This article appeared in a 1974 issue of New Musical Express. The writer isn't named on the copy I have (may be credited elsewhere on the same page or somewhere else in that NME).
Was Jimi an astronaut?
AFTER WHAT Curtis Knight told me, I find it very strange indeed that the name of Jimi Hendrix is absent from the list of people he has publicly acknowledged for helping him prepare "Jimi" - Knight's intimate biography of his long-standing confidant.
Why, only last week while laying in bed with his girlfriend, Curtis had a visitation from his old buddy Jimi...
But in no way was Mr.Knight perturbed by this manifestation from the beyond, for as Knight tells it, Jimi also dropped by his place just over a year ago.
The purpose of that visit, says Knight, was to give spiritual approval to the Hendrix biography he was drafting out.
Seemingly (and we have to take Knight's word for it) the first time the author witnessed Jimi's apparition, the legendary guitarist was sporting a monk's habit, a shaven head and a warm smile. But no conversation took place.
Last week, Knight maintains that he felt Jimi's cold presence when he popped into the right side of Knight's bed. Knight knew it was Jimi, because suddenly the pair of them were strolling about laughing and swopping yarns about the good old days they spent together.
As I've said, Curtis Knight doesn't find anything abnormal about these comings and goings... for you see, Jimi Hendrix wasn't an Earthling!
"What I'm telling you is exactly what Jimi told me a long time ago," Knight disclosed at a press reception to launch his book. "Jimi wasn't of this Earth. Jimi was a spiritual messenger. He was sent here from another place so that through his music and his guitar he could put his message across to the world.
"It was his way of gaining world-wide attention.
"Jimi confided in me," Knight continued, "that when space people from another place want to influence mankind they will first of all carefully choose a particular environment in which to leave their messenger.
"Now sometimes you'll read that a baby has been left abandoned on a doorstep... you see, space people will leave one of their babies in a mortal state, but possessed with space knowledge, wisdom and guidance, so that as it grows up it will be able to perpetrate itself to the forefront.
"And this is precisely what Jimi did through his music. He got himself into a position to influence mankind."
If you subscribe to Knight's theory that Jimi Hendrix was an astronaut, then why choose to destroy himself?
"Simply because he'd become a curio... a musical freak. In the music business, the difference between making the front page as opposed to the back page is based on how visual you are. Jimi was forced to follow this line because suddenly he had been thrust before the public as a wild visual guitar-biting, stand-on-your-head sensual performer.
"In the process his music began to get cast aside. People weren't listening to the message in his lyrics, so the only thing left to him was to phase his life out - so that only his music would be left, and in that way people would be forced to hear his message.
"It's very significant," Knight emphasised, "that on the night he died, Jimi took nine pills - for in numerology the number nine is when you see God, and when you are allowed to go to your spiritual haven."
Be that as it may, it must be pointed out that over the last five years Curtis Knight (with whom Jimi worked prior to forming the Experience) has been systematically numbered on both sides of the Atlantic as trying to cash in on his association with the late-lamented guitar star.
Knight adamantly refutes all these slurrs and insists that he hasn't received any money from the albums he cut with Hendrix. But he is aware that once again he'll be accused of being a rip-off artist following the publication of his book.
"It all stems from that record Jimi and I made ('The Ballad Of Jimi') that predicted his death. Now that was written and recorded way back in 1965, you see. I told Jimi that I dreamed I saw him in a purple haze and he was dead. Jimi seemed unconcerned for he replied, 'Yes, I'll be dead within five years'.
"So immediately we sat down and wrote this song and recorded it the very same day, with Jimi playing every instrument except the drums, and adding the vocal harmonics.
"When Jimi died that song was released as a single, and I was slammed by everyone in the business. After that my name was mud. No record company would even consider recording me. So up until now I've had to finance sessions myself."
So what about the unending stream of posthumous Knight-Hendrix albums that abound?
"Well I'm prepared to take an oath on this," said Knight. "I've never earned one single penny from any of those records. You see, I was in a situation whereby I desperately needed someone to help me out of a financial jam, and to get that help I had to sign over all my composing royalties."
In that case, was it lack of cash that motivated the Hendrix biography?
"I didn't decide to write it... a set of very spiritual and curious circumstances caused it to come about. Monika Danneman, who was Jimi's last girlfriend, contacted me - because apparently Jimi had instructed her to make certain paintings according to various numerological specifications concerning the mixing of the colours and the size of the canvas.
"Jimi had also left a suicide note... a poem or song called 'The Story Of Life', with instructions that she would know the right time and the right person to show it to.
"I was the first person to read it.
"Also, Jimi's father begged me to relate the real facts that had become distorted. It was pathetic, because due to the fact that Jimi's estate was in litigation and that he had borrowed heavily from his record company to finance the Electric Ladyland Studios, Jimi's family were almost broke."
Perhaps the next time Jimi Hendrix decides to contact the living he'll choose a good lawyer and accountant to clear up the mess.