Rethinking John Lennon’s Assassination
The FBI’s War on Rock Stars
By Salvador Astuci
PART V: ROCK STARS & THE NEW LEFT
Chapter 12: Jimi Hendrix
Woodstock
From August 15, 1969 through August 17th, the historic Woodstock Music and Arts Festival was held on a farm property (owned by Jewish farmer Max Yasgur) in Bethel, New York. Woodstock was the peaceful gathering of about 400,000 young rock-music fans and marked what is considered the high point of the American youth counterculture of the 1960s. Exactly four years earlier, on August 15, 1965, the Beatles gave their renowned performance at Shea Stadium—playing before an audience of 55,600 hysterical fans, an event which pioneered the rock festival phenomenon and culminated with Woodstock. Although Woodstock was overtly a rock concert, it was also viewed by many as a powerful political statement against US involvement in the Vietnam War at a time when American forces were at an all-time high: 540,000 soldiers. The following acts performed at Woodstock:
Joan Baez
The Band
Blood, Sweat & Tears
The Paul Butterfield Blues
Band
Canned Heat
Country Joe McDonald
and The Fish
Credence Clearwater Revival
Crosby, Stills, & Nash
The Grateful Dead
Arlo Guthrie
Tim Hardin
The Keef Hartley Band
Richie Havens
Jimi Hendrix
Incredible String Band
Jefferson Airplane
Janis Joplin
Melanie
Mountain
Quill
Santana
John Sebastian
Sha-Na-Na
Ravi Shankar
Sly & The Family Stone
Bert Sommer
Sweetwater
Ten Years After
The Who
Johnny Winter
Neil Young
Aerial photo of Woodstock
Crosby, Stills & Nash at Woodstock
Country Joe McDonald
Canned Heat drummer Fito de la Parra described his first view of Woodstock from a helicopter—and audience reaction to Canned Heat’s ensuing performance—in his book, Living the Blues: Canned Heat’s Story of Music, Drugs, Death, Sex and Survival. The following is an excerpt:
The first sight of Woodstock from the air finally woke me up. A small city of a half million people. Tents and sleeping bags and blankets made little patches of blue and yellow and red on the green grass of the rolling hills for as far as I could see, from horizon to horizon…As the helicopter came in, Skip [Taylor, manager] stuck his brand new camera at arm’s length out the door and blindly clicked off one shot. He sold the picture later for the cover of Ravi Shankar’s Woodstock album…The enthusiasm of the crowd washed over us on the stage, waves of grungy, bare-chested, tie-dyed, granny-glassed, weed-ripped, crotch-bursting, rain-soaked, incredulous enthusiasm. Bear [Bob Hite, the lead singer] looked over at me, "Man, we could start a revolution right now, this minute, if we wanted to," he said…We had a little time after the show, and we walked around, into the crowd. It was amazing, the sexual energy, girls walking around with their boobs hanging out, pretending it was just the normal thing for them to do, guys swimming [nude] in this muddy little swimming hole…next to them girls washing their hair and soaping their breasts. Couples making love in sleeping bags. One couple on top of the bag. An incredible sense of freedom combined with an incredible sense of order. Total liberty with no sense of chaos or danger. A magic combination, gone too soon, a memory that a whole generation chased for decades to come.1
Jimi Hendrix played a dramatic virtuoso rendition of The Star Spangled Banner on a screeching electric guitar, using special effects and amplifier feedback to simulate the sounds of bombs dropping, explosions blasting, and machine guns firing, combined with the melody line of America’s national anthem presented as an avant-garde work of musical art before the huge gathering of spellbound American youths.
Jimi Hendrix and Alan Wilson
Jimi Hendrix (real name, John Allen Hendrix; also went by James Marshall Hendrix) was born November 27, 1942 in Seattle, Washington. Prior to becoming a rock superstar in the late Sixties, he played guitar on the road with Little Richard, the Isley Brothers and others. In the summer of 1967, Jimi Hendrix was introduced to the American music scene at the Monterey Pop Festival. Afterwards he rapidly rose to iconic status. In the music world, Hendrix was definitely viewed as a "black messiah," something Hoover’s FBI was specifically ordered to stop. Oddly, Hendrix was viewed as a messiah more by whites than by blacks. He is best remembered as a powerful and innovative electric guitarist, incorporating the blues as a core improvisational style. He was one of the first rock guitarists to bend guitar strings as a means of producing a whaling cry, and one of the first to use amplifier distortion, feedback, and an array of special effects such as wah-wah, chorus, and delay. Hendrix was also an impressive singer and a prolific and creative songwriter. His performances oozed with sexuality. On stage he wore flamboyant, psychedelic clothes, played the guitar with his teeth, often dousing it with lighter fluid and setting it on fire as a grand finale in his ritualistic performance.
Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock
Alan Wilson
On September 18, 1970, Hendrix was found dead in London, England. On September 3, 1970, fifteen days earlier, Alan Wilson was found dead in a sleeping bag in California. Hendrix and Wilson were both 27 when they died. Wilson is an obscure figure in rock music today, but in 1969, his blues/rock band—Canned Heat—was one of the top bands in the United States. Alan’s tenor voice is often heard on classic rock radio stations today singing the Woodstock anthem, Goin’ Up Country. Alan Wilson and Bob Hite (nicknamed, "The Bear") were blues historians and the founding members of Canned Heat. The two young men had a vast collection of blues records dating back to the 1930s which they drew from to develop the band’s authentic blues style. Alan was a vocalist, rhythm guitarist and top-notch blues harmonica player. Hite fronted the band and was the primary lead vocalist, although Alan sang lead vocals on several songs as well. Canned Heat drummer Fito de la Parra described, in his book, Living the Blues: Canned Heat’s Story of Music, Drugs, Death, Sex and Survival, how Alan interacted with the other band members to write songs based on older blues tunes. The following is an excerpt from de la Parra’s book:
It was a magic time [1967], a honeymoon, when all our heads were in the same place. Although Alan had the most formal musical education, we all contributed to Canned Heat’s songs. Each member’s ideas were assimilated and used as we saw fit. An idea would very rarely be turned down. Alan would never tell us specifically what to do with our own instruments. We’d experiment, talk about it and then make a decision as a group. We were adapting existing music, changing it and creating it anew. For all that artists are so individualistic, the art they create is not theirs alone, not totally unique, because every artist has to learn from other artists. Even a painter as individual as Picasso must have seen other paintings that had an effect on him. Only if you were born in a world totally without art could you claim that all your works were created solely by you. Artists take what they receive and give it new form. That’s what we were doing. We were messing around with the songs of old country blues artists, changing them into something different and new. When we did, we’d claim them, ethically and legally, as ours. When we didn’t, we’d credit the originals.2
Wilson was obviously the musical leader of the original Canned Heat, and the FBI would have had an interest in him for that reason alone, because of the band’s immense popularity. But the Bureau likely viewed Wilson as New Left as well because he encouraged the band to use a controversial cover photo on their album, Future Blues, which mocked the Iwo-Jima memorial by displaying the band dressed in astronaut suits planting an upside down flag on the moon.3
Several facts about the deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Alan Wilson have been suppressed in a manner that indicates foul play and conspiracy. For instance, Canned Heat performed with Jimi Hendrix on September 4, 1970 at a concert in Berlin, but Alan Wilson died that very morning. This fact has been suppressed in virtually all accounts of Hendrix’s final days. In 1997, Tony Brown wrote an impressive book, entitled Hendrix: The Final Days, which revealed quite a bit of new information about Hendrix’s death. Unfortunately, either Brown or his editor attempted to fool the readers by covering up the fact that Alan Wilson had died on the very day of Hendrix’s Berlin performance. In addition, Brown neglected to state that Janis Joplin performed at the same concert, and that she knew Alan Wilson.
On Page 65 of Brown’s book, he unwittingly revealed that Canned Heat was booked to play the Berlin concert. Brown wrote: "Jimi was booked as the headline act at the ‘Super Concert 70’ at the Deutschlandhalle in Berlin, along with Canned Heat, Procol Harum, Ten Years After, Cat Mother, Cold Blood and Murphy Blend." When I first read the cited passage, I remembered that Alan Wilson had died on September 3, 1970. Did they actually perform, I wondered, even though one of their founding members had just died? If so, why didn’t Brown mention it? It seems fairly important, given that this was one of Jimi Hendrix’s final concerts. To satisfy my curiosity, I obtained a book, entitled Living the Blues: Canned Heat’s Story of Music, Drugs, Death, Sex and Survival, written by Canned Heat’s drummer, Fito de la Parra.
