The Prime Suspect- Michael Jeffery, The Manager.

Update: You can now read all my Hendrix Posts in one place click "check out my lens" to see the full article


As promised here is the first of my posts about the people Hendrix was involved with on and around the day he died. I'm starting with Michael Jeffery Hendrix's manager as he is known to have taken a lot of his money and suspected by many of actually killing him.

Jeffery was a very shady character indeed, he was born in South London in 1933 the sole child of two postal workers. He completed his education in 1949 and took a job as a clerk with Mobil oil and was drafted into National Service two years later. His grades in science put him in the Educational corps, he signed on as a real soldier and entered the intelligence corps and then his military career enters an obscure phase. So quite how he ended up a night club manager and finally managing bands is a bit of a mystery.
He is alleged to have had connections to the CIA and in his obituary his dad apparently said he could speak Russian. He also boasted connections to organised crime and used thugs to get people to do his bidding as I'll discuss later.
he ran the "Club-a-go-go" in Newcastle the venue where "The Animals" established themselves, he became their manager around the time they started their recording career. By the time he had finished with them they had only £500 in their bank account, where the rest went nobody knows. Members of the band have openly condemned him and blame him for the original bands break up saying he worked them into the ground and stole all their money.
He was also apparently involved with Don Arden "The Al-Capone of pop" and Sharon Osbourne's dad incidentally. He was also a shady character and helped Jeffery bring his acts to the South you can read more about him here.
It was only because Jeffery managed "The Animals" that he got his claws into Hendrix who was bought to England by Chas Chandler (the animals bassist at one point) who wanted to manage Hendrix himself but ended up co-managing him with Jeffery who informed him he was entitled to commission from all Chandlers work including management projects.
Jeffery also continued to manage other acts like "Eric Burdon and The New Animals" and "The Alan Price Set" (led by ex-Animals organist) and "The Soft Machine" a pioneering prog rock band from Coventry.
Chandler was in charge of the creative side of Hendrix's work, while he left the business and financial side of things to Jeffery (Which I bet he later regretted when he realised he'd nicked all the money). Though he did help The Experience gain their American recording contract with reprise so not everything he did was terrible, though he did syphon off most of the money gained from it so it's all swings and round abouts.
Then Jeffery started to suggest that Chandler and Hendrix put money in to other ventures like clubs and recording Studios, Chandler left capacity as both co-manager and producer to Hendrix in 1968 during the Electric lady land sessions having been bought out by Jeffery, this put him in complete control of Hendrix's professional life.
Jeffery's financial resources became stretched around this time and to generate more revenue he had Hendrix tour heavily, often when Hendrix didn't want to. He wasn't happy when Hendrix broke up The Experience and is said by Buddy Miles to have tried to undermine Hendrix's performance with his new band The Band Of Gypsies at Madison Square Gardens by giving Hendrix Acid. It's also been reported that he used Mafioso type tactics to get Hendrix to do his bidding too like sending thugs to Wood Stock to bring Hendrix to new York to do a show at a club owned by Gangsters.
Jeffery also produced the film "Rainbow Bridge" which featured a lot of footage of Hendrix (see the you tube video in a previous post that shows a clip from Rainbow Bridge) which was another project that distracted Hendrix from writing and recording new music.
After Hendrix's death Jeffery was involved in administering "Rainbow Bridge" and albums culled from unreleased live and studio material, but this was erratic and appeared more for his own financial gain than for his love of Jimmi.
Recently roadie James tappy Wright has written a book in which he claims Jeffery drunkenly confessed to killing Hendrix, he quotes him as saying:

"I was in London the night of Jimi's death and together with some old friends . . . we went round to Monika's hotel room, got a handful of pills and stuffed them into his mouth . . . then poured a few bottles of red wine deep into his windpipe. 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."

And Tappy is not the only one he confessed to as well Alan Douglas he claims he also told him the same story.

Jeffery is supposed to have died in a mid air plane crash in 1973 somewhere near France, personally I think he faked his death, it's possible he wasn't really on the plane at all, or if he was in the military he probably could use a parachute so could have jumped out after it took off. But that's just my speculation there's no evidence of that sadly, except his body was never recovered. Though that isn't proof in itself as when 2 planes crash into each other over the sea I'm sure remains seldom are recovered.

My sources for this post were Michael Jefferys Wikipedia page and this page from the website "Answer", as well as other sources I have already credited in other posts.

This is one of a series of posts I've written on Hendrix's death with more to come the other posts are here:

"Was Hendrix Murdered?" and "More On Hendrix"

Was Hendrix Murdered?

