Deep Politics Forum

The Machine that Killed Hendrix
16th September 2010


Also see: “The Jimi Hendrix Political Harassment, Kidnap and Murder Experience”

“Hendrix was traumatised by an impoverished upringing and stung by the systemic racism that dogged him as the child of African-American and Cherokee parents.

By David T. Rowlands
GreenLeft | September 12, 2010

September 18 marks the 40th anniversary of the death of US musician Jimi Hendrix, widely regarded as one of the greatest rock guitarists of all time.

Hendrix’s identification with progressive politics embodied the ferment of the late 1960s, with songs like “If Six Was Nine” (“I’m gonna wave my freak flag high”), “I Don’t Live Today” (about the plight of Native Americans) and the visceral anti-war tone poem “Machine Gun”.

Hendrix spoke out in favour of the radical anti-racist Black Panthers and criticised the US war on Vietnam. He played free at a benefit concert for the Chicago Seven (activists charged with conspiracy to riot over the protests outside the1968 Democratic National Convention) and famously performed a radical deconstruction of the US national anthem, “Star Spangled Banner” at the 1969 Woodstock festival.

The FBI considered him a dangerous subversive and targeted him for surveillance and harassment.

Forty years on from his death, a web of intrigue continues to surround the legacy of this visionary guitarist and composer. Hendrix may have been a musical genius, but he was a babe in the woods when it came to the hard commercial realities of the music business.

This is often attributed to factors such as Hendrix’s easygoing nature and drug use, but it flows a little deeper than that. Psychologists would call it “learned helplessness”.

Traumatised by an impoverished upbringing in Seattle and stung by the systemic racism that dogged him as a “half-caste” child of African-American and Cherokee parents, Hendrix was exceptionally vulnerable to the rankest forms of exploitation.

In 1965, Ed Chalpin (who specialised in producing cheesy cover versions of Top 40 hits) coaxed the up-and-coming guitarist on the Chitlin’ Circuit (as US venues open the Black performers were known) into signing an exclusive recording contract — for an advance of US$1.

The next year, Hendrix picked up a contract with British management outfit Yameta. Chas Chandler, ex-Animals bassist, knew Hendrix’s transcendental amalgam of blues, rock, jazz, funk and soul had the potential to revolutionise the music scene.

Hendrix re-located to London, where his band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience was formed in late ’66 under Chandler’s direction. Hendrix harnessed the sonic potential of modern amplification to saturate the ears and minds of stunned audiences with head-trips of three-dimensional tone and colour.

There was an element of avant garde exploration in Hendrix’s emerging psychedelic sound — the creative process, not the end product, was what mattered to him.

Following Hendrix’s spectacular rise to international fame after his performance at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967, Chandler’s shady Yameta partner, Mike Jeffery, stepped in as the controlling force.

The Experience was the hottest act around, regularly earning $50,000 per show. But the band members (Hendrix with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell), received a minimal share.

Most of the takings disappeared into offshore Yameta bank accounts, never to be seen again.

To make matters worse, Chalpin initiated a law suit claiming prior rights to the proceeds from Hendix’s releases. Years of stressful litigation ensued, and Hendrix found it impossible to terminate an increasingly abusive professional relationship with Jeffery.

As an ex-military intelligence agent with reputed links to MI6, the FBI and organised crime, Jeffery was sly and manipulative. Jeffery was widely rumoured to have planted the vial of heroin that appeared in Hendix’s luggage at Canadian customs. The resulting legal hassles made Hendrix even more dependent on his manager.

Desperate for some creative down time, Hendrix was coerced into non-stop touring by Jeffery.

Allegedly, Jeffery was behind a bizarre 1969 kidnapping in which the guitarist was abducted, held for days and threatened with death.

The episode of extraordinary rendition was supposedly a charade designed to intimidate Hendrix, who told friends on many occasions he feared for his life.

Towards the end of his life, Hendrix was making moves toward a new start — but too late. He died in London on September 18, 1970 — a few months after breaking off all contact with his manager. Inhalation of vomit due to barbiturate intoxication was the official cause of death.

The toxic Yameta agreement had almost expired, and Hendrix — eager to step back from power-rock to pursue jazz-inspired fusion projects — was counting the days.

Former Hendrix roadie, James “Tappy” Wright, claimed in his 2009 autobiography Rock Roadie that Jeffery drunkenly confessed in 1971 to murdering Hendrix. Wright said Jeffery told him he stuffed pills into Hendrix’s mouth and poured “a few bottles of red wine deep into his windpipe”.