Canned Heat (Alan Wilson, second from left; Bob Hite, next to him, third to left)
Future Blues, Canned Heat's political album cover
Alan Wilson, playin' the blues
Surprisingly, de la Parra states that the band did in fact perform at the Berlin concert even though Alan had died that morning in California. De la Parra also reveals that Janis Joplin performed at the same concert, something Tony Brown omitted from his book, Hendrix: The Final Days. The following is de la Parra’s description of how Alan Wilson’s body was found the very morning of the Berlin concert:
On September 3, 1970, we [Canned Heat] were supposed to leave for a festival in Berlin. That morning, the Bear [Bob Hite] called me. "Have you seen Alan?" I said "No," thinking" Of course, I haven’t seen Alan, he lives with you. How come you don’t see him? [Hite said:] "I can’t find him, man. He was here last night and now I can’t find him. He’ll miss the plane and fuck up the trip to Europe." [De la Parra asked:] "Did you look up on the hill, up in the bushes where he usually crashes [in his sleeping bag]?"…The Bear [Hite] said yes, he looked there. At least that’s the way I remember it, that he said yes. I don’t like to think about this part much. I wish I didn’t even have to write it because I don’t want it in my head any more. We finally agreed that Alan had probably gone off to get some stuff for the trip and would meet us at the airport. That afternoon, we were all in the limousine…outside the TWA terminal in LAX [Los Angeles airport]. There was no sign of Alan. Skip Taylor [Canned Heat’s manager] drove up and stuck his head in the limo window. "We can’t find him. Nobody knows where the hell he is. If you guys don’t get on that plane right now, you’ll miss the festival, and we already cashed the deposit so we’d be in deep legal shit if that happens. Get on the plane." He stopped for a minute. "You know what I think?" "Yeah," Bear said. "We know what you think." "I think he’s dead" [Taylor replied].
He drove away. We all put on our stone mask faces and got on the plane…Skip told me later he knew right away where he was going to look for Alan. He just drove straight to the Bear’s house, went out back and climbed up that long steep slope and pushed his way back through the bushes to the little clearing. It was a hot, mid-afternoon, and the sun was shining bright on Alan’s body, stretched out on top of his sleeping bag, in his jeans and shirt. There was an empty gin bottle next to him, and a large, empty bottle of Seconal. His arms were crossed on his chest. Dying, he had composed himself the way he saw dead bodies portrayed in the picture movies. There were those who said later that it was all an accident. No it wasn’t. It was a big bottle of Seconal, the preferred drug for killing yourself, the drug Alan bought specifically for that purpose before. Alan knew drugs, knew the difference between a buzz dose and a death dose. He was far too intelligent to overdose by accident…
When we checked into our hotel in Berlin, the clerk handed [Bob Hite] a note to call Skip at once. We all went up to Bob’s room. Before [Hite] could make the call, Skip called again. [Skip Taylor reportedly told Bob Hite that Alan’s body had been found, and he had committed suicide. The surviving band members were then driven to the Deutschlandhalle to play the concert with Jimi Hendrix and others.]…
When they announced us, right after Procol Harum, some of the audience cheered but some others just sort of sat there, clapping quietly. We figured, well, some of them know and some of them don’t. The Bear picked up a mike, turned to face us instead of the audience, and started into an old, slow blues tune by Little Walter, a black legend out of Chicago who was one of greatest harmonica players ever, a guy whose scratchy old records Alan loved to play for the other guys on long, warm nights in the house in the Canyon. The Bear’s voice was lower and raspier than usual:
Last night I lost the best friend I ever had.
And now you are gone and left me.
You know I feel sad…
A sort of sigh and a rustle of whispers went through the audience. I looked at the other guys. There were tears in our eyes, but we played the gig to the end. Coming right after us was Janis Joplin, who knew Alan and Bear well; she once tried to hire them as her backup band. As we came off stage, she stopped us. "I heard about Alan. I think it’s a hell of a thing that you guys can play tonight." We watched her sashay out on stage, not knowing that in just two weeks she’d be as dead as Alan, with a needle in her arm in a Hollywood bungalow. Playing after her was Jimi Hendrix. By the end of the month, he was the proverbial three.4
De la Parra sends three messages in his description of Alan Wilson’s death. First, he implies that Bob Hite may have had something to do with Alan Wilson’s death. He suggests that Hite lied when he said he had looked for Alan in his favorite outdoor sleeping area, up on a hill in some bushes behind Hite’s house in Topanga Canyon. De la Parra went as far as to state that he doesn’t like to think about Hite’s possible involvement. He may not like to think about it, but he sure doesn’t have a problem implicating Hite as an accomplice to murder. Even worse, Bob Hite died on April 5, 1981—he was 385—and is unable to defend himself against de la Parra’s suggestion. Possibly Hite was involved, but from what I’ve read about him, he seemed to be a straight-forward person, not the sort who would murder his best friend. In fact, Alan Wilson’s death certainly hurt Hite’s career, because Wilson was undoubtedly the brains behind Canned Heat. Losing him meant the band had lost its cutting edge, its creative spark.
Bob "The Bear" Hite around 1969 (standing behind him is Fito de la Parra)
A person overlooked by de la Parra is manager Skip Taylor. It was Taylor who found Alan’s body in the spot where he often slept, on a hill, in some bushes near Hite’s house. Perhaps Hite was telling the truth. Maybe he did look for Alan in his favorite spot on the hill, just as he said, but Alan’s body wasn’t there yet. If Alan was murdered, as de la Parra suggests, perhaps the body was placed there later by Taylor or others. I am not accusing Taylor of murdering Alan Wilson per se, I am merely giving an alternate explanation which seems more believable than thinking Alan was murdered by his best friend, Bob Hite, for no apparent reason. It seems unfair to suggest that Bob Hite was involved in Wilson’s death, but fail to raise questions about the man who found the body, Skip Taylor.
A second message is somewhat confusing. De la Parra categorically states that Alan committed suicide, thereby contradicting his other suggestion that Hite was involved in foul play. How does he know for certain that it was? He doesn’t mention anything about an autopsy report, a death certificate, or an inquest. He simply claims that Alan killed himself but fails to provide any supporting evidence whatsoever. His only argument is Alan knew how to use drugs and was too intelligent to accidentally overdose. Sorry, but given the FBI’s war on the New Left, as revealed by the Church Committee (see Chapter 11), we’re going to need more than a clever argument to prove that a healthy 27 year-old rock star killed himself shortly after he acquired fame. Also, de la Parra attempts to refute the argument that Alan’s death was an accident, but oddly, he makes no attempt to refute a murder scenario. Nevertheless, he suggests, insinuates, and hints that Bob Hite may have murdered Alan, or been involved in his death in some manner.
Third, de la Parra reveals that Janis Joplin performed at Super Concert 70’ at the Deutschlandhalle in Berlin, along with Canned Heat, Jimi Hendrix, Procol Harum, and others. Yet he got the timeline wrong about the deaths of Hendrix and Joplin. He claims that Joplin died two weeks after Alan Wilson, and Hendrix died about a month after Wilson. Actually, it’s the reverse. Wilson died on September 3, 1970, Hendrix died on September 18, 1970, and Joplin died on October 4, 1970. To clarify things, here is de la Parra’s erroneous description of the timelines of Hendrix and Joplin’s deaths:
Coming right after us [Canned Heat] was Janis Joplin, who knew Alan and Bear well; she once tried to hire them as her backup band. As we came off stage, she stopped us. "I heard about Alan. I think it’s a hell of a thing that you guys can play tonight." We watched her sashay out on stage, not knowing that in just two weeks she’d be as dead as Alan, with a needle in her arm in a Hollywood bungalow. Playing after her was Jimi Hendrix. By the end of the month, he was the proverbial three.6
Why would de la Parra get such well-known facts wrong? Is he so ignorant that he genuinely does not know that Hendrix died before Joplin? This seems difficult to believe, given that he saw them both in Berlin at one of Hendrix’s final performances. Was it a typo? Given the detailed word choice used, that hardly seems likely either. Was de la Parra deliberately trying to confuse readers? That appears to be the most likely scenario, but why create confusion over such a seemingly trivial issue? In the propaganda world, great pains are taken to seem believable without giving up too much information. When sensitive information is revealed, for whatever reason, it is often written in a manner that can easily be discredited or recanted later. For example, sometimes good articles about controversial issues appear in the Daily Worker, a Communist newspaper. Sure the facts are right on the money, but who’s going to believe a bunch of Communists? That is the mindset of propagandists. As books begin to be published on controversial topics, as genuine articles appear in journals from time to time, as truth begins to emerge from various sources, the propagandists’ jobs are to suppress or taint the truth. To do this, they are sometimes forced to "come clean", but coming clean usually means telling only what has already been written, and no more, but with a special spin which often includes publication in a discredited newspaper, or endorsed by a discredited public figure.
