The Covert War Against Rock

by Alex Constantine

  Who in 1969 suspected that the Hell’s Angel was in reality a death squad leader in the pay of “conservative” political operatives? The swastika tattoos and gothic jewelry? Window dressing. The roughing up of peace demonstrators? The shootouts? The terrorizing of small towns? The rapings? The drugs? A refreshing break from the status quo.

  A supplier from Berkeley donated 1,000 hits of LSD laced with speed to Barger’s Altamont security force, and the Angels toted along several cases of red wine and a generous supply of barbiturates. The concert commenced at 1 PM with a set by Santana, and before long the beatings began. By the time Santana ripped to a close, the first casualties limped into the first aid station. There were broken arms, open wounds, shattered jaws and ribs, and bad LSD trips that left joy-seekers screaming in terror. There were so many of these that the Thorazine caché ran dry within a few hours, leaving the overdosed untreated.12

  The Jefferson Airplane played songs about social unity and revolution and a flung beer bottle fractured a woman’s skull. She reeled, fell, stood and collapsed again.

  Jagger arrived in a helicopter. Anson writes: “Kids got up, yelled, and started running, bursting past the Angels to get close to him. Jagger emerged, smiling, waving, calling greetings, with Timothy Leary at his side flashing the peace symbol.”13

  Jagger hurried to the safety of his trailer. The Angels resumed beating concert-goers. A photographer was told to stop shooting the violence and give up the film. He refused and an Angel smashed him in the face with his camera.

  Crosby, Stills and Nash preceded the Stones, but the escalating violence forced them to cut their set short. The Stones would not play until the sun went down and delayed their appearance some 90 minutes, aggravating the macabre tension of the event. The Angels, riding on electric currents of methamphetamine and lysergic acid, bludgeoned the audience with lead-filled pool cues. At long last, Jagger strutted across the stage, sporting a red, white and blue stovepipe hat, silver pants, black boots, an Omega symbol emblazoned on his chest.

  The Rolling Stones packaged the occult education they had received from Satanist Kenneth Anger. “The top hat,” explains Anger biographer Bill Landis, “was snatched from the legend of [Bobby] Beausoleil,” the Mansonite killer of LA. guitarist Gary Hinman. “The Crowleyan personal power tripping” was amplified by “pop iconography and massive amounts of cocaine to fuel Jagger’s attempt at incarnating Lucifer.”14

  The Stones managed to lumber through “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Carol,” but “Sympathy for the Devil” was accompanied by howls from the crowd directly in front of the stage. Jagger urged the audience repeatedly to “cool down, cool down, now. . . .” Another outbreak accompanied “Under My Thumb.” The source of the commotion was the stabbing death of Meredith Hunter, 18, who pulled a gun and reportedly took aim at Jagger.

  “As Mick peered out,” Ben Fong-Torres recalls, “there were kids staring at him in incredulous silence, mouthing the word, ‘Why?’”

  After the concert, reports Anson, “there was a mysterious shake-up in the Angel hierarchy, and the suicide of one Angel who had been particularly close to the rock scene.” Alan David Passaro, 24, one of Barger’s soldiers and an ex-convict, was charged with Hunter’s murder. But Barger himself was unapologetic. “I’m no peace creep by any sense of the word. Ain’t nobody gonna kick my motorcycle.”15 Passaro, already serving a prison sentence on an unrelated offense when served, was eventually acquitted on grounds of self-defense.

  A platoon of cinematographers was assembled by directors Albert and David Maysles to shoot Gimme Shelter, the Altamont documentary. They were directed to concentrate on the violence, not the performances on stage. A recent TV Guide review of the the video complains that the crew “focused resolutely on the mayhem and discord.”16

  “Sympathy for the Devil” was the last-gasp anthem of the festival scene in America. A repeat of the disaster was visited upon Louisiana a few months later, when an excess of 50,000 young people turned out for a “Celebration of Life” on the Atchafalaya River. The Galloping Gooses motorcycle club, hired to attend to security, chain-whipped the celebrants, leaving three dead and many wounded.17

  A cancer was growing on the counter-culture.

  NOTES

  1. Herb Caen, “Above and Beyond,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 24, 1996, p. B-l.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Letter to the editor, San Francisco Chronicle, July 19, 1996, p. A - 16.

  4. Charles Higham, Errol Flynn: The Untold Story, New York: Doubleday, 1980, pp. 91–92. Background on Higham and the government documents released to him come from author’s interviews of Higham.

