Jimi Hendrix’s best Christmas present ever
After getting arrested at Pearson for drug possession, trial was like a ‘nightmare’ for legendary star
In 1969, legendary rock musician Jimi Hendrix declared Canada had given him “the best Christmas present” when a Toronto jury acquitted him of drug possession charges.
He had been arrested when he arrived at Toronto airport for a performance seven months earlier. Sadly for local Hendrix fans, it would be his last visit to this country and indeed, his last Christmas. The “Purple Haze” songwriter died 10 months later.
“Canada has given me the best Christmas present I ever had,” the relieved 27-year-old rock star declared on leaving a Toronto courtroom in early December 1969. His comments followed a three-day trial on charges of illegal possession of narcotics, specifically heroin and hashish residue.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience was scheduled to give an evening performance at Maple Leaf Gardens on Saturday, May 3. That morning, the band members flew into Toronto (now Pearson) International Airport. Moments after Hendrix stepped off the plane, a bottle containing three packets of heroin and a tube with hashish residue was found in his flight bag.
Police detained Hendrix for four hours, while a police lab confirmed the suspicious substances were illegal drugs. Hendrix was arrested, charged, photographed and released on $10,000 bail and then given a police escort to Maple Leaf Gardens, where 10,000 fans were waiting for the 8 p.m. concert to begin.
He didn’t talk about his arrest on stage that night, although he improvised the song “Red House,’’ adding the line “as soon as I get out of jail, I wanna see her.” News of his arrest was slow to surface. It didn’t appear in the Star until the Monday paper two days later, when music critic Jack Batten made a passing reference to the fact that Hendrix was “incidentally out on bail” in his rave review of the Saturday concert. Batten called the show “utterly, candidly erotic.” Hendrix, dressed in “tight crimson pants, purple shirt slit to his navel” was the “embodiment of 1969 sex.”
The same day the review was published, Hendrix appeared in an Old City Hall courtroom filled with young fans. The three-minute arraignment in front of Judge Fred Hayes was mostly noteworthy for his colourful attire — he wore a pink shirt open to the waist, a multicoloured scarf around his neck, and an Apachestyle headband. June 19 was set for his preliminary hearing. When Hendrix appeared, he was dressed in a suit. Judge Robert Taylor set a trial date of Dec. 8.
It went on for three days. Then an all-male jury deliberated for eight hours before acquitting James Marshall Hendrix on both charges — avoiding a maximum seven-year-prison term on each count.
He’d celebrated his 27th birthday shortly before trial — on Nov. 27. He would not see his next one.
The musician described by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as “arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music” died at a London, England, hotel on Sept. 18, 1970, of asphyxia, from vomit inhalation following a barbiturate overdose. Speculation continues today as to whether the overdose was an accident, deliberate or foul play.
But when Hendrix won his court case Dec. 10, 1969, and emerged around 9 p.m. from York County Courthouse into a wet Toronto snowfall, he appeared to be on top of the world — grinning, flashing a peace sign and escorted by two beaming female admirers.
In an interview after his acquittal, with the Star’s Marilyn Dunlop outside the courthouse, Hendrix explained why he had used drugs in the past.
“Sometimes people are too sensitive, as I was,” he told Dunlop. “So they find something, maybe drugs, to make them feel better, brighter and bolstered.” He said as he became more successful and met more people, “I saw a lot of good things and a lot of bad things. Some of the bad things happened because of drugs . . . Look what happened to me, even when I don’t use them anymore.”
During his trial before a jury and County Court Judge Joseph Kelly, Hendrix admitted having smoked marijuana, hashish and taken LSD and cocaine, but never heroin. He testified that his cannabis use had declined over the previous year. Conservatively clad in a blue blazer and ascot tie, Hendrix told the court: “I feel I have outgrown it.”
The bottle containing heroin packets and a tube with hashish residue, found in his flight bag, was not his, Hendrix testified.
He told the court that people were constantly giving him gifts and he often didn’t look at them closely. He testified that there’d been a party in his Los Angeles hotel room. He’d complained of an upset stomach and a girl had handed him a bottle with what he thought was the antacid Bromo-Seltzer. He threw it in his bag. He said he didn’t know how the tube with hashish residue got in his bag.
To make the possession charges stick, the Crown had to prove Hendrix knew drugs were in his bag.
There was some testimony to back up Hendrix’s claims. His lawyer, John O’Driscoll, called United Press International reporter Sharon Lawrence to the stand.
She told the court that while she was trying to interview Hendrix she had seen a girl hand him a bottle after he had mentioned a stomach ache and he had put it in his bag, Lawrence said.
The court also heard that Hendrix expressed “surprise” to Toronto customs official Mervin Wilson, who found the packets of white powder (later determined to be heroin) when he pulled them out of the musician’s bag. The Star’s story quoted Wilson as saying that Hendrix told him “oh no, I really don’t know what it is,” when he showed him the packets.
The court was also told that Hendrix was examined by police and had no needle tracks on his arms, nor was any heroin paraphernalia found.
The defence implied someone had put drugs in Hendrix’s luggage as part of a setup. Indeed, a story in Rolling Stone magazine shortly after his arrest speculated just that, implying that whoever was involved had later called the airport. The May 31, 1969, article by rock journalists Ritchie Yorke and Ben Fong-Torres questioned why RCMP were there when the drugs were found: “For one thing the Mounties . . . customarily do not wait at the airport to make dope busts . . .” They also speculated that it was an example of conservative “Toronto authorities” making an example of a “freaky, frizzy-haired psychedelic” person to “scare the freaks out of Yorkville,” then a hangout for hippies.
At the verdict announcement of “not guilty,” the young fans packing the courtroom cheered.
When Hendrix stepped outside into the cold Toronto air, it was the end of what Hendrix biographers Harry Shapiro and Caesar Glebbeek ( Jimi Hendrix: Electric Gypsy) called a “nightmare” that stressed out the musician for the seven months the charges hung over his head.