This is probably the game de la Parra is playing. Of course, de la Parra may be completely innocent because he was assisted by two other writers, Terry and Marlane McGarry. Page 374 shows a picture of the middle-aged couple all cleaned up an dressed for a black-tie affair, but the text underneath says they’re bikers and journalists. It says "they’ve been Fito’s motorcycling companions since his youth in Mexico City, where Marlane was a rock music writer for the Mexico City Daily News and Terry was a correspondent for an American wire service." Mexico City? Where have we heard of Mexico City before. Oh yes, the late William Sullivan—former assistant director of Domestic Intelligence with the FBI—revealed in his book, The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover’s FBI, that J. Edgar Hoover continued to maintain offices in London, Paris, Rome, Ottowa, and Mexico City after President Truman created the CIA in 1947 under the National Security Act. These were active field offices, running informants, and operating illegally in violation of the FBI’s domestic charter.7
Hell’s Angels do the FBI’s bidding
I am curious if Fito de la Parra’s co-authors Terry and Marlane McGarry—the journalist/biker couple from Mexico City—have any affiliation with the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club. It is commonly believed that the Hell’s Angels has a military lineage, founded by former members of the Hell's Angels Bomber B-17 Group from World War II. I am not certain if this is true, but the Angels also have a history of harassing rock stars, which suggests they work with the FBI. I cannot state absolutely that Terry and Marlane McGarry are on the FBI’s payroll, but their backgrounds certainly have all the earmarks of FBI informants. And the discrepancies they co-wrote regarding Alan Wilson’s death certainly smacks of propaganda. This would explain why they and de la Parra aggressively claim that Alan Wilson committed suicide, then subtly contradict themselves by suggesting Bob Hite had something to do with Wilson’s death. Then they leave themselves an out by getting the dates wrong regarding the deaths of Hendrix and Joplin. De la Parra et al were probably setting up an escape route should anyone challenge their suicide assertion regarding Alan Wilson’s mysterious death. Should Wilson’s family decide to sue de la Parra for libel, the Hendrix/Joplin error could easily be used by a defense lawyer to argue that de la Parra is a lightweight researcher and he simply got his facts wrong.
Regarding Hell’s Angels, rock historians are familiar with the nightmarish Altamont rock concert—at the Altamont Motor Speedway outside of San Francisco on December 6, 1969—where the notorious motorcycle gang was hired to run security. In the process, they murdered one person outright and three others died from "accidents." Many people write this off to poor planning, not necessarily a conspiracy to discredit rock festivals. Just one of those unfortunate things, right? Hardly. What most people don’t know is a German charter of the Hell’s Angels were hired nine months after Altamont to run security at Jimi Hendrix’s final concert, at the Love and Peace Festival in the Isle of Fehmarn, Germany on September 6, 1970.8 True to form the Angels ransacked the concert, but this time without any fatalities. This point has been suppressed in most books about Hendrix. Tony Brown mentions the incident in his book, Hendrix: The Final Days, but he fails to relate the riot at the Isle of Fehmarn to the riot at Altamont. The suppression alone points to conspiracy. The following is Tony Brown’s description of the Angels’ riot at Jimi Hendrix’s final concert, at the Love and Peace Festival in the Isle of Fehmarn, Germany on September 6, 1970:
[WRITER’S NOTE: Hendrix was originally scheduled to performed on September 5, 1970, but did not perform due to torrential weather. The Hell’s Angels rioted on the 5th, but Hendrix performed the next day, the 6th. The following excerpt describes the Angels’ violent escapades on the 5th and the 6th.]
In the October 3 [1970] issue of Record Mirror, Heinz Zweidrei wrote: "There were armed police with dogs, and a genial bunch of Hell’s Angels with chains, truncheons and knives brought in to keep order. But since the crowd were incredibly self-disciplined and entirely ruly, the Hell’s Angels were obliged instead to damage the press tent and all its telephones, set fire to the festival headquarters, destroy a temporary pub after getting rotten drunk, and beat up a few hippies." It was also reported that the Hell’s Angels robbed the ticket office at gun point and many people heard the sound of heavy machine gun fire during the night.
On the morning of Sunday, September 6, Jimi awoke at 9 am, had breakfast, then traveled to the festival site by limousine, arriving around 11 am. Gerry Stickells [tour manager] was immediately assaulted by one of the Hell’s Angels who hit him around the face with a chain. Other reports indicated he was hit by a plank of wood with six inch nails driven through it. The whole entourage was on its guard…
Alexis Korner introduced Jimi to the stage around 1 pm…Jimi had to face an outburst of abuse from the audience who whistled, booed and shouted "go home, go home" as he came on stage. The outburst was prompted by the previous evening’s canceled appearance [due to inclement weather]…Jimi tuned up and played the opening riff to The Kingsmen’s ‘Louie, Louie’ which segued into ‘Killing Floor’…After the song was over the boos turned to cheering and clapping. Jimi had won the German audience over…
By the time Jimi started his last number, ‘Voodoo Child…’, the fighting had commenced again, closer to the stage this time…[After finishing the tune] they left the stage. Jimi, Mitch and Billy huddled together with their crew for safety, and boarded a helicopter for the flight to Fuhlsbuttle Airport in Hamburg and finally on to their flight directly back to London. Meanwhile, back at the festival site, the Hell’s Angels invaded the stage. Rocky, one of Jimi’s roadies, was shot through the leg as he was dismantling the equipment. The Fehmarn Isle Love and Peace Festival came to an end shortly afterwards when the actual stage was burnt down.9
Obviously the Hell’s Angels were recruited by someone to intimidate rock stars and discredit rock concerts. If the Angels’ riot at Altamont had been a one-time occurrence, it could be written off as an unfortunate event. But two Hell’s Angels’ riots at two rock concerts within nine months hardly seems like mere bad luck. Now we’re looking at conspiracy. Apparently the media moguls in the United States decided to suppress the Hell’s Angels’ riot at the Fehmarn Isle Love and Peace Festival after Hendrix died because the public would certainly ask lots of questions. Who organized the Berlin concert and why would the Hell's Angels be allowed to run security after the fiasco at Altamont? According to Tony Brown, the concert was organized and promoted by Tim Sievers, Helmut Ferdinand and Christian Berthold.10 Obviously Hendrix’s manager, Michael Jeffrey, booked the concert, so he cannot escape accountability, although Brown does not mention his involvement. Even more surprising, Brown does not draw a comparison between the Hell’s Angels’ conduct in Germany with their similar conduct at the Altamont rock concert nine months earlier. Instead Brown closes the discussion about the Hell’s Angels incident at the Isle of Fehmarn by using Fito de la Parra’s tactic of citing erroneous facts about Hendrix’s final concert in the US. Here is an excerpt:
Ironically, the last-ever Jimi Hendrix Experience concert in the US, in Denver back in June 1969, ended when the audience rioted after the police started firing tear gas into the crowd towards the end of their performance. Although there was no tear gas in Germany, the level of violence was the same, if not worse.11
Excuse me? Hendrix’s last concert in the US was NOT in Denver in June 1969. He performed at Woodstock in August 1969. Surely Tony Brown is aware of Woodstock. I suspect he’s playing the same confession and avoidance game as de la Parra. It’s unfortunate because this sort of thing taints the rest of Brown’s book which appears to contain useful information.
Disinformation about Hendrix’s bassist Billy Cox
Tony Brown stated several times, in Hendrix: The Final Days, that Hendrix’s bassist, Billy Cox, had become paranoid and suffered a nervous breakdown during Hendrix’s tour of Europe, his last tour. Based on my research, this is a fabrication. I am not a doctor and cannot determine if Cox had a breakdown or not, but he certainly was not paranoid. By definition, paranoia means a person imagines he/she is being persecuted. If Cox cracked under pressure, it was because unusual and dangerous events were occurring around him. Was Cox paranoid to be afraid of being killed by the Hell’s Angels? Certainly not. Such a fear demonstrates a high degree of common sense and survival instincts. If someone starts firing a gun in your general direction, it’s not paranoid to duck. That’s essentially what was Cox was doing. Also, Cox was probably quite upset to learn of Alan Wilson’s death on September 4, 1969 at the ‘Super Concert 70’ at the Deutschlandhalle in Berlin. Brown omits this incident completely, although he seems to know a great deal about the concert in every other aspect. This is out and out deception. Two days later the Hell’s Angels rioted at the at the Isle of Fehmarn concert on September 6, 1969. Given these incidents, it seems completely normal that Cox would be upset. But there’s more. The following excerpt is from Tony Brown’s book— Hendrix: The Final Days—where Cox attempts to distort Billy Cox’s state of mental health:
After the concert [in Liseburg, Sweden on September 1, 1970], Jimi, Billy Cox, and Mitch Mitchell attended a party where someone spiked Cox’ drink with acid. The consequences were disastrous. Jimi’s bass player experienced a very bad trip and, convinced that someone was trying to kill him, he wouldn’t touch any food. As the effect of the acid wore off over the next few days, he became more and more paranoid, which would ultimately lead to the remainder of the European tour being canceled.12
Hold on, Mr. Brown. Let’s review what you’ve just stated. Someone spikes Cox’s drink with acid and he gets upset, thinks someone is trying to kill him, won’t touch any food afterwards. You label his behavior as paranoid. Most people would think it’s quite sensible. Putting LSD in someone’s drink is extremely mean-spirited and dangerous. It’s tantamount to food poisoning which is attempted murder. Not everyone uses LSD in a casual manner. In fact, most people don’t. Cox’s reaction of being suspicious of ANY food prepared by others was a perfectly normal response after someone had just slipped LSD in his drink. To label his reaction as paranoid is extremely misleading. The following excerpt is another example of how Tony Brown inaccurately labeled Billy Cox as paranoid:
Back at the hotel [Hotel Dania in Puttgarden, on the north side of the Isle of Fehmarn], all hell broke loose. The hotel bar had been drunk completely dry by all the musicians that were staying there and fights began breaking out. In a desperate bid to calm everyone down, beer was sent in from the festival site, and this gesture helped a little. But the atmosphere, the chaos, the insecurity and the evening’s carousing caused Billy Cox’s fragile health to further deteriorate. He expressed a fear that they wouldn’t get off the Island alive.
