Over time you forget a lot of what happened. But the encounter with Jimi is still very present and alive. He stayed because he was such an extraordinary and gentle person. I met him in January 1969. In our community 1 everything was very permissive and jealousy had officially been abolished. But I’m jealous as hell when I love someone. And when Rainer (Langhans) made out with a girl again, I thought, well, I can do that too.
When I found out that Jimi was in town, I just went to the Hotel Kempinski where he was staying. There was a lot going on, but when he came downstairs, he walked straight up to me, took my hand, and we went up to his room. Getting to know each other always worked out well for me because I looked pretty good too. And the guys were always really excited. But with Jimi it was something special. He was so gentle, whispered rather than spoke, and moved like a cat. Extraterrestrial. Then I thought, just like you used to introduce your crush to your parents, I would now introduce Jimi to my community and took him with me. But they weren’t nice to him. Above all, (Dieter) Kunzelmann, this poisonous dwarf, attacked him straight away. We then quickly left again, but the car we came in wouldn’t start and we walked arm in arm back to the hotel in the freezing cold.
“For the first time in my life I wished I was older and more experienced and knew what to say in a situation like this”
Shortly afterwards I wanted to visit Jimi in London, but he wasn’t there. I was just in his apartment and saw his four-poster bed. Then a letter came from him. ‘I hope you still remember me’, he wrote – he was that humble. And he wrote that he would have liked to have had a longer conversation with my roommates in Berlin – very polite of him, even though they weren’t at all nice to him.
I didn’t reply to the letter because my English wasn’t particularly good, and unfortunately the story fell apart. But a year later I was at the festival in Fehmarn and met him in the hotel. But then he had become a different person; he seemed to me like he was behind a glass wall. I couldn’t get through to him. For the first time in my life, I wished I was older and more experienced and knew what to say in a situation like this.
I was on stage when he performed and watched. But that was also a disappointment. The mood was bad, all the performances were late, it was raining, everyone was standing in the mud and was aggressive and irritable. The dream was over. And a few days later Jimi was dead.