After a promising start in journalism, interviewing Jimi Hendrix and Yoko Ono in the same week, his ambitions receded only to be recruited to Radio Blackburn in 1978 to work on the music review show RPM.

BBC: Presenter profile: Steve Barker

But of the three rock stars who died at the start of the 1970s, it is Jimi Hendrix whose music became the most potent shorthand for the new youth culture of the age.

BBC: The real Jimi Hendrix experience

It was reported this week it would start filming in Ireland later this month and chronicle the time Hendrix spent in England in the late 1960s.

BBC: Jimi Hendrix estate responds to biopic reports