Ringo owned the flat at 34 Montagu Square and rented it to us after we moved out of the Hyde Park Towers Hotel.

We were lucky to get it as Paul McCartney had just moved out of the flat before us. The neighbours weren’t too happy about having musicians in the flat. Paul had been using it as a recording studio and I’m sure it wasn’t very soundproof.

Paul and Ringo outside the flat

The elderly lady who lived upstairs could be rather grumpy. She wouldn’t let us have the keys to the communal gardens when the photographer wanted to take some photos of Jimi in the gardens.

In the end we had to move out because of the complaints about noise, but after us John and Yoko Ono moved in and they were raided by the drug squad which was the last straw as far as the neighbours were concerned. Ringo had to sell up and no more musicians lived at 34 Montagu Square.

John outside the flat

Now there is a Blue Plaque to John Lennon on the house.

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During our first weeks together we did a little shopping and sightseeing and I introduced him to friends. Because we didn’t have much money we went everywhere on the Underground.

There were two stations near the Hyde Park Towers Hotel. Queensway was the station for the Central Line to get to the West End. Bayswater was the station for the Circle Line to get to Notting Hill Gate for Portobello Road and then on to Sloane Square for Kings Road. We got off at South Kensington to get to the Cromwellian club. We used to get some funny looks on the Tube because of Jimi’s clothes and hairstyle.

The Queens ice rink was just by the Queensway station and one day we decided to have a go at skating.

Neither Jimi nor I had ever been skating before and Queensway ice rink was just around the corner. ‘Shall we try it?’ I asked Jimi one evening when we were at a loose end.

‘Sure.’ Jimi was always game for a new experience.

At the rink they had trouble finding a pair of boots big enough for Jimi’s size eleven feet. They managed it eventually and he tucked his flares in and we set off. Within seconds of hitting the ice we were lying in an hysterical heap, weak with laughter. The other skaters just had to make their way round us as we rolled around trying to pull ourselves up on one another, only to lose our footing and come crashing down again.

By the end of the session Jimi had got reasonably good and had actually managed to let go of the side and still stay upright, but every time I let go I went straight down again. My sense of balance had not improved since my ballet lessons at the convent. By the end my ribs were aching from laughter even more than my legs and bottom were from falling over.

Jimi enjoyed himself so much that we went back several times and by the end he was pretty accomplished, whizzing round the rink, attracting everyone’s stares with his hair waving in the breeze.

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Now most people seeing this picture would not have any idea of why Jimi is sitting on the floor with two phones.

We had started to get problems with unwanted visitors. People would just knock on the door and barge in uninvited and they would also phone us up at any time of the day or night. Jimi was so polite that he couldn’t say no until they got so annoying that he’d suddenly lose his temper with them.

Having two phones was my idea to stop people bothering us on the phone and it worked for a while until Jimi sabotaged the system in a moment of forgetfulness.

The telephone never stopped ringing so I decided to have two phones installed, one with a number which we gave out to people and one which we kept private. Then I would take the general phone off the hook. But Jimi started giving the other number to people in case they couldn’t get through on the first line, which completely defeated the object.

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The Scotch of St James

This is the entrance to the Scotch of St James in Masons Yard off Duke Street where I was the DJ.

I had been DJing at the Cromwellian when I was poached by Rod Harrod, who had worked at the Cromwellian previously, and Louis Brown. They came to the Crom and asked me to move to the Scotch. Louis Brown was one of the owners of the Scotch and he also part-owned Le Kilt. The lovely Rod Harrod had gone to manage for him at the Scotch. I heard that Rod Harrod went to South Africa later and started a school and music academy for disadvantaged kids which I thought rather a good thing to do.

I think the reason I was hired was because of the sort of music I played. Everyone else was playing the top ten pop tunes of the day; I didn’t. I played the sort of music that the musicians who came late at night to the clubs liked, which wasn’t their own numbers that they were sick of hearing anyway. I often played Motown and R&B numbers that were virtually unknown in London at the time.
Louis Brown and Rod recognised this and I think they wanted to lure the “in-crowd’ away from the Cromwellian and into the Scotch. I started my shift quite late and used to have my dinner and hang around upstairs until after midnight. What I didn’t know before I started was that the DJ booth at the Scotch was a coach that I had to sit in like some sort of fairy princess. I found it quite embarrassing with people coming up and asking me if I had glass slippers and whether my coach turned into a pumpkin. Luckily Rod Harrod and friends protected me.