Gerry Stickells [tour manager]: "Billy had kind of a breakdown. It was part of my job to nurse him through it, to get the date over with. But he was severely paranoid of what was going on, you know. This whole thing was going to collapse and everybody was going to be killed and God knows what else. I had to sit on the side of the stage and stuff like that, so he could see you all the time. Everybody was feeling bad at the time, you know. When somebody’s like that, it permeates through the whole thing. But this was the last show, let’s just do it, get it over with and get out of here, and that’s what happened."
Cox’s paranoia was not as unreasonable as it appears. In the October 3 issue of the Record Mirror, Heinz Zweidrei wrote: […He describes the Hell’s Angel’s riot at the Love and Peace Festival in the Isle of Fehmarn; previously quoted.]13
Tony Brown continually pushes the story that Cox was paranoid, but he backpedals somewhat regarding Cox’s reaction to the Hell’s Angels’ riot at the Isle of Fehmarn concert. Yet Brown continues to label Cox’s fear as paranoid, something it clearly was not. Frankly, why would Gerry Stickells, of all people, call Cox paranoid? As previously mentioned, Stickells was violently assaulted by the Hell Angels, according to Tony Cox. If this is true, why would Stickells think Cox’s behavior was paranoid? Let’s recap the events that reportedly upset Cox during the final weeks of Hendrix’s European tour.
First, someone spiked Cox’s drink with LSD on September 1, 1970. Second, Alan Wilson—a founding member of Canned Heat—died unexpectedly on September 4, 1970. Cox and Hendrix performed with Canned Heat and other bands at a Berlin concert on the 4th only to learn that of Wilson’s death that morning. Third, the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang rioted at the Isle of Fehmarn concert in Germany on September 5, 1970. The Angels had been recruited to run security at the concert, something that was highly suspicious because they had acted in a similar manner nine months earlier—on December 6, 1969—when they were recruited to run security at a rock concert at the Altamont Motor Speedway outside of San Francisco. The Angels’ violence at Altamont resulted in the deaths of several people, one of them killed in front of Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger. Fourth, on the first evening of the Isle of Fehmarn concert (September 5th) musicians were fighting over booze at the hotel where Cox was staying in Puttgarden. The next day, he had to perform at the Isle of Fehmarn concert in front of a hostile crowd where the Hell’s Angels were still rioting. Cox’s world was coming apart in a very real way. Being upset, being scared to death was a normal reaction. Cox may have suffered a nervous breakdown under the stress, but to call him paranoid is blatantly untrue! Shell-shocked is a more accurate description.
Pressure builds against Hendrix
The last week of Hendrix’s life was filled with all kinds of pressures and distractions, many of them with girlfriends. On Saturday, September 12, 1970, Devon Wilson, a girlfriend from New York, reportedly phoned him in London and was irate about news stories that he was engaged to Swedish model Kirsten Nefer. According to Tony Brown, Hendrix’s record producer Alan Douglas allowed the hysterical scorned lover to fly with him and his wife to London,14 and the three of them stayed at the home of "pop impresario" Danny Secunda.15 Brown does not question Douglas’s motive for bringing an ex-girlfriend to London to harass Hendrix, but one has wonder why a big-time record producer would put one of his most famous clients in such an awkward situation? Brown also states that Wilson "died in mysterious circumstances (the following year) at the Chelsea Hotel in New York in 1971," but he does not provide further details.16
According to Tony Brown, on September 16, 1970, just two days before his death, Hendrix’s lawyer, Henry Steingarten, "arrived in London from New York to discuss a pending paternity suit brought against him by Diane Carpenter following the birth of a daughter named Tamika James Laurence Carpenter, and he was trying to get in touch with Jimi."17 Ed Chalpin and his lawyers were also in London looking for Hendrix because they had brought a "High Court action against Jimi and Track Records [and Polydor Records] which was due to be heard within a few days." Chalpin had reportedly "signed Jimi to a three year recording deal in New York in October 1965, eleven months before he came to the UK and signed with Track." Jimi was reportedly avoiding both Steingarten and Chalpin.18 On the evening of September 16, 1970, another old girlfriend—Monika Dannemann—re-entered Jimi’s life.19 Brown insinuates that Dannemann murdered Hendrix because she was jealous of his other girlfriends. Having stated that, Brown makes a compelling argument that Dannemann was, at a minimum, deeply involved in Hendrix’s death in some manner. She may have killed him personally, as Brown suggests, but I seriously doubt that she acted alone regardless of her role in the crime.
The real cause of Hendrix’s death
Several erroneous stories emerged regarding Jimi Hendrix’s death and the cause. On the day he died, a spokesman for St Mary Abbot's Hospital told the press: "We don’t know where, how or why he died, but he died from an overdose."20 This was followed by false stories that he had died from an overdose of heroin. Others said he committed suicide. Three days after Jimi’s death, Eric Burdon—former lead vocalist for the Sixties rock group, the Animals—was interviewed on BBC TV’s 24 Hours and made the following remarks: "…His death was deliberate. He was happy dying. He died happily and he used the drug [quinalbarbitone, a barbiturate] to phase himself out of this life and go some place else. Because he realized that for him to stop off and correct what was wrong with his organization, the fact that he was being artistically stifled, he wasn’t receiving his money I don’t think, as much as he should have been getting. He realized that to stop off and do that, would kill him artistically anyway. Jimi just exited at the time he felt it was right."21 It is unclear why Burdon made those statements which were blatantly untrue. If Hendrix had taken his own life, Burdon had no way of knowing it. On September 28, 1970, the official cause of death was announced at an inquest conducted by Westminster coroner Gavin Thurston, who reached the following conclusion:
The cause of death was clearly inhalation of vomit due to barbiturate intoxication, but there is no evidence as to intention to commit suicide. He had no worries outside the usual stresses of business and I do not feel it would be safe to regard this as sufficient motive. If the question of intention cannot be answered, then it is proper to find the cause of death and leave it an open verdict.22
Twenty-three years later, information emerged which strongly suggests Hendrix was murdered. In 1993 it was disclosed that Hendrix had not strangled on his vomit, but "drowned in red wine." Dr. John Bannister was the physician—a Surgical Registrar—who worked on Hendrix initially at the St Mary Abbot's Hospital. Shortly afterwards Hendrix was seen by Dr. Martin Seifert, the Medical Registrar on duty that day.23 In an interview with The Times newspaper, published December 18, 1993, Dr. Bannister made the following statements about the death of Jimi Hendrix:
Jimi Hendrix had been dead for some time, without a doubt, hours rather than minutes. He didn’t have any pulse. The inside of his mouth and mucous membranes were black because he had been dead for some time. He had had no circulation through his tissues at any time immediately prior to coming to hospital…[Red wine] was coming out of his nose and out of his mouth. It was horrific. The whole scene is very vivid, because you don’t often see people who have drowned in their own red wine. There was red wine all over him, I think that he was naked but he had something around him—whether it was a towel or a jumper—around his neck. That was saturated in red wine. His hair was matted…The medical staff used an 18 inch metal sucker to try to clear Hendrix’s airway, but it would just fill up with red wine from the stomach…He was completely cold. I personally think he died long before. He was cold and he was blue. He had all the parameters of somebody who had been dead for some time. We worked on him for about half an hour without any response at all. There was a medical registrar, myself, nursing staff and I think one other doctor. I didn’t even know who Jimi Hendrix was. It’s tragic that such a bloke died in those circumstances.24
In addition, there was practically no alcohol in the bloodstream. Someone apparently poured red wine down Jimi’s throat to intentionally cause asphyxiation after first causing barbiturate intoxication. This person apparently slipped him a large quantity of barbiturates which caused him to go into a temporary coma. During this time his natural reflexes stopped working. This means he lost the ability to cough as a natural response to liquid going down his windpipe. Without the ability to cough he was easily drowned. And he was drowned in an extremely sinister manner. Large quantities of red wine were poured down his throat. As he strangled, he spewed huge amounts of vomit, something that normally happens with drowning victims, but according to the physician who worked on him, Hendrix did not die from drowning in his own vomit. He died from drowning in red wine.
