Did Red Wine Kill Jimi Hendrix?
When you think of dangerous rock ‘n’ roll substances, red wine probably isn’t even on the list. But according to a friend of Jimi Hendrix, it may have been the cause of the guitar legend’s death.
In an interview with the UK’s Daily Mail, Meic Stevens recounted the last night of Hendrix’s life, saying he “was drinking lager or some kind of beer and he just poured the wine in to the pint glass. I don’t think he had ever drunk red wine before — he didn’t know how to drink it. He seemed okay. He seemed to be alright. But the next day I woke up late and somebody phoned and said Jimi’s dead. Apparently he choked on his own vomit.”
It seems like a bit of a leap to go from watching someone mix beer and wine to determining that as their cause of death, but hey — Stevens was there, and that’s something the rest of us can’t say. Moral of the story: don’t drink a pint of wine without supervision.
The never-ending Hendrix re-issue series will continue this year via a new slate of albums from Experience and Sony Legacy, including a four-disc box of live performances from Winterland, an expanded edition of ‘Hendrix in the West,’ and a collection of performances from ‘The Dick Cavett Show.’