Jimi Hendrix Offed by Manager?

(Jimi Hendrix at The Winterland; both are gone now.)

Jimi Hendrix belongs in the triumvirate of Sixties axe men, along with Carlos Santana and Eric Clapton. His death in Britain, along with Janis Joplin’s in Southern California more than two weeks later, devastated and upset many young fans and observers. We high school students–I was a junior then–heard about both deaths from our assistant principal in an announcement over the campus radio during class time–that’s how important the news was. Never mind that Jimi’s rendition of the Star Spangled Banner during the Woodstock concert was banned from our student radio airwaves. He was gone, and we would never see him or his like again.

Over the years, as I have grown older than Hendrix when he died, I have heard some weird and wild conspiracy theories about his death. The CIA whacked him at the behest of J. Edgar Hoover, or for their own reasons. Eric Burdon of the Animals and later War helped bump him off with girlfriend of only a few days Monika Dannemann, who was jealous of him and his women, respectively. The Mafia, the hidden, but ubiquitous entertainment power, was pissed at him and got rid of him because Hendrix built Electric Lady Studios in New York without a by-your-leave.

Now comes another theory posed by a former roadie, James “Tappy” Wright. Wright claims, in a new book, Rock Roadie: Backstage and Confidential with Hendrix, Elvis, The Animals, Tina, that it was former manager Michael Jeffrey, who in a drunken rage, confessed that it was he who offed the famed musician because Jeffrey was afraid that Hendrix was about to get rid of him.

Concerned about losing money if Hendrix replaced him, Tappy claims Jeffrey decided he would make out better financially with Hendrix dead, because he had a $2 million life insurance policy on Hendrix’s life.

“I had to do it. Jimi was worth much more to me dead than alive. That son of a bitch was going to leave me. If I lost him, I’d lose everything,” quoting Jeffrey in Tappy’s book.

Tappy attributes further quotes to Jeffery confessing to the murder of Hendrix: ‘I was in London the night of Jimi’s death and together with some old friends …we went round to Monika’s hotel room, got a handful of pills and stuffed them into his mouth …then poured a few bottles of red wine deep into his windpipe.”

Neither Jeffrey or Monika Dannemann are around to refute these claims. Jeffrey died in a plane crash in 1973. Dannemann committed suicide in 1996, after giving several strange versions of what happened over the years. Yet undigested red wine was indeed found in Hendrix’s system during the autopsy. In fact, it was so much red wine, that surgeon John Bannister, the surgeon who attended Hendrix, said he was convinced the rock star had drowned in red wine, despite having very little alcohol in his bloodstream. And Jeffrey was no saint, accused by the Hendrix family and by members of The Animals of cheating them and stashing their royalties into his own offshore accounts.

It’s an interesting thesis, yet I wonder why this guy, Tappy Wright, waited nearly 40 years to tell this story. Why can he talk now, instead of straight after the purported murder, when all the principals were alive? Did Jeffrey threaten him? Was he paid off, and now the money has run out? Was the murder covered up by someone higher and more powerful? The few American blogs or columnists that have picked this up this story are either laughing that a roadie would be privy to this kind of information, or wondering whether money is at the bottom of why Wright is speaking up. It only makes Jimi’s loss, and all the attendant what ifs, even more painful to contemplate. We may never know the truth unless we get some unfiltered answers.

~ by blksista on June 5, 2009.