Hendrix hits the bowels of the earth

Clues are dribbling out about the Natural History Museum’s Earth Galleries project, due to be unveiled on 20 July. As are images – such as this Cyclops sculpture by Michael Whiteley Associates.

This month we revealed details about Met Studio’s work for the Restless Surface Gallery. And now we know that Jimi Hendrix is to play an integral part in Neal Potter’s giant globe, to dominate the main atrium space.

Potter has been getting his rocks off to Hendrix’s Third Stone from the Sun with music producer Joe Glassman. He’s even persuaded the museum to let him use it in the bowels of the globe.

“The sound you’d expect would be something planetary, but I think this song has a certain heartbeat to it, a rumble like the beat of the earth underneath it,” says

Potter, who first heard the song when he was approached to pitch for a Hendrix Museum in Seattle (he bottled out on discovering it was a 50-way pitch).

But did Potter understand his brief from the museum? It actually said Rocks, not Rock ‘n’ Roll.