There may or may not be people out there willing to put down cash for a DVD showing Jimi Hendrix getting it on with two naked ladies in a barely-lit bedroom that just may be real, but could equally be fake. One company with an eye for quick cash is betting that there are plenty.

Vivid Entertainment, a porn-flick producer in Los Angeles, has confirmed the
imminent release of Jimi Hendrix the Sex Tape, available for $39.95. If
celebrity – dead celebrity – voyeurism is your thing, it will be available
for purchase this week or instant download over the internet.

But as you ponder just how big a boy Jimmy was – and we don’t mean
musically, because that we know – be aware that the man whose face appears
only for a few moments may not be him at all. Vivid found former groupies
ready to swear the tape is real, but paid them for their wisdom.

“I believe that we did our due diligence, and as a result of that
clearly believe that it’s him,” Steven Hirsch, Vivid’s co-chairman,
told The New York Times, which broke the story of the video’s release. “If
they said that it wasn’t him, I would never have put it out.”

We also have the good word of Howie Klein, a broker who first brought the
reel to Vivid, which has previously released similarly naughty videos
allegedly featuring the likes of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee. Mr Klein
said it came to him via a collector who stumbled upon it at a London auction
of rock memorabilia. The tape was inside a tin box labelled “Black Man”.

But which black man? One ex-girlfriend of the guitarist, Kathy Etchingham,
60, told The New York Times that she is not convinced. Saying the looks are
not right – the face is a little off and the hairline too low – she noted: “He
would never have allowed anyone to see that. In private, he was very shy and
would cover up.”

Covering up is not what anyone is doing here. The 45-minute DVD incorporates
all 11 minutes of the newly discovered reel (the rest is padding, looking
back on the icon’s career before his death from a drug overdose at the age
of 27 in 1970). They show two brunettes and an African-American man with a
bandana.

There is no audio – none of the great man’s music – and even the view of his
face, with eyes closed, is fuzzy thanks to poor lighting. There are frequent
glimpses of his hands, with many large rings on his fingers. Hendrix liked
to wear rings, so maybe it really is him.

Cynthia Albritton, otherwise known as Cynthia Plaster Caster for her
collection of plaster casts of the genitals of ageing and long-dead rock
stars, including Hendrix, says it is so. And so does another women who
allegedly met Hendrix while he was alive, Pamela Des Barres. Both were paid
for their testimonies by Mr Hirsch, though how much he has not said.

“I’m 100 per cent sure it’s him,” Ms Albritton, 61, offers. “The
facial bone structure is the same. The eyebrows and the moustache are true
to the style he was wearing in 1970.”

If Hendrix is turning in his grave, he should know that the club of dead
icons big enough to warrant a posthumous skin flick is tiny. Or at least
according to Mr Hirsch. “There are only about five real icons,” he
said. “If I had Frank Sinatra, that would do awesome. JFK would do
great. I don’t know if, other than that, there are a lot of dead people that
it would make sense to put out.”

Hendrix should be flattered, whether or not the man in the film is him.

- David Usborne in New York