New books says Jimi Hendrix was murdered by his manager

A former roadie of rock legend Jimi Hendrix is coming out with a new book that claims the musician was murdered by his manager, Michael Jeffery.

James “Tappy” Wright claims in his new book, “Rock Roadie” that Jeffery confessed a year after the singer’s death to killing him in September 1970.

The former roadie claims that Jeffery was concerned that Hendrix was about to fire him when his contract expired in December 1970. So, he went to the hotel room and stuffed a handful of pills and wine down Hendrix’s throat

Hendrix, who died when he was 27, was found by paramedics in a room at the Samarkand Hotel in West London that was registered to Monika Dannemann, a woman he had known for a few days.

In the book that is scheduled to be released next month, Wright says that Jeffrey confessed to him at his apartment in 1971, two years before he died in a plane crash.

Wright says Jeffery told him, “I had to do it, Tappy.  You understand, don’t you?  I had to do it.  You know damn well what I am talking about.”

“I was in London the night of Jimi’s death and together with some old friends…we went round to Monika’s hotel room, got a handful of pills and stuffed them into his mouth…then poured a few bottles of red wind deep into his windpipe,” Wright writes in his book.

“I had to do it.  Jimi was worth much more to me dead than alive,” he continued.  “The son of a bitch was going to leave me.  If I lost him, I’d lose everything.”

Wright claims that Jeffery had taken out a $2 million life insurance policy on Hendrix.

In 1992, John Bannister, the doctor who tried to revive Hendrix in the hospital, said although the official cause of Hendrix’s death was “barbiturate intoxication and inhalation of vomit,” he was convinced that Hendrix had drowned in red wine, even though very little alcohol was found in the musician’s bloodstream.

“I recall vividly the very large amounts of red wind that oozed from his stomach and his lungs, and in my opinion there was no question that Jimi Hendrix had drowned, if not at home then on the way to the hospital,” the doctor said.

“At the time I felt that he had either been on sedative tablets, to sleep or otherwise, and that he had imbibed copious amounts of red wine prior to going to sleep.  I would suspect that he regurgitated the red wine and drowned,” Bannister said.

Jimi, whose real name was Johnny Allen Hendrix, was born in Seattle, Washington on November 27, 1942 while his father was stationed at an Army base in Oklahoma.

After he was born, his 17-year-old mother, Lucille Jeter Hendrix, left him in the care of friends in California, and when his father, James Allen “Al” Hendrix, was released from the Army, he took Jimi and changed his name to James Marshal Hendrix.

At the age of 15, Jimi bought his first acoustic guitar for $5 from an acquaintance of his father.

Hendrix is widely considered the greatest guitarist in the history of rock music by other musicians and commentators in the industry.