. at a restaurant on King’s Road. Normally Jimi would have come back to the apartment because he was staying with Alan and me. Devon had joined us there in the last few days, to everybody’s surprise. We didn’t hear back from him that night and we all went to sleep. Devon woke up from a nap she’d been taking in the back room, and found out that Jimi had not come back. She’d even given me a little bit of lip about it. Since he didn’t come to bed with her, she figured he’d gotten involved with some groupie, and he’d show up later. The next day when we were at the restaurant, we had no idea what had happened.
What was your reaction to the news about his death?
I have gotten over it, but at the time I had a bit of resentment for that girl. She had obviously given him a pill, and ten minutes later he hadn’t felt anything. Devon told me, after having a conversation with her, that the girl had given him two huge tranquilizers, one right after the other, about fifteen minute intervals, and he was not use to this type of drug. He must have been so unconscious under the effect of this drug that his body couldn’t react properly when he got sick.
Well, that and the large amounts of red wine he’d consumed just prior.
I don’t know. I haven’t read the coroner’s report. It’s so hard for me to imagine because he usually didn’t drink red wine.
(also talks about Jimi’s 27th birthday party in 1969.)
What are you doing now?
I work in academia, and as a counselor. I have a degree from UCLA. My teacher asks me to give lectures there. Sometimes they last up to two hours.
Interview with Stella Douglas – October 2007 by Steven Roby
http://steveroby.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/img_0030.jpg?w=487 (http://steveroby.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/img_0030.jpg)
In 1969, Jimi Hendrix met Stella Douglas who ran a boutique on East 9th Street in New York. Her husband was Alan Douglas, who ran the jazz record company Douglas Records. Both remained his friend, and happened to be with him only hours before he died in London.
In 2007, I’d met Stella’s sister Luna, who in turn introduced us. The following interview was conducted at Stella’s home in Los Angeles, California.
Steven Roby: When was the first time you met Jimi Hendrix?
Stella Shapiro: I met him in a club in 1969. It was a small club, maybe the Salvation. I was with a girlfriend, and he probably just got into New York. I had seen him before, accidently, at a club called the Cheetah. He was dressed so wonderfully well. He was tuned into style. I told my girlfriend, “That is Jimi Hendrix,” and she said, “Who?” She turned around to look at him and he smiled at us. We were listening to a band. It could have been Joe Cocker. The first second our eyes made contact I could feel something profound. Jimi had that quality when he looked into someone’s eyes. The soul of the poet was exalted in him. He got up from the table of people he was with and asked if he could join us, and we said yes. We went to my girlfriend’s house. We had some tea and coffee, and spoke for quite a long time.
Can you explain what you mean by the soul of the poet?
I realize this more now more than I did then. There was something charming and moving about him. He was extremely gentle, soft-spoken, and I never heard him scream. He was composed, but shy, and extremely magical.
How did your friendship develop?
From that day forward, we stayed in touch almost daily. I was married to Alan Douglas at the time, he was a producer, and Jimi became our friend. I think he was living in the basement of his manager’s place. I don’t want to make that sound like it was a bad thing or he was victim. He had all of his equipment there. He took us over to see it, and I told him, “You can’t stay here. You don’t have enough air,” so we found him a place off Sixth Avenue. I think it was on 12th Street. It was a block away from where Alan and I lived. He liked it and moved in. We helped furnish his place in the style of those days. Everything was from Morocco.
You owned a boutique at that time with your friend Collette. Did Jimi drop by?
He would come by almost everyday when he was in town. There was a picture I recently found with Collette, Miles Davis’ wife, and me outside of it. The photo depicts so much of the culture and flair of the era. We were wearing the appropriate “costumes” for the picture.
What was the place called?
The boutique had no name printed on the front of it. Alan, Jimi, Collette, and I were at our apartment one night and we wanted to come up with a name for the store. We came up with some silly and serious names. Jimi came up with Band of Gypsys, but the one he liked the most was The Nudist Colony. We all thought it was funny that a clothing store would be called that, but we went with it. We never got around to putting the name on it. The outside of the store was painted a red burgundy and the display window was filled with beautiful things. Miles Davis was our first customer and he bought a beautiful amber-beaded necklace my sister Luna made. It was one her first pieces. I introduced Jimi to Miles at the shop, you know. I remember clearly that Devon was there too. Jimi looked over and saw Miles, and they looked up in surprise, as if to say, “Oh, you?” They started teasing each other.
Those were such fun times.