Two years later, on September 10, 1995, Dr. Bannister made additional remarks on BBC Radio One’s Wink of an Eye. The following is an excerpt:
[Hendrix] did not have an obstruction of the airways. What he had, was that he had a drowning of the airways. His lungs were completely overcome by fluid. One does a tracheotomy to get better access to the trachea and to the airways. But his problems were below that. The body was cold, there were no signs of circulation and my overall impression was he’d been dead for several hours.25
In 1997, Tony Brown contacted the two ambulance attendants, Reginal Jones and John Saua, who responded to a call that Hendrix was unable to wake up. The ambulance reached the Samarkand Hotel at 11:27 AM. The following is Reginal Jones’s description of what they found, as told to Tony Brown:
It was horrific, we arrived at the flat, the door was flung open, nobody about, just the body on the bed. We called out for someone, loads of times, so we walked in. We went into the bedroom, it was dark because the curtains were still pulled, I mean the gas fire was on but you couldn’t see anything, your eyes had to adjust. He was covered in vomit, there was tons of it all over the pillow, black and brown it was. His airway was completely blocked all the way down, his tongue had fallen back, he was flat on his back you see. The room was dark, we had to pull the curtains. Well we had to get the police, we only had him and an empty flat, so John ran up and radioed, got the aspirator too. We felt his pulse between his shoulders, pinched his earlobe and nose, showed a light in his eyes, but there was no response at all. I knew he was dead as soon as I walked in the room, you get a feel for it, I can’t explain it, but you do and I knew he was dead. Once the police arrived which seemed like no time at all, we got him off to the hospital as quick as we could. See we just have to keep working on him and we did, my shirt was wringing wet. ‘Cos the ambulances in them days, weren’t equipped like they are now, we had them crazy Wadhams [type of ambulance] in them days, awful they was. We took him to St. Mary Abbots. That don’t have a casualty ward now but in them days it did. That was our designated hospital for the day. There was a ‘bed state’ at St. Charles, you found out at the beginning of your shift what your designated hospital was.26
The other ambulance attendant, John Saua, gave a version remarkably similar as Reginal Jones’s version, although the two men had not spoken since they worked together in September 1970. Jones’s regular partner was off that week and Saua filled in. Afterwards, the two men never saw each other again. The following is Saua’s version of events, as told to Tony Brown:
Well I remember we had a hell of a time trying to suck him out [with an aspirator]. I mean the vomit was dry, and there was a hell of a lot of it. The aspirators in those days were all right but not like you have today, they couldn’t shift that lot. I mean we knew it was hopeless, nothing would have worked. To tell the truth, I thought it was an overdose. It wasn’t really my business to diagnose, I just had to keep working. There were no bed clothes on top of him. An ambulance crew by law just has to keep on working on him until we get him to the hospital. There was no pulse, no respiration. We got down to the flat, and there was nobody but the body on the bed. So we had to radio for the police from the ambulance. We couldn’t touch anything in the flat. As I say, we knew he was gone, he was on top of the bed dressed, but I didn’t recognize him, don’t know anybody would have recognized him, his mother wouldn’t have recognized him. He was in a pool of vomit, it was everywhere, but we are not doctors, it’s our job to keep trying till we get him to the hospital, we can’t proclaim him dead…I vaguely remember taking a sample of the vomit in a container, because we didn’t know what he had taken. So as soon as the police arrived, we were off. I was in the back with Jimi, Reg drove. When we moved him, the gases were gurgling, you get when someone has died, it wasn’t too pleasant. The vomit was all the way down, we couldn’t have got an airway down. He was flat on his back, it’s a shame he wasn’t on his side because he probably would have pulled through.27
Monika Dannemann’s erroneous accounts of Hendrix’s death
According to Tony Brown, Monika Dannemann gave several erroneous accounts of the circumstances surrounding Hendrix’s death. The following are summaries of six critical points involving Hendrix’s death, as told by Dannemann, which turned out to be erroneous:
1 Dannemann claimed she first found Hendrix unconscious with a "trickle of something coming out of his mouth." Ambulance attendants Reginal Jones and John Saua, who found Hendrix dead in a guest room at the Samarkand Hotel, claim he was in pools of vomit.
Dannemann & Hendrix, Dusseldorf, Germany, 1969
2
Dannemann claimed she was in a guest room at the Samarkand hotel with Hendrix when the ambulance attendants arrived. Ambulance attendants Reginal Jones and John Saua claim the room was empty when they arrived, except for Hendrix’s body. Their version was confirmed by police officer PC Ian Smith, who was summoned to the scene, and the London Ambulance Service after the latter conducted an extensive investigation in 1992.
3
Dannemann claimed she rode in the ambulance to St Mary Abbot's with Hendrix and two ambulance attendants. Ambulance attendants Reginal Jones and Dr. John Bannister claim no one else rode with them.
4
Dannemann claimed Hendrix was placed in a chair in the ambulance. Every time his head fell forward, an "ambulance man" pushed it back again. Ambulance attendants Reginal Jones and Dr. John Bannister claim this did not happen. They claim choke victims are normally laid on their side.
5
Dannemann claimed one of the ambulance attendants told her—at the Samarkand hotel room where Hendrix was found—that Hendrix would be fine, but they would take him to the hospital as a precaution. Ambulance attendants Reginal Jones and John Saua claim they knew Hendrix was dead when they found him in the empty guest room at the Samarkand Hotel. They deny telling Dannemann anything about Hendrix’s condition because, again, the hotel room was empty, except for Hendrix’s body.
6
Dannemann claimed she talked to a doctor at St. Mary Abbot's Hospital. She even claimed the doctor talked to her in a condescending manner because he apparently didn’t approve of mixed racial couples. Dr. John Bannister and Dr. Martin Seifert, the doctors on duty at St. Mary Abbot's Hospital when Hendrix was brought in, both deny seeing or talking to Dannemann. (NOTE: Bannister’s and Seifert’s specific titles were "surgical registrar" and "medical registrar," respectively.)
Dannemann explained her version of Points 1 & 2 to Tony Brown which he included in his book, Hendrix: The Final Days. The following is an excerpt:
[Dannemann:] …around 11:00am, I went out [of the hotel room] and walked to the shops in Portobello Road to buy some cigarettes. So I got my cigarettes, came back, then I tiptoed back into [the bedroom] again, and I sat down on a chair and put on a cigarette and watched him. In the meantime he had turned around. Where before he was facing me where I was on the right-hand side sleeping, he now was facing left. When I was watching, all of a sudden I saw this trickle of something coming out of his mouth. I quickly went nearer and saw something was wrong, there was something coming out of his mouth. I tried to wake him up and couldn’t wake him up. I didn’t know what, why and whatever. So I quickly opened the curtains, though you could see it with the curtains closed because there was sunlight. I tried again to wake him, but I couldn’t. Then I stepped on something, and I looked what I stepped on and I realized it was a packet of ten [Vesparax] and all ten were gone…28
The ambulance was called for at 11:18am and arrived at 11:27. The ambulance man checked Jimi’s eyes, pulse and heart, and said not for me to worry, Jimi would be fine again and that they would only take him as a precaution and that we would be leaving the hospital in the afternoon laughing. They strapped Jimi into a chair because they told me that they would not be able to get a stretcher up the steep basement steps, they left him sitting in the chair in the ambulance. Every time Jimi’s head fell forward, the ambulance man pushed it back again. Just as we entered the hospital grounds did the ambulance man inside put an oxygen mask on Jimi.29
Notice how Dannemann describes Point # 1, seeing a "trickle of something coming out of [Hendrix’s] mouth," whereas, ambulance attendant Reginal Jones gave quite a different description to Tony Brown. "He was covered in vomit," Jones described, "there was tons of it all over the pillow, black and brown it was. His airway was completely blocked all the way down, his tongue had fallen back, he was flat on his back you see." The other ambulance attendant, John Saua, gave an even more grotesque account of the scene to Tony Brown. "Well I remember we had a hell of a time trying to suck him out [with an aspirator]," Saua said. " I mean the vomit was dry, and there was a hell of a lot of it….As I say, we knew he was gone, he was on top of the bed dressed, but I didn’t recognize him, don’t know anybody would have recognized him, his mother wouldn’t have recognized him. He was in a pool of vomit, it was everywhere, but we are not doctors, it’s our job to keep trying till we get him to the hospital, we can’t proclaim him dead." Jones and Saua’s description of Hendrix in pools of vomit does not match Dannemann’s statement that she saw a "trickle of something coming out of his mouth;" not by a longshot.
