In September 1965, Jimi one night showed up at the door of his current producer, Ed Chalpin, with his drummer, Curtis Knight, at 2.00 o'clock AM, and said he wanted to record a song.
The song was The Ballad of Jimi, an autobiographical song about Jimi's life, that ended with the four lines:
Five years,
this he said,
he is not gone.
He is just dead.
Almost exactly five years later, September 18, 1970, Jimi died from inhaling his own vomit.
The song was released as a single the same year. Did he predict his own death? Did Jimi have a vision that night?
It is known that Bob Marley, being able to tell people's fortune with impressing accuracy as a child, once said he'd expect to be dead at 36. I guess I need not say how old he was when he died.
Actually, all the lyrics from Ballad Of Jimi would fit perfectly in as if written in 1970.
Many things we would try. For he knew soon he'd die.
This could explain Jimi's daring experiments with drugs. Jimi could take four times as much drugs as most of his friends, who were experienced users. Whether he expected to die from his bravery or got his bravery from allready knowing that he would soon die, is (and will remain) unknown.

... he is gone. But he left us something that time can't erase.
Now he's loved by us all. Yes, he's loved by us all. That is my story. It has no end. Now Jimi's gone, ...

(Read the complete lyrics here)
Also, in If 6 Was 9, Jimi mumbles in the background, some sentences about his own death that never appears on any lyrics, neither on the Net nor in CD/LP booklets:
I got my own life to deal with ... I'm the one who's got to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to!

Jimi spent September 18 in the flat of Monika Danneman.
There, he drew the number nine, nine times, and said "nine consciousness was the highest form of consciousness". Then, he drew a Christian cross, and decorated each of the four lines with the faces of famous people from each of the four races: Martin Luther King, Jr and other black faces on the left horizontal, Hitler, JFK and other white faces on the right horizontal. Geronimo and other Indians on the lower vertical, and Genghis Khan, Gandhi and other Asians on the opposite. He then said; "Monika. Remember this. This is the Grand Design. Remember all I say. You are a painter. Put this in your painting. Nine. Remember the number nine. There are nine planets. And remember the number four. Four colors. Remember." Later, the two of them went to a party where Jimi took a so-called "black bomber", a capsule containing amphetamine and a sedative. He also snorted some LSD. At 8:30 PM, they got back to Monika's appartment. There they stayed until 1:45 AM, when Jimi said he had to go to some people's appartment. He did not like them, he said, but he had to go. Alone. So Monika drove him there, and picked him up again at three o'clock. What happened during this hour, and the identity of the people is not known. They went to bed, and Monika awakened at 10:20 AM, the morning of the eighteenth. She failed to wake Jimi, and noticed he had taken nine of her sleeping pills. Vomit was around his mouth and nose. What had happened, was he had drugged himself so much his reflexes was not working. He had then got sick, vomited, and
failed to turn around, like a healthy person would instantly have done. The vomit then went back into his throat and was now choking him. But Monika did not know this. She called Eric Burdon, a friend, for advice, because she was afraid to call the ambulance. She feared Jimi would be angry if she got him into a hospital if nothing really was wrong. Eric told her to call an ambulance, and so she did. The ambulance personnel assured her Jimi was going to be alright, and she checked him into St. Mary's Abbot Hospital in Kensington, London under a false name. At 11:25 AM, September 18, 1970, Jimi officially died from inhalation of vomit.
The coroners office later stated an "open verdict", meaning the accurate reason for his death was unknown. Referring to an old quote of Jimi; "when I die, there won't be a funeral, but a jam session", a jam session was arranged, to wich both Noel and Mitch attended.

Jimi's Funeral.

Why state the inhalation as reason, then later change it? And why did the coroner and informant, Gavin L. B. Thurston, never sign the death certificate? Who were the people Jimi unwillingly visited hours before his death? Why did Jimi eager to record the Ballad of Jimi at two o'clock at night, on the month five years before his death? Did the cross mean anything, or was it just another one of Jimi's strange philosophies? It could be just a lot of co-incidents with natural explanations.
Or it could not.
We'll never know. Ha ha ha!


Text by Anders Kvernberg. Copyrighted © 1998 to the latter.
Violation may cause you to all by sudden become an ugly old man.
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