The lead-up to Jimi Hendrix’s last show was crushing

he first-hand the perils of such setups when he and his bandmates arrived at that year’s Love and Peace Festival in Fehmarn, Germany, for a gig on September 6th.In the hours leading up to his set, Hendrix watched as minor technical issues with the stage setup slowly snowballed into a full-blown catastrophe. The hasty construction of the stage had left it wobbling and uneven, and moments before showtime, one corner of the stage collapsed entirely, causing the amps to short out and the house PA system to lose power. A group of German bikers hired as security began shouting and jeering at Hendrix’s crew while attempting to repair the stage, and even worse, the protective fence separating the band from the audience gave out after a barrage of soda cans and bottles began raining down from the crowd.Instead of stepping onstage and trying to play through the chaos, Jimi and his band opted to cancel the performance, telling the crowd that he didn’t want anybody getting hurt trying to rush the stage. Vandals damn near destroyed our equipment,” Mitchell told the press in the aftermath. “They walked on us because we wouldn’t go on.” But in reality, it was just the fact that we could have all got killed that made old Jimi say ‘no’.There would be only one more show for Jimi, as nine days later, he was found dead in a London flat from barbiturate intoxication after choking on his vomit. As with so much that happened in his career, Hendrix’s final gig would be seen in retrospect not just as a footnote to his legacy, but as an overture to it—a prophecy of the world of problems that would follow him to the grave, sealing his legend as much as his music ever did.