  5. San Francisco columnist Herb Caen reminisced about Belli’s bosom friendship with the screen idol, both of whom had a keen interest in teenage girls: “When he and his close friend and client, Errol Flynn, were out on the town, no young lady was safe. Two Rogue Scholars on the loose, both exceedingly handsome and dangerous to know too well. Every time I saw Mel on the make I thought of Dorothy Parker’s line about the girl who lost her virginity sliding down a barrister. One night at Cal-Neva, the Tahoe gambling joint with the California-Nevada state line running through the lobby, I saw Mel crossing that line with a very young girl. Referring to the then-statute against crossing a state line with a minor for immoral purposes, I asked him ‘Does she know about the Mann Act?’ ‘Know about it?’ he whooped. ‘She loves it!’” Herb Caen, “Friday’s Fractured Flicker,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 12, 1996, p. C-1.

  For background on Melvin Belli’s interaction with the Central Intelligence Agency and the Mafia, see: Constantine, A., Psychic Dictatorship in the U.S.A., 1995, p. 191; Diamond, S., Spiritual Warfare, 1989, p. 30; Hinckle, W., If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade, 1990, p. 200; Johnson, R.W., Shootdown, 1987, pp. 377–8, 394–5; Kantor, S., The Ruby Cover-up, 1992, pp. 224–35, 415–6; Marrs, J., Crossfire, 1990, pp. 414, 424; Piper, M.C., Final Judgment, 1993, pp. 161, 172–5, Ragano, F. Raab, S., Mob Lawyer, 1994, pp. 241–8, 360, Scheim, D., Contract on America, 1988, p. 154, Scott, P.D., Deep Politics, 1993, p. 233.

  6. Robert Sam Anson, Gone Crazy and Back Again, New York: Doubleday, 1981, p. 141.

  7. Account of Larry Shears, ATF agent, alleging that Barger was recruited by ATF agents—at a time when G. Gordon Liddy worked for the ATF, a division of the Treasury Department—to assassinate Eldridge Cleaver: December 17, 1971 news broadcast, Channel 23, Los Angeles, CA.

  8. Drew McKillips, “Amazing Story by Hells’ Angels Chief,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 12, 1972, p. 1.

  9. “ATF Agent Says He Was Part of Coast Plot to Kill Cesar Chavez,” New York Times, January 2, 1972, p. 31).

  10. Karen Brandel, “Angels In Arizona,” Tucson Weekly, Aug. 15, 1996, p. 1.

  11. Hotchner, p. 320.

  12. Anson, p. 148.

  13. Anson, p. 149.

  14. Bill Landis, Anger: The Unauthorized Biography of Kenneth Anger, New York: Harper Collins, 1995, p. 177. It is ironic that with Scorpio Rising (1964), Anger the satanist had launched the popular mythos surrounding the Hell’s Angels. Anger’s cultural oddity, Landis writes, “made them seem more lyrical after all the media reports on gang rapes, chain whipping and stomping they were doing.” (pp. 118–19).

  15. Anson, pp. 156–57.

  16. “Gimme Shelter, 1970,” TV Guide Movie Database, Internet posting.

  17. David P. Szatmary, Rockin’ in Time: A Social History of Rock and Roll, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1987, p. 149.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I Don’t Live Today:

  The Jimi Hendrix Political Harassment, Kidnap and Murder Experience

  I DON’T BELIEVE FOR ONE MINUTE THAT HE KILLED HIMSELF. THAT WAS OUT OF THE QUESTION. CHAS CHANDLER, HENDRIX PRODUCER

  I BELIEVE THE CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUNDING HIS DEATH ARE SUSPICIOUS AND I THINK HE WAS MURDERED. ED CHALPIN, PROPRIETOR OF STUDIO 76

  I FEEL HE WAS MURDERED, FRANKLY. SOMEBODY GAVE HIM SOMETHING. SOMEBODY GAVE HIM SOMETHING THEY SHOU
LDN’T HAVE. JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, GUITARIST, MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA

  HE DIDN’T DIE FROM A DRUG OVERDOSE. HE WAS NOT AN OUT-OF-CONTROL DOPE FIEND. JIMI HENDRIX WAS NOT A JUNKIE. AND ANYONE WHO WOULD USE HIS DEATH AS A WARNING TO STAY AWAY FROM DRUGS SHOULD WARN PEOPLE AGAINST THE OTHER THINGS THAT KILLED JIMI—THE STRESSES OF DEALING WITH THE MUSIC INDUSTRY, THE CRAZINESS OF BEING ON THE ROAD, AND ESPECIALLY, THE DANGERS OF INVOLVING ONESELF IN A RADICAL, OR EVEN UNPOPULAR, POLITICAL MOVEMENTS.

