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Echoes of the pastBrook Street in London was home to two brilliant musicians, two centuries and one brick wall apart. A new museum recreates their homes at numbers 23 and 25. Simon Tait fi nds out moreShaving one afternoon in his Mayfair bathroom, the American rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix was suddenly aware that he was not alone. Peering past his own refl ection in the mirror, he saw a fi gure apparently standing behind him, a round face framed in a white wig. “The bathroom was upstairs and he came down and said ‘You’ll never guess who I just saw…’,” recalls his then girlfriend Kathy Etchingham. “Madeline Bell [the singer] was here and we said, ‘What are you on?’ but he insisted it was true – he’d just seen Handel.”It was the summer of 1968 and the couple had recently moved into the third-fl oor Brook Street fl at in London’s Mayfair, found through an advertisement in a London evening paper for a rent of £30 a week. “We had no idea who Handel was until music students started coming round wanting to see where he lived because of the blue plaque on the wall – and they’d no idea who Jimi was,” says Kathy. Hendrix was from Seattle, but had moved to London two years earlier on the advice of his manager, Chas Chandler. In his private moments, as he worked on his own compositions, Hendrix would play classical music, often Handel, as well as blues and jazz. Kathy recalls: “We went to a record shop and bought Messiah and The Water Music and he came to love Above: Jimi Hendrix’s bedroom has been recreated at 23 Brook Street Opposite: Hendrix photographed in the same room in 1969Left: Detail of fabric in the Hendrix roomHANDEL AND HENDRIXwww.nadfas.org.uk NADFAS REVIEW / SUMMER 2016 37