In Point # 2, Dannemann claims she was present when an "ambulance driver" came to the room. Dannemann told Tony Brown: "The ambulance man checked Jimi’s eyes, pulse and heart, and said not for me to worry, Jimi would be fine again and that they would only take him as a precaution and that we would be leaving the hospital in the afternoon laughing." Ambulance attendants Reginal Jones and John Saua flatly refuted Dannemann’s version. "It was horrific," Jones told Tony Brown, "we arrived at the flat, the door was flung open, nobody about, just the body on the bed. We called out for someone, loads of times, so we walked in." The other ambulance attendant, John Saua, corroborated Jones’s assertion that the body was alone when they found it. "We got to the flat, and there was nobody but the body on the bed," Saua told Tony Brown. "So we had to radio the police from the ambulance."30 Jones and Saua’s version was further corroborated by a policeman, PC Ian Smith, who was summoned to the hotel room. Tony Brown asked if anyone else was in the room. Smith gave the following response:
[Was anyone else in the hotel room where Hendrix’s body was found?]
[PC IAN SMITH:] No, I remember quite clearly the doors shutting on the crew and Jimi. We just closed up the flat as there was no one about. If she’d been in the flat, they would never have called us to come, because they just could’ve taken him as normal. But because no one was there, he was dead and circumstances were a little odd, suspicious, they radioed their control to get us in. It wasn’t until later in the day that I found out that it was Jimi Hendrix.31
In January 1992, the London Ambulance Service issued the following official statement—written by David Smith, Press and Public Affairs Manager for the Service—of how Hendrix’s body was found and transported to the hospital:
In light of our extensive inquiries it is apparent that the ambulance men acted in a proper and professional manner. There was no one else, except the deceased, at the flat [22 Lansdown Crescent, London W1; Samarkand Hotel] when they arrived; nor did anyone else accompany them in the ambulance to St. Mary Abbots Hospital.32
The London Ambulance Service’s official statement further refutes, Dannemann’s claim (Point # 2) that she was present in the hotel room when the ambulance attendants arrived. The LAS statement also refutes Point # 3, that Dannemann rode in the ambulance with the "ambulance men" to St. Mary Abbots Hospital. Regarding Point # 3, Tony Brown asked ambulance attendant Reginal Jones if anyone else accompanied John Saua and him to the hospital. Here is Jones’s response:
Did anyone come along in the ambulance with you?
No, Mr. Saua was with Jimi, I didn’t know he was Jimi Hendrix - a bit out of my age group. When we got him to the hospital, we had to clean the ambulance out, it really was a mess. His bowels and bladder, all that goes when you’re dead. That flat must have needed a good clean too…
Did you speak to anyone at the flat or on the way?
Just the police and the hospital staff.33
This is quite different from Dannemann’s version of events. Not only was she not there, but Hendrix lost control of his bowels and bladder, leaving a big mess in the ambulance. How could Dannemann have forgotten such putrid details? She made it seems as though they took a pleasant drive to the hospital. The other ambulance attendant, John Saua, further refuted Dannemann’s claim that she rode with Jimi in the ambulance. Saua made the following comment during an interview on BBC Radio One’s program, Wink of an Eye, which was broadcast on September 10, 1995:
There was just me and the casualty [Hendrix] and Reg [Jones] the driver. Nobody else.34
Tony Brown asked ambulance attendant Reginal Jones about Point # 4 where Dannemann claimed an ambulance attendant sat Hendrix up in the ambulance. Here is Jones’s response:
Did you sit him up in the ambulance?
Sit him up? No, you don’t sit people up when they’ve choked. The steps up from the flat were steep, and you had a natural incline on the way up, but no, he wasn’t sat up.35
John Saua explained—in the same BBC Radio One interview, aired September 10, 1995—how an unconscious person is normally transported in an ambulance:
There’s a standard procedure especially for someone who’s unconscious. They travel on their side. All the equipment is there at his head if you need to do resuscitation, anything like that, it’s all there ready for use.36
Dannemann’s claim (Point # 5) that one of the ambulance attendants told her Hendrix would be fine, but they would take him to the hospital as a precaution, is refuted by Jones’ and Saua’s denials of Points 2, 3 & 4. Jones and Saua claim that no one was in the hotel room, only Hendrix’s body; that no one rode with Hendrix in the ambulance other than them (Jones and Saua); and that Hendrix was definitely not placed in a chair in a sitting position while in the ambulance.
Dannemann’s claim (Point # 6) that she spoke with the attending physician (presumably Dr. John Bannister or Dr. Martin Seifert) and that he treated her in a condescending manner because he apparently didn’t approve of mixed racial couples has no basis in reality. The following is Dannemann’s description of her conversation with the so-called racially intolerant physician and the treatment given to Hendrix at St Mary Abbot's Hospital:
The only thing I recall…arriving, they immediately took care of Jimi. I went in the hospital in a different way than they went with Jimi…I went straight to the doctor [presumably Dr. John Bannister or Dr. Martin Seifert]. I didn’t go to any administration person or whatever; I went straight to the doctor and I immediately gave him the tablets [the ones she claims Hendrix took]…This man just didn’t bloody give a damn…I said to him, "Listen, it is Jimi Hendrix…he’s a very famous musician…"…He left into the room where Jimi was. So after a time I went into that room, because I wanted to know what was going on…And I saw them treating Jimi. He was sitting in a, sort of a chair, like you have at the dentist, where you can sort of do it backwards. And they pushed me out again…I had the feeling with the doctor [presumably Dr. Bannister or Dr. Seifert]…he was interested in Jimi and my relationship and I had the feeling that there was a racial feeling. He was not young, I think 40, 45 around that. I was very annoyed because he kept talking about that instead of the trouble. They could have saved him in the hospital. They could have just cut the air pipe (tracheotomy) and it’s the easiest thing. Every doctor I’ve talked to afterward—because I couldn’t get that in my head that he could die—said the same thing. Never ever it should have happened. And these tablets—they all said this—they were too weak to do that, for him to die. If it was accidental, then they did the biggest blunder you can imagine.37
Dr. Bannister read Harry Shapiro’s Hendrix biography, Electric Gypsy, particularly the pages that dealt with Hendrix’s death. Subsequently, he wrote a letter to Shapiro, on January 9, 1992, to provide more detail. The following are excerpts from the letter which was presented in Tony Brown’s book, Hendrix: The Final Days:
…I do not believe he was admitted into the hospital and that he was taken to the morgue directly from Casualty…I note in your book that someone suggested he should have perhaps had a tracheotomy. He would not have responded to such treatment and it was not even a possibility. I would suspect that he had been dead for quite some time before he reached the hospital and there was no indication to proceed to tracheotomy…38
Dr. Martin Seifert was more emphatic that he never spoke to a woman about Hendrix’s condition. The following is Dr. Seifert’s response to Dannemann’s assertion that she talked to a doctor at St Mary Abbot's Hospital about Hendrix’s condition and his care:
I never spoke to or saw anyone about Jimi, there was no woman in administrations. After we worked on Jimi I vaguely remember hearing a lot of drama going on in admissions, but it could have been anything. I would have done anything I could’ve to save him, it was too late, he was dead.39
[AUTHOR’S NOTE: Monika Dannemann stated that she spoke directly with a doctor without going "to any administration person," so it is possible she may have talked to a physician other than Dr. Seifert or Dr. Bannister; however, this does not explain how she got to the hospital in the first place. She claims she rode in the ambulance but both ambulance drivers stated emphatically that no one else rode with them.]
Revelations emerge about Monika Dannemann in 1995
Tony Brown paints a gloomy picture of Monika Dannemann, a West German woman about 30 years old at the time of Hendrix’s death in 1970. Brown essentially raises four major points which indicate Dannemann was probably involved in Hendrix’s death. First, she claimed to be engaged to him, but I have found no evidence that she was anything more than a groupie. At the end of his life, several people witnessed him being agitated with her because she was apparently stalking him and he was avoiding her.* Second, Dannemann lied extensively about the facts surrounding Hendrix’s death. She claimed she was at the hotel room where Jimi’s body was found. She also claimed she talked to the ambulance attendants who found him, even rode in the ambulance to the hospital, and spoke with a doctor at the hospital about Jimi’s condition. No one involved has any recollection of these events. Third, Phillip Harvey—son of the late British politician Lord Harvey of Prestbury, a member of the Parliament for the Conservative party—wrote a detailed affidavit describing several hours he and two female friends spent with Hendrix and Dannemann, on September 17, 1970, the day before Hendrix died. The affidavit—which emerged in 1995, after the death of Harvey’s father—stated that Phillip Harvey and two female companions, Penny Ravenhill (then 16) and Anne Day (then 19), spent about five hours—from about 5:30pm until 10:40pm—with Jimi Hendrix and Monika Dannemann at Phillip Harvey’s home on the evening of September 17, 1970, the night before the rock star’s death. Harvey’s home was 4 Clarkes Mews, in London, just behind the King Edward VI Hospital off Beaumont Street. Harvey described most of the time spent with Hendrix as "remarkably pleasant" but Dannemann was anti-social and later became violently hostile. The following is an excerpt from Phillip Harvey’s affidavit:
With the exception of Monika who, as the evening progressed, appeared to me to become more and more upset, we had been having a remarkably pleasant evening, happy and interested in each other’s company. Then about 10:00pm at a particular moment when Jimi had gone to the downstairs cloakroom, Monika quite suddenly, and for no particular apparent reason, got up and stormed down the four steps leading from the reception room, through the double glass doors, past the door to the cloakroom, down the hall and out of the front door into the mews [presumably a courtyard], shouting as she left, "I’m leaving! I’m leaving now! I’ve had enough!" Jimi who had obviously heard something quickly came out of the cloakroom and back into the reception room. I explained to him briefly what had happened. He looked at us in a most embarrassed way and raised his eyebrows to the ceiling. He said, "I’d better go and see what’s wrong with her." He then followed her out into the mews leaving the front door ajar.
