She Was By His Side
Jimi Hendrix’s London girlfriend Kathy Etchingham speaks out against John Ridley’s new biopic
Long in a development haze has been the new Jimi Hendrix biopic, Jimi: All Is By My Side, which hits theaters in the U.S. on September 26th. Directed by John Ridley, the film stars Outkast’s Andre Benjamin as Hendrix, a casting that many of his fans embraced, seeing parallels in their flamboyant style and stage presence.
Ridley is an accomplished writer and director — his work on 12 Years A Slave won him the 2014 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, amidst awkward tension between him and the film’s director, Steve McQueen. Ridley and McQueen conspicuously avoided thanking each other in their acceptance speeches.
While Ridley’s Oscar win added momentum to his new project, Jimi: All Is By Side is facing some crosstown traffic. The film was denied the right to use any of Hendrix’s music, as the estate is attached to a different Jimi biopic. That second film focuses on the last nine days of Hendrix’s life, tentatively titled simply Jimi, directed by Ol Parker and starring Anthony Mackie [Captain America: The Winter Soldier]. Without Hendrix’s music or family support, Ridley’s project is facing a serious authenticity issue.
Now Jimi’s former girlfriend Kathy Etchingham is speaking out, insisting that Ridley’s film is largely a fictitious account, filled with embellishments and historical inaccuracies. Etchingham, who is allegedly the basis for “Foxy Lady” and “The Wind Cries Mary,” was a DJ in the “Swinging London” music scene. She met Hendrix on the first day he arrived in the city, in September of 1966. Etchingham wrote a memoir in 1999 covering her time with Jimi, Through Gypsy Eyes. In a post on her website, she panned the film after seeing an early screening in Australia. Although she is portrayed as a key character in the film, she claims nobody from the film ever contacted her or asked for her input.
Cuepoint spoke with Kathy Etchingham about her issues with the film and her heartfelt experiences with Jimi.
Cuepoint: I saw your post about Jimi: All Is By My Side and wanted to get a little more in-depth with you about your feelings on the film.
Kathy Etchingham: It is absolutely shocking, actually. I was sitting there watching it, and I didn’t recognize anything in it. The guy playing Jimi [Andre “3000” Benjamin] speaks only in monotone and portrays Jimi as somebody who is completely inarticulate, and who can only speak in one way, mumbling mantras and things like that.
The person who is playing me, Hayley Atwell [Captain America: The First Avenger], there is nothing about her, nothing about her character, or her personality, or events that bare anything remotely like me. Basically they just hijacked my name and personality, and applied a completely different personality on to it. I’ve never been interviewed for this film, and indeed, Hayley Atwell said that she purposely didn’t want to speak to me. She wanted to do “her own” interpretation of what I’m like, based on, presumably, John Ridley’s script.
In an interview, she actually says that. She said, “I didn’t meet with Kathy, I purposely decided that. Through trusting John’s work and his vision and his writing — and her book — that it would be about my interpretation as an actor with the material at hand, rather than an impersonation of someone.”
There you have it. This isn’t me. It was never intended to be me. It was just John’s vision of me. So that’s presumably why nobody interviewed me, because they didn't intend to tell the truth.
There are characters in the film that didn't exist, especially one called “Ida.” But one of the things I noticed is that my book, Through Gypsy Eyes, has certain events, and John Ridley has taken the basic facts from my book, and then put a completely different story around those facts. And that’s why I can say that this is made up, it’s a bunch of lies.
And it’s really annoying, because it makes Jimi look like a complete idiot. I don’t know what Andre Benjamin was thinking. I can only assume he didn’t know Jimi’s history, and everybody just went along with John Ridley.
Hayley Atwell says that she decided from the outset not to talk to me, but when I saw an interview with her — I think in an English Newspaper, The Independent, I can’t remember which one — where they’re asking her about her upcoming part in this film, and she started describing me in the most defamatory way. So I sent her a Tweet, saying “What the hell are you talking about? Research the part that you are playing.” And I got a Tweet from her agent saying “Hayley wants to talk to you.” So I sent my email address, and never heard another word. In the meantime, she must have spoke to John Ridley.
And then, a friend of mine went to see the film, and he managed to get ahold of the sales note — or whatever they’re called — that they hand out to distributors. And in it, one of the actresses, Ruth Negga, who is playing this fictitious character, says “When John interviewed Kathy, she said ‘X, Y, Z,’” giving the distributors the idea he had actually interviewed me, when he hadn’t. So I think that John Ridley is rather dishonest.