Jeffery allegedly said: “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.”

Circumstantial evidence adds to the mystery. Hendrix’s clothing was saturated in red wine, but the post mortem examination revealed little alcohol in his bloodstream.

Such evidence is intriguing, but the absence of conclusive proof makes it impossible to verify the murder conspiracy theory. At the very least, however, it is clear the insane pressures inflicted on him by the profit-driven music business machine contributed to Hendrix’s untimely death.

In a sense, Hendrix’s death amounted to a slow execution by the corporate capitalist music machine.

Hendrix died intestate and the question of who owns his work has been in and out of court for decades amid claim and counter-claim by competing factions bidding for exclusive rights.

In the mid-1990s, multi-billionaire Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, underwrote a successful campaign by Hendrix’s father Al (who died in 2002) and stepsister Janie to wrest control from controversial producer Alan Douglas.

Hyped as a progressive development at the time, the Experience Hendrix company (operating in silent partnership with Allen) has since acquired a reputation for aggressively bullying any other potential claimants — including Hendrix’s children and his brother Leon.

What would Hendrix have made of it all? Perhaps he would ruefully conclude that the confining “plastic cage” he sang about in “Stone Free” was not so easy to break, after all.

Peter Lemkin Wrote:[B][U]The FBI considered him a dangerous subversive and targeted him for surveillance and harassment.

How did this sick fuck control American minds for so long. I don't mean his crossdressing. The rest of his personality is far more disturbing. America's worst and palpably corrupt public servant for half a century did a lot of damage but the media supported him.

Dealey Plaza would not have been possible without JEH running the FBI.

Mark Stapleton Wrote:How did this sick fuck control American minds for so long. I don't mean his crossdressing. The rest of his personality is far more disturbing. America's worst and palpably corrupt public servant for half a century did a lot of damage but the media supported him.

Dealey Plaza would not have been possible without JEH running the FBI.

Blackmail. Amongst many tricks. Americans were always told about the dreaded Stasi and such of other countries but had no idea how extensive and pervasive their own FBI (and other agencies) was in their lives.

The media could have destroyed his career at any time, but didn't. They allowed this madman to run amok for decades.

One public figure, whose name I can't remember, vowed to destroy Hoover's career early in the piece--back in the 1930's I think. But he died mysteriously on a train trip.

There was definitely an invisible hand protecting Hoover.

I saw Jimi Hendrix May 11, 1969 at the Indiana State Fair Coliseum. He asked that the crowd not flash their flashcubes, and when they persisted, he dedicated the next number, “some people never learn.”


Satini the little bundle of energy from our crew went down after to experience him, appearing the next day with lovely parting gifts of a bottle, fifty dollars, and a bus ticket.


1969 began with our going to the Nixon Counterinnaugural January 19, at which we filmed the Hogg Farm and Wavy Gravy, and I saw Mark Rudd and his “Maoists” in their red armbands running down the street shouting, “Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh! The NLF is gonna win!” One of them ran up and banged the iron knocker on Justice, and the shirt-sleeved lawyers on the second floor gave everyone the finger.


These were the neverchanging tundra that persisted under Johnson, under Nixon, smug as barnacles.


Rudd showed up at Purdue, within our parameters, we went with cameras and tape recorder; he spent seven hours in recruiting for the Rage. I sat next to him on a living room rug at one of the smaller venues where he amiably explained, “My friends don't like my talking to you; they think you're cops.” We weren't.


Also that season, Abbie Hoffman, live, flanked by two Chicago cops, he swinging a fireplace poker, declaring the stage a liberated zone, showing the Yippie movie wherein Daley declares, “The police are not there to create disorder; the police are there to preserve disorder.”


October 8-11, SDS Days of Rage. We in Roger's Econoline with the hatch sawed in the top, the windows meshed, cut off at every block by speeding convoys of three sedans (black, white, bronze, navy, light blue) punctuated by a black wagon.


Platoons of pigeon-egg blue helmets, knots of Dick Tracy's in trenchcoats clustered around the milk carton walkie talkie. The ragged revolutionaries round their smoldering fire of police barricades exhorted by the bullhorn, racing off pursued by dozens of off-duty cops looking for a little ultraviolence.


