Rock'n'roll tourist in Seattle

By GRAHAM REID

The round woman in the cemetery office looks at me briefly and then, with mock confusion and her forefinger jabbed into her right temple asks, "Now, why might you be here?"

We both laugh and because I don't need to reply, she wanders off to a drawer to pull out a folder then photocopy a map for me.

"You go out here and turn right, go down the main drive to where the veterans are - you'll recognise it, there's a cannon - then turn left and it's along by the sundial. You'll find it."

And so, passing these instructions on to the taxi driver - because this is a very large suburban cemetery some half hour from the central city - we drive to the sundial and find it: Jimi Hendrix's grave in Greenwood Memorial Park in Renton, a suburb of Seattle.

Hendrix died 30 years ago last month, almost to the day I am standing here with Tommy, a Norwegian rock writer living in LA, both of us looking at this modest plaque in the ground.

Hendrix is an icon in rock, a world citizen from this attractive city whose music went global and whose lyrics were intergalactic.

Three decades ago Jimi was buried here. The pall-bearers included Miles Davis, and the crowd a mix of rock's most respectful, fans and family.

It was a huge funeral, almost impossible to imagine on this still and silent day with Mt Rainier towering behind us.

Hendrix's plaque is simple, his career and influence discernible only by the inscription "Forever in our Hearts" and the guitar logo. It hardly seems adequate when you consider his magisterial music - and think of Jim Morrison's tomb at Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, where every day leather-clad kids and pilgrims sit drinking wine and leave bottles of booze and cigarettes for their dead hero.

On this day in suburban Seattle, Hendrix's grave has only a single vase of fading flowers and no visitors other than us. There are plans for a memorial to be built nearby, but little has come of them.

Yet there is something more moving about this unpretentious headstone. It allows you to contemplate the man and his music rather than be diverted by the myth which swirls like clouds of manipulative mystique around Morrison.

So between the sundial, which coincidentally points to his grave, and a small tree lies Jimi Hendrix, in a quiet suburb of this city in Washington state which has the imprint of rock'n'roll all over it.

Ten years ago, Seattle was the home of grunge and bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and dozens of others. Kids and wannabe rock stars in plaid shirts, baggy shorts and working boots made their pilgrimage here.

Grunge passed - as an "alternative movement" it was killed a decade ago when Vogue ran a "Grunge and Glory" cover special - but many musicians of the period still live here. Pearl Jam are residents and have a rehearsal space in the warehouse district, right opposite that of the Seattle Opera Company.

The influence of grunge, and especially Nirvana, is still felt in rock today. The cover of the latest Australian edition of Rolling Stone is Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, who committed suicide in his home near the city in 1994. Ironically, the American edition of the magazine banners the very alive Hives, an Australian rock band.

But way back before grunge, Washington was the place that gave the world that famous frat anthem Louie Louie (originally by locals Rockin' Robin and the Wailers, then more famously by the Kingsmen) and was home to the Ventures, whose instrumental Walk Don't Run created the template for surf rock in the 60s.

The Sonics in 1964 were a garage band punk rock outfit a decade before punk broke big. In the mid 60s Paul Revere and the Raiders (Kicks, Hungry, Just Like Me) emerged out of here wearing colonial uniforms and playing raw-edged pop-rock.

On this trip to chin-wag with Pearl Jam, who have a new album due, I am staying in the Edgewater Inn on the waterfront where once you could fish from the windows. The Beatles stayed here, I am told by the young bell-hop, but I know it as home of one of rock's most notorious parties, involving Led Zeppelin - although they say it was Bad Company - a groupie and fish.

Washington state gave us the two-sister stadium rock band Heart and later Queensryche who signed to a major label after playing just one live gig. Then came grunge, with Sub Pop Records down on First Avenue the mecca for aspiring bands. Oddly enough, it is the local company Microsoft which has given the city its most famous rock'n'roll landmark, the Experience Music Project.

This remarkable 13,000 square-metre building beneath the famous Space Needle was designed by one of the foremost architects of our time, Frank O. Gehry who also designed the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain. The EMP was underwritten by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, a Hendrix fan who has the world's largest private collection of Hendrix memorabilia, including hand-written lyrics, rare recordings and Hendrix posters, guitars and concert tickets.

Allen originally conceived a centre for the storage and study of Hendrix, but it expanded and now the EMP is a massive three-storey centre paying tribute to the music of the Northwest and with interactive exhibits, a permanent collection of historic guitars, and a performance space. There are sound labs, a large display of the history of Washington rock, and an 11m central sculpture by local artist Trimpin made up of 600 guitars and not a few drum kits. It is breathtaking in a building which has you gasping anyway.

Of course, coming from a Microsoft man, it is interactive and the headphone guides are essential for any real appreciation of the objects on display. The Hendrix area tells you everything you ever needed to know - and then some - about the life and music of the man who is buried beneath that modest headstone outside town.

The city's other most famous dead rock star - Nirvana's Cobain who grew up in nearby Aberdeen and Montesano, and like Hendrix died aged 27 - has yet to be publicly acknowledged. There is still no statue at Morrison Riverfront Park, where the candlelight vigil was held in 1994 after his suicide, as was intended.

Cobain has no grave in the city, nowhere you can stand and contemplate his life and musical legacy. No memorial other than the living power of his music born of these inner-city streets and dark forests, these mountains and cold wet days which have inspired and imprisoned so many musicians down the decades since Louie Louie.

Experience Music Project

City of Seattle