Also in the film, there is a big “Thank You To Leon Hendrix”, and in an interview, John Ridley says “It’s nice to have a family member on board,” I can’t remember the exact words. And Leon wrote a letter to the Seattle Times saying “I’ve never met John Ridley, or any of his people. I’ve had nothing to do with this film.”
And then, they promised to take it off the film. But when I went to see it, six weeks after I saw it in Sydney, it was still there, “Thank You To Leon Hendrix.” So he wants to give the film some sort of credibility, but he’s lying. Neither of us, Leon or myself, have had anything to do with the film.
I think what’s happened here, is that when he made the film, because he didn’t have the rights to the music, he had to think up a different story, and he didn’t really want to know the truth, because it would be too hard to make a film like that. He just simply made it up.
Do you feel that “the truth” was not “juicy” enough?
Yeah. During the period that he is covering, September 1966 to June 1967, Jimi was at the height of his creative powers. He had already written “Purple Haze,” “The Wind Cries Mary,” he’d written Are You Experienced, the album, and it was in the charts. The impression that the film tries to give, is that Jimi hadn’t created any music whatsoever, and that we’d spent all of our time down in nightclubs. But that wasn’t the case, Jimi was a huge star when he went to Monterey, a huge star in the UK and all over Europe. He was already performing all of these songs, “Hey Joe,” and “Purple Haze.” And in all of these interviews, John Ridley said that “Oh, Jimi was washed up until he went to Monterey.” Oh really? He wasn’t washed up at all, he was 23 years old.
Best Writing,
Adapted Screenplay.
So they didn’t have the music, so they had to pad it out, basically with just banter. Half-finished conversations. It’s quite stupid, and it’s boring. There’s no music, no writing, there’s no doing gigs. I don’t know what it’s supposed to be. But the worst part about it is, because there is no music in it, they had to introduce some kind of, what they call, “Hollywood jerks” for the audience. So he used domestic violence, and it didn’t happen.
He’s said that he’s researched it, and that it’s well documented and that he’s had a fact checker. The fact checker’s never been in contact with me either. They just didn’t want to know that it wasn’t true. I think the age that we are living in now, compared to back in the 60’s, to put domestic violence on the silver screen for entertainment is appalling. He ought to be ashamed of himself.
It has me beating Jimi up. I’m 5’4, I weighed about 110 lbs at that time, and it’s got me beating him up in the street, knocking him to the ground. I’ve never laid a hand on him. His biographies have all said, nobody had ever heard anything about Jimi perpetrating any domestic violence.
You wrote in your original post: “I had been told that Jimi had beaten me with a telephone in the film and after I had protested that this was not true the filmmakers had replied that it was true because they had ‘thoroughly researched’ me.” After seeing the film, how do you think the filmmakers came to this conclusion, is there a version of this story that they could have embellished for the film?
They made a statement to the Sydney Morning Herald saying basically the same thing, that they stand by the integrity of their film, and that this domestic violence is all well documented and that they had it fact-checked. So we said, point us in the right direction, where is this documentation? We heard no response, whatsoever.
And Channel 10, in Melbourne here, reported about that. And again, they just stick by their original statement. So what I think happened is that there have been loads and loads of biographies about Jimi over the years, many of them which had never interviewed me, because for about 20 years, I never said a word, and I lived quietly and didn’t give any interviews. So what I think has happened is that he read many of these biographies. He said in an interview that he saw two or three versions of the same event, and he had to be a “historical referee” and choose which one had been most likely. But what I think he’s done is decided is which one is best for his film.
What happens with these biographers — they’re all amateurs basically — they read other people’s biographies and then they copy what’s in that and then it becomes folklore. I think that’s what’s happened, because I don’t read any of these biographies.
In the scene where Jimi plays with Cream at London Polytechnic, you expressed disappointment at how it was handled. What do you think they could have done better to capture that moment?
Well, music would have helped. What they had was some instrumental done by somebody called Waddy Wachtel, which was just mediocre. Nobody could play like Jimi, and that’s the bottom line. At that gig, Jimi was actually playing “Killing Floor,” so he was singing. There was no singing in their recreation of it. The other thing that they cooked up was that the Eric Clapton character was playing guitar along with Jimi. He never did that. What he did was offer Jimi his guitar, and Jimi said, “No, I’m left-handed, I’ve got my own,” and then came over and got the guitar from me.
