Throwback Thursday: The Final Performance of The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Throwback Thursday: The Final Performance of The Jimi Hendrix Experience

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On this day in 1969, The Jimi Hendrix Experience played their final public performance at the Denver Pop Festival in Colorado. The rock band, which formed in London in 1966, consisted of Jimi Hendrix as lead vocals, songwriter, and guitarist; Noel Redding as backing vocals and bassist; and Mitch Mitchell on drums. From 1966 through 1969, The Jimi Hendrix Experience released three successful studio albums, several hit singles (“Purple Haze,” “Hey Joe,” and their cover of Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower”) and popularized psychedelic rock, channeling the style and energy of the 1960’s counterculture. They became notorious in the US after their performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in June of 1967, where Hendrix ended the set by lighting his Fender Stratocaster on fire. However, relations between Hendrix and bassist Redding soon began to deteriorate, and after their appearance at the Denver Pop Festival in June of 1969, Redding left the trio. After Redding’s departure, Hendrix and Mitchell expanded the band, sometimes still referred to as The Jimi Hendrix Experience (and sometimes as Gypsy Sun and Rainbows), performing at Woodstock in August of that same year. However, more arguments and bandmate shuffling plagued the group, until Hendrix himself died of a drug overdose in September of 1970. In 1992 the Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.