Jimi Hendrix statue

The bronze statue of Jimi Hendrix on Broadway in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighbourhood was created by sculptor Daryl Smith and unveiled in 1997. It shows Hendrix in performance — kneeling, leaning forward over his guitar, the posture of a man completely inside the music. The figure is life-size and unmonumental in scale, planted on the footpath on Broadway rather than on a plinth, so that pedestrians encounter it at eye level. Capitol Hill was not Hendrix's own neighbourhood growing up — he was raised in the Central District, a few blocks south — but the strip of Broadway where the statue stands was the heart of Seattle's music and counterculture scene, which made it a reasonable choice for a city trying to honour its most famous musical export.

Hendrix was born in Seattle in 1942 and lived there through his teenage years, attending Garfield High School in the Central District before dropping out and eventually enlisting in the Army. He left Seattle in 1961 and never really returned, building his career through a series of moves: Nashville, New York, London. By the time he became famous he was identified with England and Greenwich Village rather than the Pacific Northwest. The statue on Broadway represents an attempt to reclaim him — to put him back in the city that shaped his early years, even if he never chose to be famous there.

The Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) across town holds the most significant Hendrix collection in the world, assembled by Paul Allen, and is the primary institutional custodian of his legacy in Seattle. The statue on Broadway is the more accessible marker: a bronze figure on a busy pedestrian strip, usually surrounded by people who stop to look and then keep walking.