The love note from Hendrix that played on my heartstrings
IT was a moment that would leave any music-mad teenage girl awestruck.
As Anthea Rogers watched Jimi Hendrix on stage in 1967, the guitar legend, then 24, leapt down, ran over – and wrote her a love note.
He scribbled: ‘To Anthea. Love and kisses to you forever – I wish I could really talk to you. Stay sweet. Jimi Hendrix.’
Anthea, then 19, was at the gig with her boyfriend Eddie Cooke. His band Sons & Lovers were supporting The Jimi Hendrix Experience.
But she still treasured her encounter with Hendrix and kept the note for 50 years. This week, the 69-year-old mother-of-two, now Anthea Connell, sold the memento at auction for £5,700 (€6,400).
Mrs Connell still vividly recalls the concert, at the Starlight Room in Boston, Lincolnshire, on March 25, 1967.
She was sitting alone watching the bands do their sound checks when American Hendrix spotted her.
‘He started talking to me and I was so shocked I can’t even remember what we said,’ Mrs Connell said. ‘I was totally awestruck. He came back with a guitar string packet... and he proceeded to write me this wonderful message on the back. I think it was because, at the time, I was the only girl in the ballroom.’
Mrs Connell, from Nottinghamshire, England, added: ‘Afterwards, when I told Eddie about the note from Jimi, he said, “You ought to hang on to it” – and I did.’
Hendrix, whose hits included Foxy Lady, Hey Joe and Voodoo Chile, died of an overdose three years later, aged 27.