THE “original 1960s rock chick” who brought Jimi Hendrix to Klooks Kleek nightclub in West Hampstead for a famous jam session has called for a blue plaque to be erected on the Railway pub to preserve its musical heritage. 

As an 18-year-old bookings agent in “Swing­ing London”, and the girlfriend of singer John Mayall, Christine Cas came into contact with some of the biggest names in rock ’n’ roll on a daily basis.

Dropping acid with Hendrix, making friends with Eric Clapton and blues musician Alexis Korner, with her long blonde hair, sparkling personality and “dolly bird” good looks, many famous names fell for “Chrissie”.

Now a 66-year-old grandmother, who has lived in Belsize Park for nearly 40 years, she came forward after reading the New Journal’s article last week on the proposed conversion of the former West End Lane venue into offices.

It was in March 1967 that Christine, then 20, was asked by Mayall to pick up their friend Hendrix and take him to the tiny room above the Railway pub, then called the Railway Hotel, because there was a “rumour that Freddie King (the influential American blues artist) might play.”

Christine Cas as a hippy in the 1970s

King never showed, but Hendrix’s surprise gig with Mayall went down in history.

She said: “Kleeks was packed that evening. It was a tiny place. He (Hendrix) was shy – not on stage, but off stage he was just like you and me. At the end of the night I had to phone for a minicab to take us back to Egdware Road (where he was staying with manager Chaz Chandler).”

She told how they were approached by a group of skinheads who started racially abusing Hendrix and so she pulled him into the car of a kerb crawler waiting for local prostitutes and shouted: “Take us to Edgware Road, we’ll pay you anything you like.”

In late 1967 her relationship with Mayall ended, with four songs inspired by her on his and Eric Clapton’s Bluesbreakers album, recorded at Decca Studios in West Hampstead, as well as a later track, Leaping Christine.

She retained her close friendship with Hendrix, taking her first acid trip with him at The Speakeasy in Margaret Street, Fitzrovia, going shopping in John Lewis together for a “black sheet” he wanted, with him counselling her through “some dark times” in person and with regular phone calls from his America tour. 

Christine said: “He was so funny and caring. Even after John and I broke up, he always treated me with such respect for being ‘John’s girl’. Jimi and I became companions.”

Regulars call for the Railway to be saved after plans to convert the upstairs to offices were revealed

In a famous recording of a conversation between Hendrix, Clapton and Christine in The Speak­easy in 1967, Hendrix calls her “lovely Christine”, adding: “She is so groovy man, some girls can be so sweet man.”

“Nobody was with Jimi for a length of time,” she said. “Kathy (Etchingham) was his main girlfriend everyone knows about, but I kept in the background. I’m one of the original rock chicks, I guess you could say. I knew him from 1966 until he died.”

She added of his death in 1970: “I loved his smile, and his crinkly eyes. Jimi used to call me his ‘Lady of Glass’. I said: ‘Was that because you could see right through me?’ I think it was perhaps because I was a little fragile. Life was so fast then. It was so, so fast. I still miss him, he made such an impact as a human being.”

She added of the plaque: “Klooks, it is just something that is very much in the past. Gone are those evenings. So what can we do? Let us do something to validate that this did happen. They were here, we were there, at that time, it did happen. I think that a plaque would be a great way to do that.”

A spokesman for The Heritage Foundation, based in Highgate, said it was “very interested” in erecting a plaque.

Building freeholders Spirit Pub Company confirmed they were “happy in principle”, pending the support of the heritage group and Camden Council.