Jimi Hendrix’s old London flat to open to the public for the first time

When he wasn’t being a string-shredding, amp-blasting guitar hero, Jimi Hendrix liked nothing better than to sit at home drinking tea and watching British soap opera “Coronation Street.” The musician’s former apartment – in a London building that links Handel’s “Messiah” and “Purple Haze” – opens to the public Wednesday. It captures a fertile period in the late 1960s when Hendrix was forging an international musical reputation, and immersing himself in the highs and lows of British culture.