In those days fame was not commercial like it is today. I don’t remember people running after Jimi for autographs when he walked in the streets. No screaming girls running after him like the Beatles. It was a magical time of revolution, but not in a political sense. It was the end of a cycle and the start of a new one, you know, like the sign of the infinite and the crossing point or crossroads was a revolution, going from one cycle to another. We had choices we could make, to either go with this new culture, or not. Many people never went with it. I was told that in the days of Elvis Presley, parents forbid their children to look at him.
Because he might corrupt them?
Yes, either their moral or religious beliefs… social, sexual, whatever. My mother told me that when she was a young girl she always wanted to have short hair, but it was not permissible in her environment. Through all generations you’ll see there is a proclivity to carry on what your parents have told you to do, and it was respectful to do that. I think one of the things that brought us so close together with Jimi was that he was completely respectful to me and people around him. Once in awhile there were some male groupies that used to dress like him, standing in the hallway following us, or when we went into a club. The club owner would say to Jimi, “Weren’t you just here a few minutes ago?” I heard Andy Warhol would do that. Having people wear the white wig and go to parties for him. We didn’t have paparazzi back then… nobody pushed him around.
How do you think people perceive Jimi Hendrix today?
Through the years I’ve heard people say that Jimi was a junkie, and I’ve decided I’m going to stand up for him. The people who say or repeat those rumors were probably given wrong or distorted information. As a councilor today, I can assure you he was not a junkie. A junkie is a person who uses drugs in a constant manner, and admits that the drug is the higher power. That was the era of drugs, and they were around everywhere. In Jimi’s case, I never experienced him coming late to dinner or when we went to listen to someone play because a dealer was coming by. In alcoholism there are different stages and phases of it. For example like a social drinker that has one or two drinks, but three or four years later he has fifteen drinks, then that pre-stage was an alpha stage. I’m not saying he didn’t use drugs, but there were people around us that became junkies. We had a small group of friends then, and we knew him toward the end of his life.
I never got the impression Jimi was much of a drinker.
I’d seen him drink some wine once, and he made a remark that he didn’t digest it well. He didn’t like it. You must remember the people that smoked cannabis sativa, pot, whatever you want to call it, didn’t drink. We were socially two separate groups. And the code of ethics we had back then was, we wouldn’t hang out with people that drank. They were violent, less than charming… it was a cultural stand that we had.
I understand you helped expose him to different foods, fine art, and a culture he’d never experienced while growing up in Seattle.
I lived the way I did. He was sensitive, observant, and had a fantastic flare for fashion. He was a prince in the true definition of the word. There was something very elegant in the way he moved, dressed, and the way he ate. He had something gracious about him. Our house was elegant and he was attracted to that lifestyle. He came to my house almost every night because I love to cook Moroccan food. In those days we had a great Moroccan table on the floor, and velvet cushions from my grandmother’s cellar. The Rolling Stones were into this type of decoration for their homes too. It was what was happening. Some people said we were hippies, but we were definitely hippies deluxe.
Tell me about your trip to Morocco with Jimi in 1969.
There have been so many things printed in books about our trip that it isn’t true. For example we didn’t spend nine days. I don’t think we stayed more than a week… maybe six days. Jimi came after my friend Collette was there with a friend of his. I’m not willing to disclose any names because I don’t think this appropriate. I’m not here to talk about anybody’s experience with Jimi, but I can tell you we had a wonderful time. We took Jimi to the restaurants, we walked through the streets of Morocco, we stayed in the best hotel in town. Each one of us had our own rooms. He paid for his. We paid for ours. We were a little band of gypsies. We stayed at the hotel in Monsieur. We took him inside the Medina to eat, at a Jewish Moroccan Kosher restaurant, and we made him eat things that were absolutely outrageous. Afterwards we told him what they were. It was delicious and he loved it. We took him to a girlfriend’s house one night. We went to Marrakesh one night, to the Hotel Mamunia (correct spelling?). We even went to the nightclub, which was totally deserted, and we all danced… all together, like kids dancing. We came back towards Casablanca, and then south to a town then called Mogodor, and now it’s called Essaouira. I don’t think we slept there, but there are so many people that have said they’d seen us, been with us, and all that… Not true!
So, was it a private getaway?
