"The Bold And The Baroque" – How Two Maestros Found A Musical Home at Handel Hendrix House in London

A phone rings, piercing a melody being idly strummed on an acoustic guitar. Fwoosh. A cigarette crackles as it's lit, followed by murmured conversation.

Stepping into the former bedroom of Jimi Hendrix, it feels like the man himself has just stepped out a few moments before and left the hangout hanging. While waiting for his imminent return, I scan his Sixties sanctuary and admire this rock ‘n roll time capsule in London’s Mayfair neighbourhood.

The illusion is carefully curated. The sounds I’m hearing are part of a background tape attempting to recreate the atmosphere of the flat as it was from 1968 to 1969. But the scene itself is, in many ways, true to life.

The room is decorated just as Hendrix and his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham kept it during the nine months they lived here, filled with Persian rugs, rich tapestries, an oval mirror above the fireplace, feathers, and a guitar resting casually on the bed. Even the bedside table is cluttered with handwritten lyrics and a pack of Benson & Hedges, ready for yet another fwoosh and another song idea to scribble down.

It’s a strange feeling, standing in a space so intimate yet so public. Bedrooms are personal places, not usually designed for visitors, and yet here I am, invited to look around.

If this surreal scene wasn’t strange enough, Hendrix’s bedroom at 23 Brook Street sits directly next door to the home of George Frideric Handel, the German Baroque composer who lived here more than 200 years earlier.

Separated by a wall and two centuries, their homes now exist under one roof, preserved as the Handel Hendrix House. One man soundtracked coronations; the other, the counterculture, yet both found a home on this quiet Mayfair street.

On the other side of the wall, the past feels quite different. If Hendrix’s home is a brief moment of bliss frozen in time, Handel’s is a multi-floor monument to domesticity.

Handel lived at 25 Brook Street for over three decades, composing masterpieces like Messiah, entertaining London’s elite, and eventually passing away here at the ripe old age of 74. Unlike Hendrix, who rented only the top floor with a romantic partner, Handel had an entire Georgian townhouse to himself, and it shows.

The composer’s world was one of heavy drapes, ornate furniture, and classical paintings, with room for elegant parlours, dining areas, a large kitchen, and servants’ quarters too (meanwhile, not much cooking happened in Hendrix’s kitchenette, as the guitar guru was more in favour of nearby pubs).

Still, both residences were a place of work and play. And for these two travelling musicians, Brook Street was also the first home of their own.

Voyaging voyeuristically through time and space, the museum teaches us that each genius lived decadent but quite different lifestyles.

Hendrix did most of his business from bed, conducting numerous interviews and photoshoots on the sheets, which have helped inform how the room is meticulously recreated today. He treated his private space as an after-party venue of sorts, filled with musical jams and a revolving door of guests crashing in the spare room/"bar”.

Two centuries prior, Handel knew his way around a party too, hosting many private performances in the presence of patrons and favoured friends. He chose to consolidate his achievements and build his career in a place of stability, allowing his body of work to span 42 operas, 29 oratorios, 16 organ concerti, and more than 120 cantatas, trios, and duets.

Beyond the preserved rooms and period details, the Handel Hendrix House is still a place where music is discussed, dissected, and played. And if you time your visit right, you’ll get a bit of everything.

I’ve chosen a monthly Saturday guitar talk and workshop led by Nigel Jones, the museum’s resident guitarist, offering visitors a deeper dive into Hendrix’s instruments, techniques, and the ever-evolving world of electric guitar. As a drummer, I sense that I may be out of my depth for the dissertation.

It’s being held in a downstairs event space due to the sheer turnout of guitar-wielding guys and girls. A volunteer valiantly keeps count of the ballooning guest list, advising to visit on “Fridays around lunchtime” to get the Jimi Bedroom Experience complete with live guitar.

Class is in session, and Nigel begins with a simple yet profound statement: “No two guitars sound the same.”

Hendrix knew this well, reportedly owning—or at the very least, playing—dozens over his short career (“between 72 and 78”), swapping them frequently both to experiment with different sounds and navigate the inconsistencies of 1960s guitar production.

Much of the discussion focuses on Fender’s evolution from early Telecasters to the Stratocaster. The Strat was Hendrix’s signature, known for its bright, bell-like tone, which suited the spiralling, psychedelic blues he coaxed from it (one red model, which he infamously set on fire at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, became an enduring symbol of his showmanship).