In the film, they’ve got Eric Clapton cockily saying, “What’s your name, mate?” and he goes “Jimi Hendrix.” That never happened either. He had already been told his name was Jimi by [manager] Chas Chandler. Actually Eric Clapton walked off stage and walked around the back. Chas has said that Eric Clapton was amazed at how good he was, and asked if that was the only song he could play, or has he got other things. It was just sort of a bit of a joke, but in the film, they’ve got Eric Clapton tearing his guitar off and stomping off in a rage.
Can you explain a little bit about, in your words, the “political, racial and sexist agenda that John Ridley seemed to be pursuing” with the film?
Yes, I can. He’s turned perfectly innocent encounters into “racist” encounters. For example, Jimi and I went to the flat of a guy called Michael X. Now, Michael X was a bit of a confidence trickster, and he was trying to raise money — basically for his own pocket — by getting all of the rock stars to contribute to some black organization. When we got there, it didn’t take Jimi long to figure out what he was up to, because Jimi had been around the block a few times. The guy started saying, “Why have you got a white girlfriend?” And Jimi was just completely taken aback by this. We looked at each other and we basically said “Oh we’ve got to go now,” and Jimi said “I’m playing tonight,” and we nearly fell down the stairs getting out of there.
Now in the film, I’m not there at all, and there is this made up character called Ida. And this guy is talking to him about “black power” and “You’re just a novelty act.” None of that was said.
He’s taken this from my book and altered it, because it’s only ever been published in my book.
So he’s turned it into a racial thing, and it wasn’t really. He was just a confidence trickster trying to get money out of Jimi. So then, [in the film], this Ida person cracks out a jar of marijuana, and then I find Jimi lying on the sofa, out of it. None of this happened, there were no drugs involved. Marijuana was not available in the UK at that time. It was only cannabis-resin, everybody knows that.
Then he was stopped in the street by the police, which was in my book. Basically they were saying that Jimi was wearing an army jacket that still had the insignia of the deceased soldier on it. So they asked him to take it off until he removed the epaulets, and so he did. And then we walked down the street to the pub, and he just put it back on again. The following day, he cut the epaulets off, out of respect.
In the film, it’s a big racist encounter of the police picking on him because he is black. I have a piece of film footage of a white guy saying that the same thing happened to him, that the police stopped him saying you can’t wear certain insignia.
And then [in the film], we get on a bus, to go to a nightclub, and I’m screaming at Jimi saying “Why didn’t you stand up to them! They were racist!” and all this business. None of that happened.
And then, in the film, he must have tried very hard to find some sort of film footage that indicated that Britain was a racist society in those days. All he could find was the race riots in Notting Hill in 1958. Those race riots lead to the Race Relations Act, which had already been put into operation by the time Jimi had got to Britain. There had been other riots, but they were multicultural, you know?
So what he tried to do was give the impression of a racist Britain that Jimi walked into, with all of these racist encounters that Jimi had. I think what [Ridley] is doing is projecting on to Jimi what he thinks himself. But at the same time that he is putting all of this racist stuff in, he himself is being sexist, by using women to tell a story.
And that’s about it. The film doesn’t have much in it, but it does have Jimi beating me, so badly that I have a broken nose, two big black eyes, and split lips. So it’s based on domestic violence and it didn’t happen. If it had, a lot more people would have said, “Wow, I saw Kathy with her face all beaten up.”
And then later on, they have me having a break down and overdosing on pills. They tried to get around it by indicating that they are prescription drugs. I come in and I say to this non-existent Ida, “Oh, they gave me painkillers and sleeping tablets.” And then in a later shot, I’m sitting there with my nose running, popping these tablets. And the next scene, I’m in the hospital, with Jimi sitting on the side of the bed. There’s no dialogue, it just sort of fades out. That never happened. The whole thing is ridiculous, absolutely.
That’s the story John Ridley wanted to tell, about “the good rock chick and the bad rock chick.” I being the bad rock chick and Linda Keith being the good rock chick. The Linda Keith character — who is telling him to sit up straight and eat his vegetables, telling him how to play and how to do his hair and everything — she wasn’t there. I’ve never exchanged any words with her, I only met her the first day Jimi came to England, and we never saw her again. And this other Ida character wasn’t there. But in the film, I’m portrayed as someone that is so sick, that I don’t even know where America is. I’ve got a strange accent that I’ve never had. So the whole thing is completely bizarre.
