Of all the stellar rock acts who appeared at Newcastle's fabled Club a'Gogo, the most notable was quite probably Jimi Hendrix.
During its short 1960s lifespan, the tiny club on Percy Street hosted names such as Pink Floyd, The Who, the Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, Cream, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, The Spencer Davis Group, Long John Baldry (featuring Rod Stewart) and Jeff Beck.
But on this day in 1967, it was Seattle-born Hendrix with his band The Experience - featuring Noel Redding on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums - who rocked the venue to its foundations.
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The 24-year-old guitar virtuoso had charted for the first time in the UK earlier that year with Hey Joe reaching number six, and Purple Haze would soon ascend to the heady heights of number three.
Managed by Chas Chandler, former bass player with The Animals (the Club a'Gogo's resident band before hitting the big time), Hendrix played two sets at that same venue – one at 8pm in the under-18s room, the second in the Jazz Lounge at 2am.
Five-and-a-half decades later, no verifiable setlists for the shows exist, but looking at some of the star's sets from other venues on his hectic tour of small provincial clubs at the time, it's highly likely he performed Hey Joe, Purple Haze, Wild Thing, and Bob Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone.
In the audience for the first show that night, meanwhile, was a 15-year-old pupil from St Cuthbert’s Grammar School called Gordon Sumner who would go on to make quite a name for himself. Years later, Sting said: "I think I remember snatches of Hey Joe and Foxy Lady."
For Hendrix, 1967 would be the breakthrough year. He enjoyed four top 20 UK singles, released the groundbreaking album Are You Experienced, and quickly established a reputation as rock music's most extraordinary guitarist during a non-stop touring schedule.
If the Club A'Gogo was Jimi's first Newcastle show, a month earlier he'd played at South Shield's New Cellar Club, and he'd perform twice that year - in April and December - at Newcastle City Hall.
Looking back at the star's time on Tyneside, it's interesting to note that rather than booking into a plush hotel, he would usually stay, along with manager Chas Chandler, at Chandler's mother's home, a flat on Second Avenue, Heaton.
The website A History of Jimi Hendrix in North East England quotes Chandler as saying: "Jimi and I were staying at my mother's house in Newcastle. As we were sitting there talking, I decided to walk down to the phone box, because my mother had not put one in yet, to ring London and see how things were going. Hey Joe had leapt to number seven in the charts, and I knew we were really on our way."
Meanwhile, Hendrix's then-girlfriend Kathy Etchingham later recalled staying at "a tiny, back-to-back tenement house which didn’t even have running water" and that the men and women, to spare the blushes of Chas's mother, slept in separate rooms.
The Chandler family were clearly long-time occupants of 35, Second Avenue. Chas's father, James - a "furniture van driver" - is recorded as living there in the 1939 Register, as seen on the family history website findmypast.com
What the flamboyant American guitarist made of life in the Newcastle suburb, and what local residents made of him isn't on record.
Neither, sadly, is there any proof that Hendrix busked on Heaton's Chillingham Road, as legend has it - although it would be wonderful to think the claim was true.
A blue plaque unveiled in 2007 today marks the location in Heaton where Chas Chandler lived (and where Jimi Hendrix would sometimes stay).
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