Eric Clapton and the Orange Shop Lefty Strat (1970)

Eric Clapton visited Orange Music hours before Jimi Hendrix’s death, buying a left-handed Stratocaster he’d planned to give him that night.

In the late afternoon of September 17th, 1970, Eric Clapton was walking through London’s West End when he dropped by the Orange Shop. That evening, he planned to head to the Lyceum on the Strand for a Sly and The Family Stone gig, where he’d arranged to meet Jimi Hendrix.

A Guitar for Hendrix

Earlier that day, Clapton had come across something unusual: a left-handed Fender Stratocaster. “I’d just found it. I think I bought it at Orange Music. I’d never seen one before and I was going to give it to him,” Clapton recalled in a television interview from the 1970s. It was a gift he thought Hendrix would appreciate, something rare and personal from one guitarist to another.

The News That Shocked the World

The next day, September 18th, the music world was stunned. Jimi Hendrix had been found dead in a basement flat in West London. Clapton never got the chance to give him the guitar, and the left-handed Strat remained with him as a quiet, poignant reminder of a missed moment between two legendary musicians.