It’s time for the weekly rumor. The type that cannot be confirmed nor denied because all parties involved are long since deceased. The type of rumor that will have people talking for the next three minutes, maybe resulting in an IM to a friend with the link and that one emoticon that looks like you’re saying “hmmmm.”
Well, today it’s coming from the good people at The Daily Swarm, who reported on a story in The Independent, which suggests Jimi Hendrix was murdered by his manager, who stood to collect millions of dollars on a life insurance policy. The claim was made by a roadie, who says Hendrix’s manager, Michael Jeffrey, confessed to the “killing.” Regardless, Jeffrey was killed in a plane crash two years later, so the point is moot from a legal standpoint. But not a historical one.
Read the full account here.
Related:
June 16th, 2009 at 5:30 am
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?”
July 12th, 2009 at 7:10 am
I have long believed Jimi was murdered, if not by his notorious manager, Mike Jeffreys, then by the mob, CIA, etc.
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…a 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 ‘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 just trying to cash-in on Jimi’s legacy in this morbid way…even at this late stage…
Everyone is dead except for Eric Burden and he is yet to come out with the truth…now 39 years later… God WILL get him in the end! Time to YOU to ‘come clean’ Eric you scumbag!
July 12th, 2009 at 7:11 am
I have long believed Jimi was murdered, if not by his notorious manager, Mike Jeffreys, then by the mob, CIA, etc.
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…a 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 ‘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 just trying to cash-in on Jimi’s legacy in this morbid way…even at this late stage…
Everyone is dead except for Eric Burden and he is yet to come out with the truth…now 39 years later… God WILL get him in the end! Time for YOU to ‘come clean’ Eric, You SCUMBAG POS!