Not in the sense we were looking for privacy. On the beach we met some people from the Living Theater. There’s not much I can say other than we talked for a few minutes with them and they were friendly. There was one called Agnitum (spelling? Correct name?), like the king of the eighteenth century dynasty. And there was a lady whose name I forgot now… Scarlet something… she looked like a mythological person… she was tall with long red hair and had a flowing robe. There was respect for the time we spent in front of that hotel, the Hotel DePlaige (spelling?) or something like that. Nobody really bothered anybody. These people knew he was Jimi Hendrix, but they didn’t come and talk. They just came up and said, “Hello, man. How are you?” People communicated more with smiles and vibes than political conversations or anything.
Tell me about the acoustic guitar Jimi played while he was there.
He played guitar for my sister for a long time. She never spent very much time with him, but he got to know her well.
Didn’t he write poetry for her?
Yes he did. It was pretty strange because he asked her what she wanted to hear on guitar, and she said Flamenco. I wish I had a recording of that so I could hear it again. He played the “Bolero de Ravel,” “Bolero,” and he played it in like a hundred different versions. The song is repetitious, but his version was so wonderful. Since we were by the sea, it was in the background, so we couldn’t hear it all that well. But once in a while I got close, and there was Jimi playing for Luna. I asked Luna if she remembered that, and she said vaguely (laughs). Like a meeting with a god.
It sounds like Jimi’s mood in Morocco was very playful.
Yes he was. Jimi came with no problems and left with no problems.
I was curious about his reaction to the African culture.
I don’t know if you can consider Morocco part of Africa’s culture. It’s more Middle Eastern.
I asked because I think many historians try to make connections to his African roots.
Well, they are horribly mistaken. Jimi was definitely colorblind. He was a very evolved spiritual being, and he didn’t see people through their color… favor blacks because he was black… it never came up or an issue. I used to tell him a lot of stories from the One Thousand And One Nights book (a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales). I am a storyteller and Jimi was a quiet person.
There was a story that Jimi had his Tarot cards read while he was in Morocco, and that he was not happy with the results. Is that true?
No, not at all. I’d never seen Jimi consult a psychic or a Tarot card reader. Now, maybe somebody in our group took him to such a person, but I was unaware of that. If he were upset he would have said something. Where did you get that information?
I found it in a book called Room Full Of Mirrors. The story was that one of the cards was a star and another was death, and after seeing that one he panicked that he was going to die soon.
Oo-la-la. Over dramatized. Jimi said that he could die young, but I have lots of friend that have said that and they’re now in there 50s and 60s. What does Neil Young say, “Rust never sleeps.” When we’re young the idea of getting old is not very appealing, but as you grow older you change your mind about it. You choose a path that you want to work on, and it’s great. I think Jimi’s death was accidental, personally.
Jimi liked to write songs about his life experiences. Did he ever mention this to you?
He wrote a song for me called “Angel.” I asked Devon about it later and she confirmed it. I asked him why he wrote that for me, and he reminded me about the time he was living in his new apartment in New York. He’d been up the night before recording in the studio, and called me up to say he was starving. He asked if I would bring him a sandwich from a nearby deli. I said, “Are you kidding? Let me make you something.” I was a really good cook. He said, “No, I just want a bologna sandwich on white bread with mayonnaise.” We were just a block away from each other, and there was a delicatessen in between. When I got there he was playing “Foxy Lady” with a little amp on the windowsill, and people on the street were looking up to his apartment.
That’s quite an image of the highest paid rock performer for 1969, and no staff available to get him something to eat. And of all the things he could desire, he simply wants a plain bologna sandwich.
He liked having friends he could trust. He was not entrepreneurial or a businessman, just a true poet. He was a renaissance man and had the ability to turn thoughts into poetry, and I will always see him as that.
Had you seen any political groups approach Jimi?
One time we were stuck in the street in the east Village, and some people who said they were part of the Black Panther group approached us. Jimi just brushed them off and said, “Let’s go.” He was not political. We were smart enough to know about the newspapers of the left and the right, the black and white, but we honestly didn’t care. Even though he’d been in the service, he didn’t care. He never discussed with me his time in the army. Maybe he went through his own revolution.
In 1969, Jimi was busted for hashish and heroin in Toronto. He claimed that a fan threw it in his bag and he was unaware of it. Did he ever mention this to you?
Yes, that’s exactly what happened. Jimi had not used heroin at that time, yet.
You never saw needle marks on his arms?
Never! Like Jimi says on his album, “Are you experienced?,” he’s talking about experiencing LSD. It was about opening the doors of the imagination. The doors of the mythological legends. I don’t think Jimi ever put a needle in his arm. I experienced pot and LSD with him. There were people around him that used heroin. If he tried it, it must have been the most minute quantity and only for the purpose of experiencing it.
