Samarkand Hotel — Where Jimi Hendrix Died

In the early hours of 18 September 1970, Jimi Hendrix died at the Samarkand Hotel — then known as the Cumberland Hotel — at 22 Lansdowne Crescent in Notting Hill. He had been staying in room 21 with his girlfriend Monika Dannemann. After a period of insomnia and anxiety, he reportedly took nine of Dannemann's prescribed sleeping tablets. He was found unresponsive in the morning, and an ambulance was called. He was pronounced dead on arrival at St Mary Abbots Hospital in Kensington. He was 27 years old. The official cause of death was inhalation of vomit due to barbiturate intoxication.

Hendrix had been in London for several weeks, performing at the Isle of Wight Festival in late August and conducting interviews and informal sessions. He had been under significant pressure — disputes with his management, an exhausting schedule, and questions about the direction of his music. The Notting Hill neighbourhood had been his base during his time in Britain; his flat at 23 Brook Street, above Handel's former home, is where he had lived with Kathy Etchingham and is marked with an English Heritage blue plaque.

The Samarkand continues to operate as a hotel and is not specially marked as a heritage site, though its association with Hendrix's death is extensively documented. Hendrix's death — alongside those of Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Brian Jones — became part of the cultural phenomenon later named the 27 Club: rock musicians who died at that age in circumstances that seemed to reflect the dangers and excesses of the life they led.