Former Jimi Hendrix roadie saves you the trouble of buying his book

A conspiracy theory regarding rock legend Jimi Hendrix began making the Web rounds on Sunday, courtesy of former roadie James "Tappy" Wright.

He happens to have a book coming out next month, and in it he alleges that Michael Jeffery, Hendrix's manager, was responsible for the musician's death.

The Telegraph today has a story about a juicy passage from the book, in which Wright makes the claim that Jeffery confessed to murdering the star a year after Hendrix died in 1970. The book "Rock Roadie," doesn't have a release date yet, according to Amazon.com.

Rather than alert the authorities (police inquisitions are such a buzz kill), Wright clearly did the honorable thing of holding onto such information for nearly 40 years before using it to sell a book.

Well, Pop & Hiss is here to save you some cash in these hard economic times, so here's the gist: Jeffery was apparently trying to cash in on an insurance policy rather than risk Hendrix leaving him for another manager.

Writes the Telegraph:

Wright claims Jeffery, who was married to actress Gillian French, made the confession at his apartment in 1971, two years before he died in a plane crash.

He writes: "I can still hear that conversation, see the man I'd known for so much of my life, his face pale, hand clutching at his glass in sudden rage."

He says Jeffery told him: "I had to do it, Tappy. You understand, don't you? I had to do it. You know damn well what I'm talking about."

He quotes Jeffery as saying: "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."

Hendrix died in his sleep in September 1970 in the London room of his girlfriend Monika Dannemann.

--Todd Martens

Photo: Warner Bros.

Comments

[Cristóbal Oyanguren]

Forever in our hearts, James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix- 1942-1970.

[Yazid Manou]

I do not believe a word of that. 38 years keeping that to promote his book.....????!!!!!!

Michael Jeffery is said to have been killed in a 1973 plane accident and Monika Dannemann, the only witness died in 1996 without changing her main story. What a strange way to decide to kill a man like Jimi Hendrix.

The all websites will give an enormous buzz to that new " Hendrix summer story" like the false sex tape or the welsh anthem and other crappy stories about Our Man.

Yazid "jimi's Back" Manou

[s]

There seems to be more to this than you are letting on. He was by himself and he asphyniated on his vomit that was mainly red wine.

From wiki:

According to the doctor who initially attended to him, Hendrix had asphyxiated (literally drowned) in his own vomit, mainly red wine. For years, Dannemann publicly claimed that Hendrix was alive when placed in the back of the ambulance. However, her comments about that morning were often contradictory, varying from interview to interview. Police and ambulance statements reveal that there was no one but Hendrix in the flat, and not only was he dead when they arrived on the scene, but was fully clothed and had been dead for some time.

[Adam Horovitz]

The comment below is posted on behalf of James ‘Tappy’ Wright, author of Rock Roadie (released June 25th in the UK and available on Amazon.co.uk). These are his words. Please check with Borkowski PR 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.

“This is not a publicity stunt – 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.

“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 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.

“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?”

[James]

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.

According to autopsy & toxicology: Jimi had NO ILLEGAL DRUGS in his system, and NO wine in his blood stream, just full in his lungs and windpipe. The coroner ruled “Open Verdict.” Jimi 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!