The 24-hour Emergency Board-Up Service trucks with generators and plywood sawed to cover the minikristalnacht and in restaurants the angry diner, “Whadda I think! I think they oughta be in jail!”


Bill Ayers would go from mug shot to making a bigger bang. A paranoid force would snuff Jimi—can it have been his role in some “Woodstock Nation” threat to the Gay Goose-Stepper?


Along comes karma, and following the red harvest of 68, the Reaper took Hoover May, 72 (heart attack), Johnson January, 73 (heart attack), Nixon August 8, 1974 (“Effective at noon tomorrow”).


Some people never learn.

Reading Dragoo above gave me a rush, a contact high.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Those_Were_...%28song%29

Gay Goose-Stepper... I like that Phil. You have a way with words. :beer:

Quote:Most of the takings disappeared into offshore Yameta bank accounts, never to be seen again.

What is really bizarre about Hendrix's murder is it is highly possible it was directly related to the same organized crime/CIA underground network that killed Kennedy. Few people realize Jimi Hendrix was in the process of firing his MI-5 manager Michael Jeffery and sending lawyers to the Bahamian banks he kept Hendrix's stolen money in. Those banks were the same offshore dirty money laundry banks CIA was keeping its mob money in from its deal with Lansky and the mob to allow them control of the Caribbean in return for keeping communism from spreading. CIA looked the other way and took millions in mob pay-off money that it kept in those Bahamian offshore banks to keep it from government scrutiny. CIA used those covert funds for its worst anti-communist black ops. By leading his lawyers to those banks Hendrix threatened much more than just his crooked manager. CIA did NOT want its most critical Cold War black ops funding source revealed. Hendrix was waterboarded to death with alcohol in combination with barbiturates - a classic method of intel covert murder, shortly after. In his confession to Wright Jeffery said "I had to do it, I had no choice". You bet your ***. What is very ironic is Hendrix could possibly have funded his own black ops assassination. Even worse MI-5 member Jeffery could have been stealing Hendrix's money as part of that black ops funding program from the start. He could have been CIA's representative in this dirty illegal funding program and Hendrix and his career may have been unknowingly tapped as funding sources for this dirty network from the very beginning.

Interestingly a few months after Jeffery confessed to Tappy Wright he was called to his Majorca nightclub from London to help fix some electrical problems. On the flight back to England his Iberia Airlines DC-9 had a mid-air crash with another commercial flight and all 60 on board were killed. To me the electrical lighting problem in the club seems like a pretext to get him into the air. You see Jeffery was in the middle of an important trial in London at the time that would have made a major ruling on some royalties Jeffery owed to some record companies over Hendrix. If Jeffery lost he would have had to pay substantial amounts of money to those record companies. It is possible that Jeffery would have been unable to come up with the money because it had been spent by the black ops program out of those Bahamian banks. In that case serious legal scrutiny would have come down on both Jeffery, who had murdered Jimi 2 years earlier, and those Bahamian CIA money laundries. It was much better for many people that Jeffery was dead.

Intel are the only people who could operate at the level of causing a French Air Traffic Controllers strike that put the French military in charge of French air traffic that day. They are also capable of arranging a strange electrical problem at Jeffery's nightclub and steering two jet aircraft into each other. Intel had just assassinated Jimi using their special methods. If they did another one of their specialties on Jeffery, like a heart attack etc, it would be too obvious. But no one would question a mid-air collision because we all know that's impossible and intel would never kill 150 other innocent people. Especially if it kept a vital black operations funding program concealed...

The British Government had all the proof it needed for murder in its possession back in fall 1970. While Jimi was soaked in wine and had "bottles worth" evacuated from his lungs and stomach in the St Mary Abott's Hospital Resuscitation Room the autopsy recorded only a 5mg per 100ml blood alcohol content which was incommensurate with the wine witnessed in and around Jimi.

The autopsy also recorded a 3.9mg percent of blood barbiturate blood level. This was a knock-out dose frozen in to the blood record at the time of death, as was the blood alcohol level.

Doctor Teare, the forensic pathologist doing the autopsy, also found undigested rice in Hendrix's stomach contents. Since it takes the body 4-5 hours to empty its stomach contents that tells you Hendrix died within 4-5 hours after eating that rice. Jimi was witnessed eating the rice in question at around midnight, which means he died somewhere between 4-5am.