Various famous musicians started to come to the club.

Sonny and Cher

Sonny and Cher did an impromptu performance just in front of my coach singing “I’ve Got You Babe” staring meaningfully into each others eyes. Then they tried to get into my coach and choose from my records which annoyed me.

Inez and Charlie Foxx

Inez and Charlie Foxx did the same sort of thing and Charlie dragged me out of my coach and danced with me which was a mistake as I’m not a very good dancer.

I got fed up with the late hours that interfered with my social life and I had just stopped working at the Scotch when I met Jimi on his first day in England.

He and Chas had dropped in at the house I was living in with Zoot and Ronnie Money but I didn’t get out of bed. That evening we went to the Scotch to see him play.

Jimi was playing when Angie, Zoot, Ronnie (Zoot’s wife) and I walked into the club and just as we settled down Chas stopped him and they came to back our table. Jimi was sitting with a dark haired model girl but when she went to the Ladies he beckoned me over to sit with him and whispered in my ear.

This is an excerpt from my book.

He kissed me on the ear and whispered, ‘I think you’re beautiful.’

It was a corny line but there was something so sweet and innocent about the way he said it. I liked him immediately. I felt flustered by his flattery and tried to cover it up with casual conversation.

‘So what were you doing in New York?’ I asked.

‘I was playing in the Cafe Wha, that’s where I met Chas.’

The dark haired girl came back from the loo and had to sit in my old seat next to Ronnie. I didn’t take much notice, assuming that she wasn’t his girlfriend or he wouldn’t be flirting so outrageously with me. A few minutes later Ronnie exploded into a torrent of Glaswegian abuse in response to something the girl had said to her about me. The girl grabbed Ronnie’s hair and pulled her head back, which anyone who knew Ronnie could have told her was a big mistake. Ronnie picked up a bottle of whisky and smashed it down on the marble-topped table, sending splinters of glass flying in all directions and attracting all eyes in the club. Everything went horribly quiet.

‘Let go of my fucking hair,’ Ronnie snarled, every inch the ferocious Scottish fighter. She pushed the jagged end of the broken bottle up to the beautiful girl’s exposed throat.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Chas looked panic-stricken as he turned to me, ‘get Jimi out of here for God’s sake, Kathy, he’s only on a visitor’s visa. Take him back to the Hyde Park Towers. Quick, before someone calls the police.’

‘OK,’ I hustled Jimi out into Mason’s Yard and on to the pavement. ‘Let’s get a taxi,’ I said, turning round just in time to see him stepping straight in front of a cab, looking the wrong way. I pulled him back as the driver screeched to a halt, opened the cab door and bundled him in.

I got Jimi back to his hotel and we chatted well into the night.

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Jimi in the kitchen at Montagu Square

This is an extract from my book

Some of the rows between Jimi and me were quite dramatic, mainly because both of us operated on very short fuses and neither of us was ever willing to climb down, so we could only end them by one or other of us storming off – usually me. Once he was moaning about my cooking again and I felt I had put a lot of effort into whatever it was – mashed potatoes probably. I didn’t take kindly to being told they were disgusting, so I picked up the plate and smashed it on the floor.

‘Hell – what are you doing?’ he screamed at me, so I picked up a few more plates and threw them around the room as well, yelling back at him. Eventually I turned on my heel and stalked out, crossing the street to find a cab. He followed, trying to persuade me to come back, but I refused to listen. I found a taxi and jumped in, and without letting Jimi hear I told the driver to take me to Angie and Eric’s place in Jermyn Street. When I returned the next day, having cooled down, I asked him what he had done while I was away.

‘I wrote a song,’ he said and handed me a piece of paper with ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ written on it. Mary is my middle name, and the one he would use when he wanted to annoy me. I took the song and read it through. It was about the row we had just had, but I didn’t feel the least bit appeased.

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This picture of a scrumpled up piece of paper is one of the many scribblings that Jimi had a habit of making when he was working on new songs.

This one is from our time in Brook Street in 1969 and I remember he showed it to me and asked me what I thought of it.

The simple answer was “Not much – and it didn’t seem to rhyme.”

The other thing was that I was a bit unhappy about the Send My Love to Kathy bit. It was bad enough Katherina and me walking into the sea (I told him he better go on his own) but I really didn’t like being named in songs and he should change it to another name.

