Lost Hendrix Show Found

A videotape of a 1969 Jimi Hendrix concert in Stockholm, Sweden, that was meant to be erased has been found by Swedish television station SVT. The black-and-white footage — which includes performances of “All Along the Watchtower,” “Spanish Castle Magic,” “Fire,” “Voodoo Chile,” “Hey Joe” and “Sunshine of Your Love” at the Stockholm Concert Hall — is well-preserved, according to a spokeswoman for the network.

“The Jimi Hendrix concert was found on a shelf together with other two-inch tapes that were about to be erased,” says Catarina Wilson. “The people working with the project looked at the tape before erasing it and found the original, unedited recording. Some of it had already been broadcast, but not the entire fifty-six minutes. The tape should have been erased in 1969, but there was probably a Jimi Hendrix fan in the archive who wanted to look at it again or who understood the great value of it.”

The station is determining if it has the rights to broadcast the performance, and Experience Hendrix, the company that owns and controls Hendrix’s music and image, is also gathering information on the find. Janie Hendrix, Jimi’s stepsister and president of Experience Hendrix, says that the DVD releases Band of Gypsys and Experience feature performances from a January 9, 1969 Stockholm performance, but that the newly discovered footage may actually be “of another performance not thought to have been videotaped.”

The concert is among Hendrix’s last captured on tape, as he died from drug-related complications in 1970.