When Hendrix died they took the story of his blond German girlfriend, Monika Dannemann, and used it directly for the record and determination of cause of death. She told a story about bringing Jimi back to the flat she had rented for them at around 3am where she said they talked and she had tried to prevent him from taking any sleeping pills in order to allow him to fall asleep naturally. According to her she drifted off asleep at around 7am and woke-up at 9am. When she woke-up she said she looked at Hendrix and he was fine and sleeping so she decided to go get some cigarettes and when she returned she noticed Jimi had a trickle of vomit running down his chin and didn't respond. From there she says she tried to call Jimi's private doctor (as was done in such cases in Germany) but could not find his phone number and she ended up contacting Animals singer Eric Burdon who then finally agreed they should call an ambulance. Dannemann's time scale for all this finally puts the ambulance call at 11:18am.

It wasn't until 20 years after Hendrix's death that anyone bothered to cross-check the story with the ambulance men who arrived at the scene. According to them the front door of the flat was wide open and no one was there. They immediately called a constable according to law. Meanwhile they found Jimi on his back in the flat's bed covered in a grotesque amount of vomit from his shoulders up. This led to a re-examination of Dannemann's story in the early 1990's. Her story of riding in the ambulance and witnessing the attendants tilting Jimi's head back was also proven to be completely false. The attendants confirmed no one rode with them and there was no blond woman at the scene. As it turns out most of what she told turned out to be false.

In his 1986 biography Eric Burdon admitted Dannemann called him "at around daybreak" - which was somewhere around 5:30am. Dannemann was concerned that the drugs in the flat would cause a legal problem so Burdon went over with some Hendrix road crew members and cleaned the flat out before calling the ambulance. Interestingly, some of the road crew members were mostly interested in finding phone messages and notes and getting rid of them.

Dannemann obviously made up the false story of that morning to cover the fact Jimi had died much earlier than she admitted. Amazingly the British Inquest into Hendrix's death was quick to label it another rock star drug overdose and took Dannemann's account straight and entered it into the record without question. The timing of the death, as established by Dannemann, was then used to calculate the forensic autopsy evidence even though it was completely inaccurate. Finally, this ridiculous inquiry decided Jimi choked on his own vomit while incapacitated on a sleeping pill barbiturate overdose and left an "Open Verdict" as the official cause of death.


After Hendrix's long time English girlfriend Kathy Etchingham got in a legal libel contest with Dannemann in the early 1990's the ball got rolling on the evidence. Etchingham and some Hendrix researchers ended up digging in to the evidence and uncovering testimony to prove Dannemann was lying. Dannemann finally lost a critical libel decision to Etchingham and was being called into court where she finally would have lost her libel protections over speaking about what happened that morning. Shortly before being forced to appear Dannemann was found dead from fumes in her Mercedes at her house in southern England.


In 1990, the attending Resuscitation Room physician, Doctor Bannister, was reading a Hendrix biography questioning Hendrix's death when he suddenly realized he possessed evidence towards Jimi's murder. Bannister wrote the author, Shapiro, telling him that instead of choking on his own vomit Hendrix actually died of drowning in red wine. Bannister said that he had suctioned "several bottles worth" of wine out of Hendrix's lungs and stomach "like he had never seen before or since in his medical career". Bannister had no doubt that Jimi had died from drowning in an unusual amount of red wine and that the vomit that was witnessed was the common bodily reaction to drowning.


Just last year Tappy Wright, a road crew member for Hendrix's manager Michael Jeffery, came forward to say he witnessed Michael Jeffery confess he had murdered Hendrix. He said Hendrix was firing him and he owed so much money that it would ruin him and that Jimi was worth more to him dead than alive. So he took some "old London colleagues" to Dannemann's flat and shoved pills down Hendrix's throat followed by wine down the windpipe. Jeffery allegedly confessed in winter 1973 and was killed in a strange mid-air collision a few months later in March 1973. Wright said he didn't come forward earlier because he didn't want to be killed himself.

Jimi Hendrix is an icon in the hard rock music vein. To this day almost 40 years after his death, he is seen as one of the most influential rock guitarists in rock history. His showmanship as well as his technical prowess remains unmatched, and despite a mere five albums, his music is a staple in the world of rock and roll.

Hendrix died on September 18, 1970 - slightly a year following his legendary performance at the Woodstock music festival, and the circumstances surrounding his death are still speculated upon. After a couple of days missing, Hendrix was found dead at the flat of his girlfriend Monika Dannemann. The autopsy revealed large quantities of red wine in his stomach along with his lungs. The official cause of death was recorded as inhalation of vomit and barbiturate intoxication.

