Sometimes a stroll down Hollywood Boulevard is a step back in time. To 1969, to be exact. It’s that way when Anthony Aquarius plugs in his battery-powered amplifiers, straps his electric guitar on upside down and belts out Hey Joe to startled passersby.

Aquarius sounds like Jimi Hendrix. He looks like him too—right down to the lanky gait, bushy hair and flamboyantly coloured clothes.

Hendrix, an iconic figure from the late 1960s, is regarded by some as the best rock guitarist ever. He is still revered for his heavily amped sound and freewheeling technique.

Hendrix played left-handed but used a right-hand guitar that he held upside down. So does Aquarius. Hendrix could play with his teeth and with the guitar behind his back. Aquarius can too.

“I realised a long time ago, when I was real little, that I sounded like Jimi,” Aquarius says. “To look like him I had to draw moustaches on myself when I was 13 or 14. Back then Jimi wasn’t as hot as he is today. People would tell me to stop playing like him.”

Aquarius moved to Los Angeles last summer from Youngstown, Ohio. These days he performs on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, about a block from where Hendrix’s own star is encased in the sidewalk’s terrazzo. “This is where you get your A game,” he said. If you practise at home, you’re going to practise a half hour and get something to eat and then lay down and take a nap. Out here people are watching.”

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