In the kitchen and the hall at the front of the house, I could hear Monika out in the mews shouting at Jimi at the top of her voice, even though the individual words themselves were indistinct. There was even some noise in the reception room at the back of the house. At one point, when Monika’s screaming reached a particular prolonged high peak, I went to the front door to see what was happening. I was genuinely concerned that blows might be struck, and I was also worried that the loud screaming my provoke a complaint to the police from the management of the King Edward VI hospital on the other side of the mews directly opposite the house.
Jimi was just standing quietly there in the mews while Monika verbally assaulted him in the most offensive possible way. As I approached them, I remember hearing her shout at him, "You fucking pig!" I interrupted them and suggested that they should come back into the house as I didn’t want the police called. Monika simply carried on shouting at Jimi, telling me viciously to mind my own business. She didn’t seem to care less that she might be disturbing the neighborhood or, indeed, making a public spectacle of herself. In fact, Clarkes Mews is very quiet, especially at night, and I saw no sign of anybody else in the vicinity. I went back inside the house, leaving the front door open ajar so that they could come back inside the house if they wanted to.
Monika’s haranguing of Jimi continued in my best estimation for about half an hour. I went outside one further time to try and cool things down, and to see if anybody else’s attention had been attracted to the scene, but Monika’s shouting was at such a pitch that I decided not to interfere again. While I did not personally see any blows struck and Jimi, on two occasions I went outside, looked remarkably calm given the viciousness of Monika’s language, the violence in her voice and posture would suggest to me that she might well have struck him during the extended scene. I was actually quite worried that Monika might resort to serious physical violence, but Jimi appeared to me to be a fit man and I thought that, on balance, he was probably quite capable of looking after himself, and I had only just met them earlier that day and didn’t know any details about their relationship.
At about 10:30pm Jimi came back into the house alone, and walked into the reception room where Penny, Anne and I were still wondering what was going to happen next. He apologized profusely for Monika’s behavior and said he was very embarrassed. He said he didn’t really know what was wrong with her but she had obviously had too much to drink. He said that Monika refused to come back into the house and that, as he couldn’t abandon her, he would have to leave with her. He said that my house at 4 Clarkes Mews was the nicest scene he had found in London and that he would definitely visit us again when he got back from the USA which he thought would be in a few weeks’ time…He thanked the two girls and myself for our generous hospitality. I saw him out into the mews and he left with Monika driving the car. Monika was still screaming at Jimi as they left and she did not say a word to me. The time was about 10:40pm.40
A fourth point implicating Dannemann in Hendrix’s murder is she reportedly committed suicide on April 5, 1996,41 according to Tony Brown, that is; however, Brown does not provide any details about the nature of her death in his book, Hendrix: The Final Days. He merely states that she committed suicide, and obligingly accepts it as fact without comment. But given the arrogance of Dannemann, one would have to question whether she took her own life. In my experience, arrogant people do not have enough humility to kill themselves. Why did Tony Brown not entertain the notion of foul play? If she was part of a broader conspiracy to kill Hendrix, and her role had been exposed in 1995 by Phillip Harvey’s affidavit, it seems quite plausible that the other conspirators might have murdered her in 1996 to prevent her from divulging further information about Hendrix’s death. Phillip Harvey is about as credible a witness as one will ever find. He was the son of a prominent British politician, the late Lord Harvey of Prestbury. Also, Tony Brown indicated that Phillip Harvey later became the "Honorable Phillip Harvey,"42 presumably a Judge in the British Courts. In addition, Brown pointed out that Dannemann had sued Hendrix’s former bassist Noel Redding for publishing his opinion of "the events surrounding Jimi’s death."43 Redding died under mysterious circumstances on May 11, 2003 at his home in Dublin, Ireland. He was 57.44
Although Brown’s arguments are compelling that Dannemann was involved in Hendrix’s murder, he does not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she was the actual killer, only that she lied extensively to cover up what really happened, and that she was verbally abusive to Hendrix on the night before his death. Brown seems to want to dispel any notion of conspiracy, instead laying the blame entirely on Dannemann’s shoulders. This would explain why Brown’s book omitted the fact that Canned Heat performed at a Berlin concert—on September 4, 1970, along with Hendrix—despite the loss of Canned Heat’s founding member Alan Wilson who died that morning. It would explain why he left out the fact that Janis Joplin performed at the same concert. It would explain why he left out the fact that a German charter of Hell’s Angels caused a riot at Hendrix’s final concert at the Isle of Fehmarn, Germany on September 6, 1970. It would explain why he gave the false impression that Jimi’s bassist Billy Cox was paranoid, when in really, he had several good reasons to fear for his life.
Confusion over location of the body
Hendrix was staying at the upscale Cumberland Hotel in London during his final stay in London, but his body was actually found at a less extravagant part of London. The ambulance attendants found his body on a bed in a basement guest room at the Samarkand Hotel, reportedly where Monika Dannemann was staying. For some reason, the Samarkand Hotel is not mentioned on the death certificate, only the Cumberland Hotel. It is unclear why Hendrix was at the Samarkand Hotel or how he got there. It is possible that he spent the night with Dannemann, but why wouldn’t he bring her to his fancier room at the Cumberland Hotel? Also, if Hendrix had spent the night with Dannemann at the Samarkand Hotel, why wasn’t she with him when the ambulance arrived? And why did she lie about talking to the ambulance attendants who found him? Why did she lie about talking to the doctor who treated Hendrix at St Mary Abbot's Hospital? Why did she make up a story that Hendrix’s condition didn’t seem very serious whereas the ambulance attendants and doctors described his condition as "horrific." Also, there are serious doubts about the level of romantic feelings Hendrix held for Dannemann during his final days. Several witnesses felt he had avoided her the night before he died. As we analyze the crime scene, it seems probable that whoever killed Hendrix either lured him to the Samarkand Hotel and murdered him, or killed him somewhere else and dumped the body at the Samarkand Hotel. The latter scenario seems highly plausible since the doctors who treated Hendrix and the ambulance attendants who found him all agree he had probably been dead for hours.
Hendrix’s manager, Michael Jeffrey
Rock researcher Alex Constantine wrote—in his book, The Covert War Against Rock (2000)—that Jimi Hendrix’s manager, Michael Jeffrey, often boasted of "undercover work against the Russians, or murder, mayhem and torture in foreign countries." Jeffrey’s father said his son had been stationed in Egypt years earlier and could speak Russian.45 Constantine also claimed that friends of Hendrix suspected Jeffrey was crooked. Consequently, these friends reportedly confiscated documents from Jeffrey’s office which indicated he was embezzling large amounts of money from Jimi’s concert performances. The documents were given to Hendrix, who reportedly took legal actions to recover the stolen money.46 The most astonishing assertion Constantine makes is two days after Hendrix’s death, Jeffrey reportedly confessed to record producer Alan Douglas that he was involved in Hendrix’s murder. "In my opinion," Douglas reportedly stated, "Jeffrey hated Hendrix."47 None of this, however, is mentioned in Tony Brown’s book, but Brown reveals lots of information which indicates there was tension between Hendrix and his manager. Recall that a German charter of Hell’s Angels was hired to run security at Hendrix’s final concert, at the Isle of Fehmarn, Germany, on September 6, 1970. How could Jeffrey have allowed such a thing, especially after the nightmarish Altamont rock concert on December 6, 1969 where the Hell's Angels ran security and killed several people in the process? For some reason, Tony Brown subtly tries to protect Jeffrey while strongly suggesting that Monika Dannemann alone killed Hendrix. For example, Brown tells how Hendrix turned up unannounced at the home of his former manager, Chas Chandler,* on September 16, 1970—two days before his death—asking him to manage the band again. Here is an excerpt from Tony Brown’s book, Hendrix: The Final Days:
Chandler: "Out of the blue, he turned up at the apartment [on Upper Berkeley Street on the evening of September 16, 1970]. Just rang the door, never phoned before he came round, and sat there and said he’d been sitting listening to the music he’d recorded subsequent to me splitting from him. He’d been in the studio for a year or something, on and off, and he wasn’t happy with what he had in the can and would I produce him again. I think that was a Wednesday night, and I’d already arranged that weekend I was gonna go up to the North East of England and see my family. And I said, ‘I’m leaving Friday morning.’ He says, ‘Well…I’ll go to New York, Friday morning and bring all the 24 tracks back to England.’ He says he wanted to record at Olympic Studios where we had done 90% of his past work. He wanted to use that studio again because he really felt that’s the way to put in right."