The recorded facts paint a vague portrait of Hendrix's death, and the events surrounding the incident leave a lot of questions unanswered. Did Jimi Hendrix simply fall victim to the excessive lifestyle in which many other musicians have met their doom, or is there more to his death than meets the eye?

On the morning of his death, girlfriend Dannemann claims to have woken up to find Hendrix sleeping normally and proceeded to go out for cigarettes. Upon return her story states that she found that Hendrix had gotten sick and was having trouble breathing. She called Eric Burdon of the Animals who they had partied with the night before; he demanded that she call an ambulance. Dannemann claims that the ambulance arrived at about 11:30 a.m. and that she rode with Hendrix on the way to the hospital where he suffocated en route.

The recollection of the ambulance attendants are a direct contradiction of Dannemann's story and claim that the apartment was empty except for Hendrix lying dead on the bed. After an unsuccessful attempt at revival, they pronounced him dead. The autopsy failed to conclude the time of death, but it was evident that Hendrix had been dead for some time before the paramedics arrived.

Eric Burdon initially claimed that Hendrix's death was a suicide, but the facts also contradict this notion. Despite Hendrix's increasingly erratic behavior and the dark circumstances present in his life, close friends claim that he was relatively happy at the time. Hendrix was found with nine Vesperax sleeping pills in his system which are said to contribute to his death. He was a chronic insomniac who was resistant to the effects of barbiturates and would not have felt such disastrous effects from nine pills. He was also found with a pack of 42 Vesperax in his pocket which would rule out suicide. If Hendrix was intent on self-termination, it is assumed that he would have taken all of the Vesperax.

Granted, mixing alcohol with downers is asking for trouble, but the amount of red wine found in Hendrix's lungs suggests something more gruesome. It's extremely rare that someone who intends on a night of hard drinking binges with such rapidity that the alcohol actually reaches their lungs. The low blood alcohol content in comparison with the amount of wine found in Hendrix's body meant that the ingestion of the wine was so quick that it didn't even have time to enter his blood stream. This inconsistency suggests that excessive drinking was not the cause of death. The physical evidence suggests that the excessive amounts of wine in his stomach as well as lungs are more consistent with being water boarded.


There were many people who were believed to benefit from Hendrix's removal. The COINTELPRO or Counter Intelligence Program designed by the FBI was aimed at eliminating subversive behavior within the country. Hendrix appearance at "subversive" benefits resulted in the FBI opening a dossier on him, and his ability to motivate masses were seen by COINTELPRO as less than innocuous. Hendrix connection to manager Mike Jeffery only furthered his surveillance by the FBI. Jeffery had on numerous occasions alluded to being connected to underground organizations. He was in the process of building a recording studio in a part of New York which was primarily mob controlled. In addition, Cynthia McKinney, US House Representative and Green Party nominee for President of the United States in 2008, has pinned Hendrix's murder on a government plot to eradicate such leaders. Moreover, Hendrix had publically called upon the Black Panther party to go to Washington, DC and shoot the place up.

The web of unsavory individuals and circumstances surrounding Hendrix raises even more questions about his death. It was reported that Mike Jeffery was intent on manipulating Hendrix's life as well as siphoning his money into his own offshore bank accounts. There is also a mention of a million dollar life insurance policy covering Hendrix and listing Jeffery as the beneficiary. Although Jeffery was in Spain during Hendrix's death, conspiracy theorists speculate that he may have had a part in it.

Jimi Hendrix was not a drug addict; he did not die of a heroin overdose as was initially printed in some publications as the cause of death. The fact stands that Hendrix did die of choking on his own vomit, but whom or what induced this? Did COINTELPRO off Hendrix in order to prevent subversion? Did mob connections between Jeffery put Hendrix in the line of mob violence? Did Jeffery orchestrate his death for the purpose of royalties and a hefty insurance policy? These questions will probably never be answered. The deaths of Jeffery in a mysterious mid-air collision over France in 1973 and the suicide of Monika Dannemann in 1996 leave very few people who were present at the time of Hendrix's death able to offer information.

Friends state that in Hendrix's final days, he became increasingly more paranoid. Did Hendrix have a feeling that his end was coming soon? We may never know what actually transpired on September 18, 1970 and the question remains: who killed Jimi Hendrix?