Where did the “Ida” character come from?
Ida, whoever she is. John Ridley has admitted in interviews that she doesn’t exist. But he has stated that he based it on a girl called Devon Wilson whom Jimi had met after we split up in 1969. I’d only met her briefly, didn’t know her at all. She died six months after Jimi, from a heroin overdose. But according to the film, she’s a lovely person. As if, all black people are wonderful, all white people are terrible.
Earlier in the conversation, you spoke on Andre Benjamin’s role in playing Jimi. Can you elaborate more about what Jimi was really like, as to how he was portrayed in the film?
Completely different. The person that Andre Benjamin is impersonating, they’ve gotten from Jimi’s interviews or his stage presence. They don’t know what he was like in private, he was completely different. He had a huge personality, a cutting sense of humor, he could mimic anybody. None of that’s in the film. He talks in a way that Jimi talked in interviews. He hated giving interviews. It’s on record that Jimi said, “I wish I could just go home and not talk to these people.” He was very, very nervous, and wasn’t himself during interviews. He didn’t like doing it. So that’s what you’ve got, Jimi in interview mode.
And his Atlanta accent kept breaking through, at the end of his sentences. He tried, but he was very stiff in comparison to Jimi. Jimi was very feline, he was very fit. In the film, he gets down on his knees to play his guitar — presumably he was impersonating Jimi setting fire to the guitar — but he had trouble getting up. He had to get up one leg at a time, because of his age. Jimi was 23, just turned 24, and was incredibly fit and got up on both legs at once. You could see people in the audience sort of snicker. His age shows, he is just too old.
I’m curious if you are familiar with Andre Benjamin’s music?
No, I’d never heard of him or Outkast, and I still haven’t heard any of their music.
I wonder if you could recount any moments from your time spent with Jimi that you felt should have been portrayed in the film, that were curiously omitted?
Yeah, the actual stories in my book! They should have asked me, I probably would have let them have it for a donation to charity. But that’s not the story they wanted to tell.
And there are lots of moments like that. I mean, you should read my Facebook site if you want to read stories of what actually went on. We used to play games, like Risk, Monopoly, and a game called Twister which you put your feet on the floor on certain colors. We were young. I was just 20 years old, so we’d play games.
There was a lot of touring around Northern England, going to various clubs. One particular story is when we went to Chas Chandler’s parents’ house and Jimi had to sleep in the same bed as Chas, and I had to share a bed with Chas’ girlfriend, because in those days, if you weren’t married, men and women couldn’t sleep together. I think that is hysterical. And they both slept with their clothes on (laughs). But none of that is in the film.
What you’ve got is a dark and gloomy tale, of an inarticulate, indecisive person that couldn’t do anything without the advice of a 19-year-old model girl. The whole story is ridiculous.
The reason Chas and Jimmy split up in 1968 is because Jimi was unmanageable. Chas just could not manage Jimi. Jimi had a mind of his own, and wanted to do what he wanted to do. But according to the film it was completely opposite.
There’s another scene in the film, where an interviewer says to him, “But there’s so much competition, like The Who and Queen.” Queen hadn’t even formed until 1970. Obviously John Ridley is not that well up on the music scene in the 60s.
Were there things in the movie that you feel that they got right or correct?
Well, the only thing they got right and correct is that he played at The London Polytechnic, he played at The Saville Theatre, and played “Sgt Pepper’s” and he did go to Monterey, and that’s about it.
Have you taken legal action against the studio or John Ridley?
I’ve sent him legal letters, yes. But the film hasn’t been released yet, which is essential before you can take any action. But not only that, I want to see what the reviewers and people have that have seen it have to say.
When I heard about all of this going on, I got my lawyer in Los Angeles to write to John Ridley and all of the producers and everyone, saying “Hey wait a minute, can we take a look at this film? Because from what the actress is saying, it might be defamatory.” They wrote back threatening to sue me for encroaching on their first amendment rights, and we wrote back again saying “baseless legal threats, blah blah blah. If you’ve researched it so thoroughly, why didn’t you speak to Kathy herself, a starting point for historical research?”
