A Retrospective Look at Electric Lady Studios Nearly Half a Century After Jimi Hendrix’s Tragic Death

In February 2019, CBS took a retrospective look at Electric Lady Studios, the legendary New York City recording studio built specifically for rock royalty Jimi Hendrix. Acoustician John Storyk of Walters Storyk Design Group spoke a little about the ceiling design of the studio. Unfortunately, Jimi only got to play in his envisioned, custom designed studio a couple of times before he died in London on September 18, 1970.

Since that time, Electric Lady has provided a musical home to artists such as Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Roger Waters, Keith Richards and more recently The Black Keys, Questlove and many others.

There was also a cat named Jimi who lived on premises and who some believed to be the reincarnation of the first Jimi.

Questlove produced D’Angelo’s landmark ‘Voodoo’ album here in the late 90s. They became convinced that Jimi the housecat was, in fact, Hendrix himself. ‘There was a point where there was just this shrieking feedback noise happening. None of the engineers could find the source of it. The cat jumped on top of the speakers, walked over and pressed a button just muted that noise. That’s Jimi Hendrix.

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.

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