Jimi Hendrix on a pull-out superposter in Bravo of 8 September 1977.
This poster was at the centre of the Great Poster Debate of September 1977 in our house. Although I bought the Bravo magazines, my younger brother and I took weekly turns in deciding which posters would go up in our shared bedroom. My brother’s bargaining strategy was that if he had no say, he’d veto any poster at all going up.
That week in early September 1977, the Superposter choice fell between a garish picture of Bay City Rollers clones Dead End Kids on the colour side (running tomorrow, but you can see the state of them in yesterday’s post), and this really cool monochrome photo of Jimi Hendrix.
I knew nothing of Hendrix, other than that he was dead. Alas, it was my brother’s week to choose the posters — and he opted for the deplorable Dead End Kids. I tried all I could to persuade him that Jimi had to go up, even trying to emotionally blackmail him by claiming that our recently late father — an opera and theatre man who named as his favourite singer Maria Callas — was a big Jimi Hendrix fan. To no avail. The Dead End Kids went up.
I never got to hear any of their records, but I would get to hear a lot of Hendrix’s. As would my brother.
