Description
In 1967, The Jimi Hendrix Experience played two clubs in Stockport in consecutive months. On 12th February 1967 they played at The Sinking Ship club in Royal Oak Yard just behind Little Underbank. A few weeks later, on Easter Monday 26th March, they played The Tabernacle Club on Middle Hillgate. Both gigs were memorable for being hot, sweaty and very loud.
The Sinking Ship was a popular mod club set into the sandstone caves under St Peter’s Bridge. Many people remember it for having a porthole window and condensation streaming down its walls. The club was run by Michael Carr and Dave Robinson, managers of the resident band Wimple Winch, who supported Hendrix that night.
It was Dee Christopholus, singer with Wimple Winch, who actually booked The Jimi Hendrix Experience as an up and coming act to launch the new club. However by the time the gig came around, they’d had a Top Ten hit with ‘Hey Joe’ so a full house was guaranteed. That day, Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell arrived in a minibus with their road manager Gerry Stickells and the band’s equipment while Hendrix travelled by train with his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham.
Dee still remembers with stunning detail what Hendrix wore that night – tight light velvet trousers, the famous gold-braided military jacket, topped off with strings of coloured beads around his neck and wrists with a paisley bandana around his head.
With punters packed in like sardines, the resident band Wimple Winch played first and then each member rooted themselves across the front of the stage to stop the crowd from surging forward as The Jimi Hendrix Experience blasted out their set. The explosive impact of the band was deafening as no-one had experienced anything quite like that before.
After the gig, Hendrix went missing until his girlfriend Kathy went into the ladies’ toilets and heard whispering in one of the cubicles. She pushed the door and found Jimi with a female fan, their clothes in disarray, looking very shocked and guilty. Jimi’s explanation was that the girl “just wanted his autograph”.
Larry and Dee from Wimple Winch escorted the couple back into Manchester for their train, stopping off for drinks at Rails nightclub first. They recall the last image of Hendrix, walking down the platform, cape flowing as he boarded the carriage of the early morning express train, engaged in an angry exchange with his girlfriend.
Before Jimi played The Tabernacle club on Easter Monday 1967, he and his bandmates went to eat at The Mersey Cafe next to The Plaza cinema in Mersey Square. Hendrix said he was happy to chat and sign autographs after he’d finished his meal. A number of Stockport music fans fondly remember chatting to Jimi in the cafe and him asking them to come along to the gig later.
The Tabernacle club was located in a former chapel building just off Waterloo Road that regularly attracted top music names such as Pink Floyd, Small Faces and Jeff Beck. The support act for that evening was Soul Stax. When the Jim Hendrix Experience came on stage, the atmosphere was electric with Jimi performing his guitar gymnastics through amplifiers cranked up to high volume to create screeching feedback.
Pam Howes remembers that she got to talk to Hendrix during the performance and witnessed him slam his guitar against the wall on stage, putting a hole through the plasterboard. For years afterwards, the hole bore the legend that “Hendrix did this’! Another fan, Paul Quinn went backstage and asked Jimi where he’d bought his military-style jacket from, to which he replied “Moss Brothers” causing some hilarity.
These two legendary Hendrix gigs in Stockport are still talked about and celebrated almost sixty years later.