I don’t want to name any names, but there was this lady that might have been into the more habitual forms of taking drugs. Drugs were totally recreational. Nobody would sniff cocaine in the middle of the day… Once in a while there was an exotic drug that we had never heard of before that would come up and we would try it. We would wake up, have breakfast, and he would go off to the studio. How you can be that productive and that prolific, and be a junkie too… I mean, think about it? What determines addiction? The term addiction in my field is the continued use of a drug or a substance that you know is bad for you, and knowing that it is bad for you; you still persist in using it. None of that applied to Mr. Hendrix. I’ve never seen people use needles, and I am experienced.
After Jimi got back from Morocco he played the Woodstock festival. Did you go too?
I had no notion that Woodstock was going to be so big, so I stayed in Morocco with my grandmother after Jimi left. My home was in Casablanca. We had a beautiful old Moorish house. My grandmother spoke several languages, knew the proverbs, and was really a remarkable woman.
Tell me about your husband at the time, Alan Douglas.
He was a prolific producer. He never met Jimi in the nightclubs. He would never go out and dance with us. He’s not a dancer… a bit of a hermit.
Can we talk about Jimi’s death?
A little bit, only because it involves a lot of people. We had a dinner together, a small gathering, but not a Pete Cameron’s house, a friend’s house. We just ordered some Thai food. Earlier Devon had rented this big extravagant car, and this girl saw Jimi, because we were standing on the corner waiting for Devon to come back, and this girl really pursued him. Even though he seemed impatient, and was giving me signs to get back in the car, she asked me if she could call him and they could go out while he was in London. I asked Jimi if it was okay to give her his phone number, and he said yes. She called the next night when we were having dinner, and she called and called. I kept telling her that he was not available, because Jimi really didn’t want to see her. I don’t know how she figured out the location, but she was downstairs beeping the horn on her little blue sports car. I could see her from the kitchen window, and it was already eleven o’clock. I went and told Jimi that this same girl was downstairs. She then buzzed the intercom and asked if she could come up. I said no, but then she wanted to know if he was coming down. She was really like a groupie.
So was it about the fascination for her?
I don’t know if that’s the right word, but they were just in the business of getting together with pop stars… that was their agenda. She was not particularly… not… well, her mommy might think so. If she were in a crowd today, I would not recognize her, but I would Devon or Colette. She buzzed the intercom so much that he finally came down and left with her around eleven thirty.
Some reports say he left a little later, like two or three in the morning.
He probably hung out with her in many places after that. She was showing off. She was with Jimi Hendrix, in London, and in her car.
What sort of mood was he in when he left the party?
He was in an extremely positive mood at the time. Not depressed. He was starting his life over again, and wanted to do new things. He was thinking about renting an apartment there. He liked and respected English musicians a lot. He loved people like Junior Wells, who played the harp. He loved Aretha Franklin too. He was not into any particular color of music. Jimi and Alan had been talking, not on a business level, but on an artistic approach to a new type of music with people like John McLaughlin and Miles Davis.
What happened next?
We all made plans for the next day to go visit some friends who had an antique shop. We agreed to meet around one p.m. at a restaurant on King’s Road. Normally Jimi would have come back to the apartment because he was staying with Alan and me. Devon had joined us there in the last few days, to everybody’s surprise. We didn’t hear back from him that night and we all went to sleep. Devon woke up from a nap she’d been taking in the back room, and found out that Jimi had not come back. She’d even given me a little bit of lip about it. Since he didn’t come to bed with her, she figured he’d gotten involved with some groupie, and he’d show up later. The next day when we were at the restaurant, we had no idea what had happened.
What was your reaction to the news about his death?
I have gotten over it, but at the time I had a bit of resentment for that girl. She had obviously given him a pill, and ten minutes later he hadn’t felt anything. Devon told me, after having a conversation with her, that the girl had given him two huge tranquilizers, one right after the other, about fifteen minute intervals, and he was not use to this type of drug. He must have been so unconscious under the effect of this drug that his body couldn’t react properly when he got sick.
Well, that and the large amounts of red wine he’d consumed just prior.
I don’t know. I haven’t read the coroner’s report. It’s so hard for me to imagine because he usually didn’t drink red wine.
(also talks about Jimi’s 27th birthday party in 1969.)
What are you doing now?
I work in academia, and as a counselor. I have a degree from UCLA. My teacher asks me to give lectures there. Sometimes they last up to two hours.