Jimi Hendrix came to this shop to buy some of Hendel‘s music (Messiah & Belshazzar) upon knowing that the great composer had lived next door to his flat (the blue plaque on 25 Brook Street was already there in 1968, after all). Jimi even thought he had seen Hendel’s ghost walk through a wall (“an old guy in a nightshirt and grey pigtail“) at some point!
This shop on Oxford Street, the first dedicated HMV shop, opened in 1921 and remained there until 2000, when the brand moved to a site further down the same street, to come back to this very place in October 2013, replacing a branch of the footwear chain Footlocker (while the more recent Oxford Street location has been occupied by Sports Direct in the meantime). HMV stands for His Master’s Voice, the title of a painting by Francis Barraud of the dog Nipper listening to a cylinder phonograph, which was bought by the Gramophone Company in 1899.
The blue plaque remembering the link between The Beatles and the shop disappeared a few years back.
Address: 363 Oxford St, Mayfair, London W1C 2LA
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