Jimi also played the short-necked Jaguar and Mustang on occasion, whose 24-inch scale lengths gave them a looser feel and slightly warmer tone than the standard 25.5-inch Strat. And for those of us unfamiliar with all the shapes, fortunately, there are numerous examples dotted around the room that Nigel can point out.

He also touches on Hendrix’s use of amps and effects pedals, explaining how fuzz, wah-wah, and tube-driven distortion helped sculpt the fiery tones that defined his recordings and live performances. But it wasn’t just the gear—Jimi used it in ways no one had before. He saw the guitar as an extension of himself, bending and contorting sound through feedback, extreme vibrato, and sustain.

Though famous for playing left-handed, Hendrix actually used a right-handed Strat flipped upside down.

This seemingly simple act had profound effects on both the feel and the sound of his guitar, changing the reach of the controls and the way the strings responded to bends and vibrato. It not only affected string tension but also altered the angle of the bridge pickup, now slanted in the opposite direction. This all helped Hendrix carve out tones that felt liquid, elastic, and otherworldly, becoming hallmarks of his unmistakable, boundary-pushing style.

By this point, the tech talk is starting to go over my head. After some nerdy Q&A, where I managed to raise a what-if about Hendrix’s unfinished album First Rays Of The New Rising Sun and a potential funky future for Jimi in the 1970s, our cue to leave comes when the rest of the guitar group start noodling about on their trusty axes for the interactive part of the programme. Let’s keep moving all along the watchtower.

Visiting here does make you wonder what the famous foreigners would have thought of each other and the city they each called home.

Between Handel’s London of the 1700s and Hendrix’s London of the 1960s, the city transformed from a hub of powdered wigs and candlelit concerts to a capital of cool looks and electrified rebellion. The museum’s lower floors under Hendrix’s flat reflect on these changes, showing how each musician navigated a metropolis that was always evolving its identity while drawing in new talent from beyond its borders.

They also reflect the history of how these conjoined homes became a single museum, first opened to the public in 2001. The acquisition of additional floors allowed for expanded exhibitions, and a major restoration in 2016 improved accessibility and visitor spaces. The latest £3 million expansion completed in 2023 fully restored Handel’s home and enhanced Hendrix’s exhibits, ensuring their musical legacies continue to resonate for future generations.

Handel’s home was already on the path to preservation before Hendrix arrived in London in 1966, with its blue-plaque heritage listing adorning the front wall. Jimi was said to have been delightfully amused that he had wound up living next door to the composer.

“God’s honest truth I haven’t heard much of the fella’s stuff. But I dig a bit of Bach now and again.” - Hendrix on Handel

He was nonetheless inspired to buy recordings of Belshazzar and Messiah by his long-deceased neighbour, the latter now sharing space alongside Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home in a vinyl collection below what was once a state-of-the-art sound system set up in Hendrix’s bedroom.

As for Handel? It’s hard to say in this one-way conversation through the ages.

For all their differences, both men were sonic architects, layering melodies with a vision that stretched beyond their eras. Handel composed elaborate Baroque arrangements that laid the groundwork for later composers like Mozart and Beethoven, weaving counterpoint (a technique where multiple independent melodic lines intertwine harmonically) and intricate ornamentation into compositions that seismically shaped the sound of Western classical music.

Hendrix, in his own way, was just as meticulous, using his guitar more as an orchestra than an instrument (as demonstrated by his producer Eddie Kramer in this fascinating behind-the-mixing-board video isolating the four interwoven guitar tracks of ‘Night Bird Flying’ to reveal its symphonic depth).

Earlier in our visit, we heard what a meeting of their worlds might have sounded like.

Upstairs in Handel’s former dining room, a vintage harpsichord filled the air with plucked, regal tones, answered by the twang of a Stratocaster bending around the centuries-old progressions. Echoes of two eras briefly mingling in a modern mashup of music.

From Baroque fugues to ‘Bold As Love’, the music still keeps on playing in these hallowed halls. And the wind, it cries Jimi.

A vintage harpischord and electric guitar duet at Handel Hendrix House in London

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Are you experienced? Have you ever been experienced?
Book your ticket online to visit Handel Hendrix House and experience both residences together.

See the museum’s website for more information on talks, music rehearsals, guitar sessions, and family days that can add to your experience.

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