Britain's The Independent newspaper reports that according to a new book, Jimi Hendrix was murdered by his manager in an "insurance scam." According to The Independent, former roadie James "Tappy" Wright alleges in his book, Rock Roadie, that
"Hendrix's manager, Michael Jeffrey, drunkenly confessed to killing him by stuffing pills into his mouth and washing them down with several bottles of red wine because he feared Hendrix intended to dump him for a new manager, according to a report in the Mail on Sunday.click to enlarge
In his book, Rock Roadie, Mr Wright says Jeffrey told him in 1971 that Hendrix had been "worth more to him dead than alive" as he had taken out a life insurance policy on the musician worth $2m (about £1.2m at the time), with himself as the beneficiary. Two years later, Jeffrey was killed in a plane crash."
Seriously? People are taking seriously an unsubstantiated confession from a man who's been dead for over thirty years in a book by a former roadie? Is this the new "Rod Stewart got his stomach pumped"?
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I have long believed Jimi was murdered, if not by his notorious manager, Mike Jeffreys, then by the mob, CIA, etc. Jimi had �out grown� drugs as he had told a Toronto Judge in his courtroom 15 months earlier in June �69.
Jimi had NO ILLEGAL DRUGS in his system, and NO wine in his blood stream, just full in his lungs and windpipe. He had been forced (9) powerful German Vesparax sleeping pills then drowned in gallons of red wine. Jimi was found laying in bed on his back fully-clothed, dead for hours, with wine & vomit all over the bed & room. With a local girlfriend scared to death and lying thru her teeth, conveniently 'gone' when he was killed, and the police & paramedics conveniently called 5-7 hours later anonymously, and Eric Burden refusing to call for help hours earlier...it ALL ads up to murder...
And 5 months later Jimi�s REAL girlfriend, Devon Wilson, is thrown out of an 8th story window of the Chelsea Hotel in NYC, a former heroin addict now clean, and actually filming a movie on quitting heroin cold turkey! She & Jimi were deeply in love and she arranged for Jeffreys to be fired & �replaced,� which resulted in both Jimi & Devon being killed. It�s actually a tragic love story...
I just can't get past this feeling I get from this nobody 'roadie' coming out-of-the-woodwork seemingly to just cash-in on Jimi's legacy in this morbid way...even at this late stage... And the fact remains that it was Jimi�s longtime English girlfriend from �66/9, Kathy Etchingham, and his drummer Mitch Mitchell�s wife, who prompted the UK authorities to re-investigate Jimi�s death in the early �90s, �and to get the woman he was with when he died, Monika Danneman, in court ON THE RECORD. This however did not occur as she killed herself in �96 - a day prior to the proceedings which would have found her in Contempt Of Court AND JAILED! This �roadie� had NOTHING to do with any of that, and it appears he just waited for Jimi�s fans to forget about all of THAT as well..
Everyone is dead except for Eric Burden and he is yet to come out with the truth...now 39 years later... He �had a hand in Jimi�s death� as well as it was HE who immediately claimed Jimi committed suicide, and it was HE who refused to allow Danneman to call for help hours earlier when Jimi could perhaps had survived the attempt on his life. God WILL get him in the end! It�s time for YOU to �come clean� Eric you SCUMBAG POS!
One further quote from James 'Tappy' Wright:
"Noel Redding said publicly that �Jimi�s death was very kind to Mike Jeffrey� � and he certainly came into a lot of money after Jimi�s death. He paid off his back taxes, his debts, gave Al Hendrix $250,000 for Jimi�s share of the Electric Lady studios in New York, bought himself a house in Woodstock, invested a fortune in clubs in Majorca. Where did this come from?"
The comment below is posted on behalf of James 'Tappy' Wright, author of Rock Roadie - check with Borkowski PR in the UK for confirmation.
"I knew what Mike Jeffrey had done and I kept quiet for all this time because I was terrified. It wasn�t just me and him involved � the Mafia were part of this and Mike owed them money. He was paying out $30,000 a month to pay back the money he�d borrowed � I know this because I drove Bob Levine out to New Jersey to borrow it for him. I was one of his closest employees. If I hadn�t kept quiet, you�d have been reading about me in the obituaries. All this happened in 1973, not 1971 as has been reported, just months before Mike died in a plane crash.
"I waited to tell the truth because I was scared and there were people still alive who were involved. Some of them could still be alive today. I started to write the book ten years ago because Rod Weinberg told me I had a moral obligation to get the truth out there � he was right, but it would have been suicide not to wait. After talking to Rod I realised that it was my duty to set the record straight. That�s why I started writing the book ten years ago. I don't believe it is ghoulish and sad to tell the truth.
"Mike Jeffrey had Jimi killed because he needed the money. Jimi�s girlfriend Devon tried to take him away from Mike and she died � I believe she was thrown off the roof of the Chelsea Hotel. I don�t think she just fell. If I�d said anything before now, that could have been me.
"This is not about some broke roadie cashing in on a story. I�m comfortably off. It�s about a moral obligation. Of course I�d like the book to sell, but it�s not about the money. It�s about getting the truth out there. I was Mike Jeffrey�s longest serving employee, right from before The Animals were even called that � there�s no story about Hendrix without the Animals. What happened to Jimi Hendrix is not the only story in the book, but it was important to tell it.
"I remember all these things happening. I started writing the books ten years ago and I have thought long and hard about getting every memory down. I never took drugs during the 60s � except once, when Eric Burdon spiked me with acid. Girls, yes I slept with a lot of girls. But I never deliberately took drugs. So my memory is damned good and what gaps there were I filled in by talking to all the people who were involved and thinking back on what happened. You look at all the Hendrix books that have come out in the last 40 years and it�s all the same regurgitated s**t. I knew the right people to ask and with their help I have remembered most of it.
"I�ve also been asked to think about the past a lot since those days. The papers in the North East of England come to me regularly for anecdotes when people like Elvis and Ike Turner die � all the people I met and worked with. I have kept the memories alive over the years."
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