Who hasn’t loved? Everyone has and everyone will eventually.
The same goes for rock stars who have changed so many things in the world. From the way we sing to the way, we tune and use the guitar. That’s why most of them often times wrote songs for their significant others.
Jimi Hendrix was not an exception. The song ‘Foxey Lady’ was for his significant other. The very opening line of the song sings, “You know, you’re a cute little heartbreaker, Deborah.” And everyone back then established that it was sung for his sweetheart. That’s when the assumption took a different turn and many assumed that it was for Kathy Etchingham.
Jimi met Kathy at the Scotch of St James nightclub in London. It was after Hendrix’s manager, Chas Chandler introduced her to Hendrix. When interviewed by the BBC, she told, “There were stairs winding down to the basement, and everybody was leaning over the banisters to listen to this guy sitting in the corner of the club playing.” She recalled, “He just looked unusual – stunning, really, He was fresh, and he had a very soft sort of American accent.” She told BBC, Hendrix, later on, leaned closer to her and said, “I think you’re beautiful.”
During Hendrix’s and Etchingham’s meeting for the first time, they also went to his hotel room to spend the night. She revealed that Hendrix was an “experienced and imaginative” lover. The following morning she also discovered that Jimi was kind of a womanizer. She recalled that they were interrupted by another woman who “burst into the room at about 11 in the morning, screaming, swearing, and calling him a bastard, She grabbed a guitar, lifted it by the neck, and was poised to bring it down on our heads while we were in bed.”
But to our surprise, she was not the woman behind ‘Foxey Lady’. The one behind the song was Lithofayne Pridgon. Now, she may sound like a normal everyday person but she was not. According to the Guardian, Sam Cooke, Sly Stone, and Little Wille all fought for her attention. She had never kissed until she met singer Little Willie John and on top of that, she was also seduced by Sam Cooke at only 16 years old. She was the inspiration behind Hendrix’s ‘Foxy Lady’.
Lithofayne and Jimi met in 1963 when he was hanging around the stage looking to meet Cook in The Appolo. Pridgon told The Guardian, “I liked skinny, raw-boned, over-f*****, underfed-looking guys.” She noted that he was totally her type and it was the second time she bumped into her. She was also very much attracted to him. That time, they took a walk from the Apollo back to her mother’s fault where they kept talking about blues records. That’s when they rented a room in the Cecil Hotel and from then, they were in love.
Back then she revealed that Hendrix was not a womanizer. She loved him and he was also really sensitive. According to Pridgon, he was a “jealous romantic”. She said, “Folks say that we lived together, I don’t feel like we lived together, but I would stay for maybe a few weeks at a time, and I’d get my knees in the breeze.” Back then, she was not really committed and didn’t want a boyfriend. While Hendrix thought she was his girl, she wasn’t really. She recalled her mother’s statement, “My mother even told Jimi, ‘Pay Faye no mind because she falls in and out of love every week.’ And I did, I loved that love rush.”
Both of them had different opinions on who they were. It was way too different. She said, “This might sound crazy to you, but he was almost like my baby, He was a sweetheart and it’s as simple as that.” Pridgon also admitted that Jimi was young and extremely jealous. She said that she had received tons of love letters from him. Jealousy was also seen in his lyrics of ‘Foxy Lady’. He wrote, “You’ve got to be all mine, all mine.” He really cherished Lithofayne and then later on mentioned his love in his song ‘Foxey Lady’. Success didn’t stop him from adoring someone he really loved.