Update: You can now read all my Hendrix Posts in one article, click "Check Out My Lens" to see the whole thing

I originally started looking at the death of Jimmy Hendrix out of curiosity after hearing former roadie James “Tappy” Wright's claims that he did not die of an OD but was in fact murdered by his manager Michael Jeffrey by pouring wine down his throat and into his lungs drowning him. I thought it would be an obvious conspiracy theory, I had no idea the disturbing world of weirdness I would enter when I delved deeper.

It turns out Tappy is not the only one who heard Jeffrey confess, he also told sound engineer (or at least he was at the time now he is a record producer) Alan Douglas that he murdered Hendrix too, Douglas also stated in his opinion he thought Jeffrey hated Hendrix.

Jeffrey certainly had a lot of money to gain from Hendrix's death having a huge life insurance policy on him, but it gets weirder it seems Jeffrey may have worked for the FBI who opened a file on Hendrix after he appeared at a few benefits for “subversive” causes. Jeffrey was in the military and got moved to intelligence, after this his military career entered an “Obscure phase”. Quite how he moved from a career as a soldier to managing Rock Groups is unclear, he also managed "The Animals". He died a couple of years after Hendrix in an mid air collision on his way to a court case concerning Hendrix.

There's also a lot of weirdness surrounding who was or wasn't Hendrix's girlfriend at the time of his death too. A woman called Monika Dannemann claimed to be his fiancé at the time of his death, he did die in her flat and the sleeping pills he took were hers. Many people seem to claim however she was fantasist and merely stalked Hendrix there was actually no relationship between them. Some even claim she had a part in his murder as she realised he planned to leave her, and she definitely lied at his inquest. She claimed Hendrix was still alive at 10am when she went out for cigarettes and when she came back he started to vomit, but medical evidence suggests he was actually dead around 4am.

It is now commonly believed she wasn't in fact there that night at all as they had big row, she did not call an Ambulance until 11:15 and apparently rang a friend called Eric Burdon (from the band "The Animals" who were also managed by Michael Jeffery) beforehand saying Hendrix wasn't well and he told her to give him coffee and slap his face, but he was already well dead at this point so what was going on in her mind I don't know. I think she came home and found him dead, he was the love of her life and she idolised him so this probably caused her to go into shock or even have some kind of breakdown perhaps deluding herself he wasn't dead just ill but I can only guess. I certainly don't believe she could have killed him on her own as some people seem to think she did. Whatever happened Ambulance attendants claim there was NO ONE in the flat when they arrived, the door was wide open and Hendrix was dead inside on the bed.

MoniKa Danneman died of carbon monoxide poisoning in her own Mercedes outside her house in 1996 (the verdict was suicide) after losing a court case with another of Hendrix's girlfriends Kathy Etchingham over claims she made in her book that Etchingham was a liar and stole from Jimi, she was ordered to stop saying it basically, the most comprehensive article I can find on the subject is here.

I'm still doing research as this has disturbed me quite a lot and I have more to write as I get it all straight, I'm also trying to find out why the case by Police was re-opened then apparently dropped in the early 90's, if anyone knows of anything else I can look into surrounding this topic please let me know. My source for most of what is written here is this article.

I also found this intriguing clip on youtube that seems to claim the Mafia and Jeffrey did it for some reason though I can't find the rest of the show or any information about it. I've contacted the person who put it on Youtube but haven't had reply yet. The person who showed it to me said the rest of the show was on there at one point but has now gone. It shows the clip from the film "Rainbow Bridge" (produced by Michael Jeffrey) where Hendrix states he has a dream of "Choking on the grape" and can't "make the choke come up" (at about 1:49, it's not very clear on this clip but if you get the DVD it is what he is saying) which is also quite disturbing and could be seen as Hendrix foreseeing his own death.

Update- The clip is no longer on youtube, but if you can get hold of the DVD it's said when Hendrix is sat drinking with them right near the end of the film, and the exact quote comes when Hendrix is talking about a dream he has about meeting Cleopatra in a Pyramid. He says "The grape chokes me but I can't let the choke come up" (he mimes choking and clutches his throat) and I said that's groovy grape wine cleo"... you will have to watch Rainbow Bridge if you want to see it, and if you would like to support this blog you can buy it from the DVD section of my astore (see the book shop widget in my sidebar).

This is one of a series of posts with more to come. The other posts are More On Hendrix Dead Ends and The prime Suspect- Michael Jeffery