Chandler may be wrong. He had told the music press that this meeting took place back in March when Jimi flew to London for an unscheduled visit. Other reports that Jimi left the message "I need help bad, man," on Chandler’s answering machine can be discounted since Chandler did not have an answering machine at that time.48
Why does Brown quote Chandler, then tell us not to believe him? Brown’s criticisms of Chandler’s remarks are non-specific. He claims Chandler told "the music press" that Hendrix made the announced visit in March of 1970, rather than September 16th. Which music press? Was it a magazine, radio or radio show? Why does Brown not provide more detail? Also, what reports claimed Hendrix left a message on Chandler’s answering machine saying "I need help bad, man"? Brown claims Chandler didn’t have an answering machine, therefore these "reports" should be discounted. What reports is Brown referring to, and how does he know Chandler did not have an answering machine?
On the other hand, Alex Constantine portrays Monika Dannemann as a reliable person who accused Michael Jeffrey of having drugs planted on Hendrix in Toronto which led to his arrest in May 1969 for possession. Dannemann reportedly made the following comments: "[Jimi] later told me he believed Jeffrey had used a third person to plant the drugs on him—as a warning, to teach him a lesson." So who are we to believe, Tony Brown or Alex Constantine? Brown claims Dannemann was a liar and strongly suggests she murdered Hendrix. Brown’s silence about Michael Jeffrey could be interpreted as a defense of Hendrix’s manager; however, Brown states in the Introduction (page 5) that Hendrix was "seeking advice about how to leave his current manager." Unfortunately, Brown provides little evidence to support that conclusion. Constantine use’s Dannemann’s comments to support his claim that Jeffrey was an intelligence agent involved in Hendrix’s murder. Constantine also reports that Jeffrey confessed to record producer Alan Douglas that he was involved in Hendrix’s murder.
So which story are we to believe? In my opinion, we should accept parts of all of them. Hendrix’s death was most likely the result of an FBI-sponsored conspiracy which involved groupie-girlfriend Monika Dannemann, manager Michael Jeffrey, and record producer Alan Douglas. Phillip Harvey’s affidavit reveals that Dannemann publicly displayed violent hostility toward Hendrix on the night before his death. That cannot be discounted. Dannemann made numerous erroneous statements about her whereabouts on the morning Hendrix’s body was found. She claimed she was with him in her hotel room, but the two ambulance attendants who responded to the call stated unequivocally that no one but Hendrix was in the room, and he was dead when they arrived. Dannemann stated that "there was something coming out of his mouth," suggesting there was merely a trickle of vomit around his mouth. The ambulance attendants stated emphatically that there were pools of vomit around him. Dannemann claims she rode in the ambulance with Hendrix to the hospital and talked to the doctor who worked on him. Everyone disputes this claim. Based on this information, there is little doubt in my mind that Dannemann lied and deliberately misled people about the facts surrounding Hendrix’s death.
The violent verbal abuse Dannerman displayed toward Hendrix in front of three witnesses (Phillip Harvey, Penny Ravenhill, and Anne Day) on the night before Hendrix died strongly suggests she was involved in the murder. Regarding Michael Jeffrey, there are lots of reasons to suspect he was involved in Hendrix’s murder, Alex Constantine’s assertions notwithstanding. Jeffrey apparently booked Hendrix at the Love and Peace Festival in the Isle of Fehmarn, Germany on September 6, 1970 where a German charter of the Hell’s Angels were hired to run security and subsequently ransacked the place. How could a responsible manager allow this to happen, especially after the Hell’s Angels had killed one person outright and were responsible for the deaths of several others at the Altamont rock concert near San Francisco nine months earlier? Chas Chandler claimed Hendrix wanted him (Chandler) to replace Jeffrey as his manager. It’s odd that record producer Alan Douglas would claim Jeffrey confessed to being involved in Hendrix’s murder. Recall that Alan Douglas and his wife allowed Devon Wilson, Hendrix’s hysterical jealous girlfriend from New York, to fly with them to London,49 and the three of them stayed at the home of "pop impresario" Danny Secunda.50 Why would Douglas put Hendrix in such an awkward situation. This fact suggests that Douglas participated in a conspiracy to apply intense emotional pressure on Hendrix, giving the impression that he was emotionally distraught, thereby making it seem believable that he took his own live as Eric Burdon stated shortly after Hendrix’s death. My point is there is plenty of evidence showing that Monika Dannemann, Michael Jeffrey, Alan Douglas, the German charter of the Hell’s Angels and others were part of a conspiracy to murder Jimi Hendrix. The big question is who masterminded the conspiracy?
Michael Jeffrey reportedly died in a plane crash on his way to Spain in 1973, about three years after Hendrix’s death. Monika Dannemann reportedly committed suicide on April 5, 1996, about a year after Phillip Harvey’s damning affidavit surfaced showing her as a prime suspect in Hendrix’s murder; Chas Chandler also died in 1996. Devon Wilson reportedly died under mysterious circumstances at the Chelsea Hotel in New York in 1971.51 Contrary to popular belief, Hendrix’s death was not heroin-related at all. He did not die from "inhalation of vomit due to barbiturate intoxication" as London coroner Gavin Thurston (deceased) wrote on the inquest report. Jimi Hendrix drowned in red wine. This is not wild speculation, it was disclosed by Dr. John Bannister—the physician who worked on Hendrix at the St Mary Abbot's Hospital—in an interview on December 18, 1993; later on September 10, 1995. If Hendrix was drowned in red wine, he must have been murdered. This leaves two possible scenarios. He was either strapped down, and red wine was poured down his throat until he drowned, or he was given a barbiturate which put him in a drug-induced coma, and wine was poured down his throat until he strangled, because he was unable to cough. In either scenario, he drowned from red wine and merely regurgitated as a final stage of drowning. Whether Jimi Hendrix was murdered or not is no longer a topic of serious debate. The question to ask about his death should be the same one asked by the Warren Commission regarding President Kennedy’s assassination. Was he killed by a lone nut or was it a governmental conspiracy? In both cases, the alleged lone nuts (Oswald and Dannemann) ended up dying unnatural deaths.
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ENDNOTES
1
Fito de la Parra, Living the Blues: Canned Heat’s Story of Music, Drugs, Death, Sex and Survival, pp. 9, 16-18
2
ibid, p 76
3
ibid, p 157
4
ibid, pp. 165-168
5
ibid, pp. 278-279
6
ibid, pp. 168
7
William Sullivan et al, The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover’s FBI, pp 39-40
8
Tony Brown, Hendrix: The Final Days, p 74
9
ibid, 74-77
10
ibid, p 72
11
ibid, p 77
12
ibid, p 47
13
ibid, pp. 73-74
14
ibid, p 99
15
ibid, p 101
16
ibid, p 168
17
ibid, p 103
18
ibid, pp. 100 & 103
19
ibid, 103
20
ibid, p 147
21
ibid, p 155
22
ibid, p 163 (Note: Tony Brown quotes coroner Gavin Thurston’s conclusion on Page 163, and Brown shows an "Inquisition" report—dated September 28, 1970—on Page 173, followed by the verdict of the Coroner’s Court—dated September 28, 1970—on Page 174. Neither report gives the same narrative presented by Brown on Page 163, although the conclusions match. Consequently, it is presumed that Brown obtained a transcript of what coroner Thurston said orally at the Inquest, and those oral comments were presented on Page 163.)
23
ibid, p 141
24
ibid, pp. 142-143
25
ibid, p 143
26
ibid, pp. 135-136
27
ibid, p 137
28
ibid, pp. 129-130
29
ibid, p 135
30
ibid, p 137
31
ibid, p 139
32
ibid, p 138
33
ibid, p 136
34
ibid, p 138
35
ibid, p 136
36
ibid, pp. 137-138 (Ambulance driver John Saua was interviewed on a BBC Radio One program, Wink of an Eye, which was broadcast on September 10, 1995.)
37
ibid, pp. 139-141
38
ibid, pp. 141-142
39
ibid, p 145
40
ibid, pp. 116-118
41
ibid, pp. 102, 169
42
ibid, p 169
43
ibid, p 102
44
Billboard.com "Hendrix Bassist Noel Redding Dead At 57"; May 12, 2003; http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1886017
45
Alex Constantine, The Covert War Against Rock, p 62
46
ibid, p 64
47
ibid, p 70
48
Tony Brown, Hendrix: The Final Days, pp. 103-104
49
ibid, p 99
50
ibid, p 101
51
ibid, pp. 168-169
Total Madness: General Selected Writings by Various Authors.
