Nearly 50 years after the tragic death of music icon Jimi Hendrix, Australian doctor John Bannister has reflected on the night he desperately tried to save the singer’s life as he was rushed to hospital on that fateful day.
Working in the surgical registrar at London’s St Mary Abbot’s Hospital on September 18, 1970, Bannister described seeing Hendrix enter the hospital as he was rushed into the emergency unit on a trolley.
“We worked on him for about half an hour,” Bannister recalled. “But there was not a breath. His oesophagus was full of wine. There was wine everywhere,” he said to SMH.
“He’d obviously been dead for at least half an hour,” 78-year-old Bannister continued, adding that a woman – likely the musician’s girlfriend Monika Dannemann – watched on from the other side of the door.
“She was very upset,” he said. “It was a very sad situation.”
Hendrix was declared dead at 12:45 pm, with a post-mortem examination indicating that he aspirated on his own vomit and died of asphyxia while intoxicated with barbiturates.
After signing the ‘Bold as Love’ rocker’s death certificate, Bannister was informed by his colleagues who his late patient was.
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“I said, ‘Who was it?’,” the former doctor said.
“They said, ‘Jimi Hendrix.’ Well, I didn’t know who Jimi Hendrix was. I had no idea,” he admitted, adding that he’s since learned that he was “the best guitarist who ever lived or will live”.
Coincidentally, another Australian doctor – Dr Bob Brown – also bore witness to Hendrix’s death as he met the ambulance when it arrived at the hospital.
Speaking to Australian writer and filmmaker Aidan Prewett for the book Our Jimi, Brown also remembered Hendrix being rushed in on a trolley as “his lady friend was coming along behind”.
Despite their best efforts, Brown believes there was nothing doctors could do to save the 27-year-old.
“He was dead and had been for some time,” Brown said, “I just came along with the trolley, walked with it for a few steps and on it went.”
Aidan Prewett’s new book Our Jimi is set to feature interviews with the friends, family and musical colleagues of Jimi Hendrix and will be out on September 18th.
Check out ‘Voodoo Child’ by Jimi Hendrix:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibJ3VMt6yfU