Just then my friend Linda came up to the flat. Linda was called Linda Baxter, or maybe Buxton (I never knew her by her surname). She was Rocky Dzidzournou the conga player’s girlfriend and she was feeling very sick and asking for something to be sick into. I found her a wastepaper bin like a small bucket.

I suggested to Jimi to change the name to Linda instead of Kathy.

Changing the name from mine to Linda seemed to cheer her up a bit.

So that is how Send my Love to Linda got started. It’s a pity it never got finished.

Just after Jimi arrived, when we were staying in the Hyde Park Towers Hotel, there were long conversations about what the Jimi Hendrix band should be like. Originally Chas was thinking along the lines of something like the Animals with five people – Jimi and a rhythm guitarist, a bass guitarist, keyboard and drums. Jimi wasn’t sure about the keyboard but was willing to go along with Chas’ expertise. He still thought that another guitar and a bass guitar were needed like his old band the Blue Flame.

The first audition was for the rhythm guitarist and it was held at Birdland in the daytime. Birdland was a small club in Duke Street, St. James. Noel Redding was being auditioned for rhythm guitar and there was a piano player and a drummer. I can’t remember the piano player but I think the drummer might have been Tommy Brown of Nero And The Gladiators. Chas played bass guitar and they all did a few numbers together.

Noel Redding

It became obvious that Jimi didn’t really need another guitar. He was virtually a solo player. Chas asked Noel if he could play bass guitar instead, to which Noel said that he didn’t know bass but he’d give it a go. Noel could play nearly any sort of stringed instrument, even violin, and had been a professional musician since school. I don’t think he had ever played bass guitar before but he knew what was needed and just took Chas’ guitar and played an absolutely steady bass line. That was it – Jimi had a bass guitarist and the deal was made in the pub next door. I think it was that evening that we met Johnny Halliday and Chas agreed to a tour in France even though he hadn’t got a band together yet and didn’t even know what form it would take.

The next audition was arranged for a drummer the next week. Again there would be a keyboard player and Noel would play bass guitar this time. Chas knew that Aynsley Dunbar was free but he wanted to try another drummer as well. Tommy Brown had gone off with Johnny Halliday so he was out.

In the meantime we went to the Cream gig at the Polytechnic and gave Eric a nasty turn and then a few days after that there were the auditions for the drummer. Chas had heard that Georgie Fame’s drummer, Mitch Mitchell, was free so two drummers could be auditioned separately one after the other.

Noel with Jimi in Paris. Jimi is wearing the suit Chas bought at Burton’s

The auditions were at a small dark club in Soho. I think it was at Die Fledermaus up at the top end of Dean Street. Chas had arranged a keyboard player and I think Noel was using a six string which might have belonged to Chas. During the audition the penny dropped with Chas. Jimi didn’t need a keyboard player. They could form a power trio like Cream who we had seen just a couple of days previously. I think he also realised it would be cheaper to have just three people on tour.

In the taxi back to the hotel we debated which drummer to have. They were both very good. Chas wanted to know what Lotta and I thought and I suggested Aynsley because he was good looking and I’d seen him play with the Mojos. Chas didn’t know what to do so he decided to toss a coin. The first flip fell on the cab floor so he did it again and Mitch Mitchell won the toss. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was formed on the toss of a coin.

Mitch Mitchell

This has been based on my book.

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When Jimi arrived in London the other guitarists were immediately very impressed. Jimi played “Killing Floor” at a Cream gig and Eric was stunned.

This is an extract from my book.

‘Eric nearly fainted,’ Chas told us later. ‘He said, ‘Give us a cigarette, man! Is he really this good, or can he just do the one piece?’ When I told him Jimi was for real he just said, ‘Oh my God!’ That night we all went home feeling pretty smug.

Jimi, Eric, Brandy and me at the Bag O’ Nails after a Cream concert

Not long afterwards we met Eric in a club and he invited us back to his flat in Park Road, near Regent’s Park – quite close to Ivor Court, where he was living with his girlfriend, Brandy. The four of us sat around making polite conversation. Eric and Jimi hardly knew each other and were making an effort but it was very stilted. They both wanted to be friendly but Eric was well known for not having the gift of the gab and Jimi could be a reticent character.

‘God,’ Jimi muttered as we came out, ‘that was hard work.’

Eric and Jimi

This photo is a posed one from the Bag O’ Nails outing when we had got to know each other better.

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