We didn’t hear back from them. But, I think they went back into the studio and cut a lot of it out, on things they couldn’t prove. Some of it must have been so defamatory that they knew they were in trouble. Hayley Atwell gave an interview in Los Angeles, and they said, “What are you doing in Los Angeles?” and she said, “I am working on All Is By My Side.” Now that was a year after they wrapped the film up, and it was in post-production and being edited, so I think what has happened is, they went back in, and had to edit, and edit, and edit. So what you’ve got is a very choppy film. And they couldn’t take all of the defamatory stuff out because they would have been left with nothing.
But when I went to see it in Sydney, they had [a scene] where I was waking up in the morning and drinking a glass of wine. Now only alcoholics drink wine when they wake up. When I went to see it in Melbourne, they cut that bit out. So obviously lawyers have gotten ahold of this, trying to edit everything out.
I understand there is another Jimi biopic coming directed by Ol Parker, which is rumored to feature Noomi Rapace playing you…
No, no, no. She’s not playing me. She’s playing Monika Dannemann who was with Jimi when he died.
Do you know who is playing you?
No.
Have they contacted you about this film to get your input?
Yeah, they have.
Do you feel that the Ol Parker film will be a more accurate representation?
Yeah, I think it will be, because I gave them all the documentation that they needed.
That film, I heard would be called Jimi, but they are marketing All Is By My Side now as Jimi: All Is By My Side.
It started off as All Is By My Side, but they were obviously advised to put “Jimi” in the title, because nobody would know what it was about. What does it mean, All Is By My Side? There’s nothing in it that indicates anybody or anything was All Is By My Side. You don’t know, you won’t find out.
So what is the title of then of the Ol Parker film on Jimi?
I don’t know. I think it was called Jimi, but they may have changed that. I haven’t been in touch with Ol Parker for about four months.
Okay. Could describe the moment when you found out that Jimi died?
Well, it was a shock, a complete shock. It’s the last thing you expect to hear, isn’t it? One minute, he’s fine, the next minute he’s dead. A friend of mine named Madeline Bell telephoned me and said, “Are you sitting down.” And I said, “What do I have to sit down for?” and she said, “I’ve got some news.” And she wouldn’t tell me until I’ve actually sat down. According to her, she had just heard about it on the radio, and, I just put the phone down. I didn’t say anything. It was just such a shock.
I went to the newsagent to get the paper — no computers then — and then, it wasn’t in the paper. So I thought perhaps it was a hoax. The newsagent said that another edition would come out in about an hour’s time, so I went back, and there it was. It said, “Jimi Hendrix Dies Age 27.” That’s when I knew it was true.
Don’t forget, we didn’t have mobile phones in those days. Madeline had phoned me by stopping at a payphone. So I couldn’t ring her back. I don’t think I even believed it then. 27 year olds don’t just die, but he did.
And, you know, a lot of rubbish has gone into folklore, such as “he was a heroin addict.” He wasn’t. I’ve seen the autopsy report that he was a fit and muscular young man, with no evidence of sustained drug use.
What killed him, was the girl that he was with, Monika Dannemann, gave him 9 [sleeping] tablets, telling him, by her own admission, that they were very, very weak. One can only assume that he took some, that didn’t knock him out, so he took some more, and then, he vomited in his sleep, and died of asphyxia.
So I think it was one of those things, that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong person. And the tablets she gave him were German, they were written in German, which he wouldn’t understand, so he took her word for it.
Then, when another pathologist looked into this in 1994, his conclusion was that there was no evidence that he had taken 9 tablets, because the toxicology levels could have been as few as five, to have had those levels. The only person that said he took 9 was the girl herself, Monika Dannemann. There was no evidence that he’d taken 9, he could have taken 5. It would have had the same devastating effect.
What he didn’t know, was that each one was a double dose. Because in England and in the United States, pharmaceutical companies couldn’t produce double-dose tablets because they were too dangerous, but they were still doing it in Germany. The idea was that you are supposed to break one in half, which he wouldn’t have known that.
I think that he wasn’t as responsible for his own death than what people make out. People that haven’t studied the autopsy report, the toxicology report, or had it looked over again by other, more modern toxicologists. The toxicologist that said it could have been as little as 5 tablets was the UK Home Office’s toxicologist, employed by Scotland Yard, and that was in 1994.
So that’s what happened.
Follow DJ Pizzo on Twitter @djpizzoHHS.
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