  COINTELPRO WAS OUT TO DO MORE THAN PREVENT A COMMUNIST MENACE FROM OVERTAKING THE UNITED STATES, OR KEEP THE BLACK POWER MOVEMENT FROM BURNING DOWN CITIES. COINTELPRO WAS OUT TO OBLITERATE ITS OPPOSITION AND RUIN THE REPUTATIONS OF THE PEOPLE INVOLVED IN THE ANTIWAR MOVEMENT, THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT, AND THE ROCK REVOLUTION. WHENEVER JIMI HENDRIX’S DEATH IS BLAMED ON DRUGS, IT ACCOMPLISHES THE GOALS OF THE FBI’S PROGRAM. IT NOT ONLY SLANDERS JIMI’S PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL REPUTATION, BUT THE ENTIRE ROCK REVOLUTION IN THE 1960S. JOHN HOLMSTROM, “WHO KILLED JIMI?”1

  As the music of youth and resistance fell under the cross-hairs of the CHAOS war it is not unthinkable that Jimi Hendrix—the tripping, peacenik “Black Elvis” of the ’60s—found himself a target.

  Agents of the pathologically nationalistic FBI opened a file on Hendrix in 1969 after his appearance at several benefits for “subversive” causes. His most cutting insult to the state was participation in a concert for Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden, Bobby Seale and the other defendants of the Chicago Seven conspiracy trial.2 “[We have to] get the Black Panthers not to kill anybody,” he told a reporter for a teen magazine, “but to scare [federal officials]. . . . I know it sounds like war, but that’s what’s gonna have to happen It has to be a war. . . . You come back to reality and there are some evil folks around and they want you to be passive and weak and peaceful so that they can just overtake you like jelly on bread. . . . You have to fight fire with fire.”3

  On tour in Liesburg, Sweden, Hendrix was interviewed by Tommy Rander, a reporter for the Gotesborgs-Tidningen. “In the USA, you have to decide which side you’re on,” Hendrix explained. “You are either a rebel or like Frank Sinatra.”4

  In 1979, college students at the campus newspaper of Santa Barbara University (USB) filed for release of FBI files on Hendrix. Six heavily inked-out pages were released to the student reporters. (The deletions nixed information “currently and properly classified pursuant to Executive Order 11652, in the interest of national defense of foreign policy.”) On appeal, seven more pages were reluctantly turned over to the USB students. The file revealed that Hendrix had been placed on the federal “Security Index,” a list of “subversives” to be rounded up and placed in detainment camps in the event of a national emergency.

  If the intelligence agencies had their reasons to keep tabs on Hendrix, they couldn’t have picked a better man for the job than Hendrix’s manager, Mike Jeffrey. Jeffrey, by his own admission an intelligence agent,5 was born in South London in 1933, the sole child of postal workers. He completed his education in 1949, took a job as a clerk for Mobil Oil, was drafted to the National Service two years later. Jeffrey’s scores in science took him to the Educational Corps. He signed on as a professional soldier, joined the Intelligence Corps, and at this point his career enters an obscure phase.

  Hendix biographers Shapiro and Glebeek report that Jeffrey often boasted of “undercover work against the Russians, of murder, mayhem and torture in foreign cities. . . . His father says Mike rarely spoke about what he did—itself perhaps indicative of the sensitive nature of his work—but confirms that much of Mike’s military career was spent in ‘civvies,’ that he was stationed in Egypt and that he could speak Russian.”6

  There was, however, another, equally intriguing side of Mike Jeffrey. He frequently hinted that he had powerful underworld connections. It was common knowledge that he had had an abiding professional relationship with Steve Weiss, the attorney for both the Hendrix Experience and the Mafia-managed Vanilla Fudge, hailing from the law firm of Seingarten, Wedeen & Weiss. On one occasion, when drummer Mitch Mitchell found himself in a fix with police over a boat he’d rented and wrecked, mobsters from the Fudge management office intervened and pried him loose.7

  Organized crime has had fingers in the recording industry since the jukebox wars. Mafioso Michael Franzene testified in open court in the late 1980s that “Sonny” Franzene, his stepfather, was a silent investor in Buddah Records.8 At this industry oddity, the inane, nasal, apolitical 1960s “bubblegum” song was blown from the goo of adolescent mating fantasies. The most popular of Buddah’s acts were the 1910 Fruitgum Company and Ohio Express. These bands shared a lead singer, Joey Levine. Some cultural contributions from the Buddha label: “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy,” “Simon Says,” and “1-2-3 Red Light.”

  In 1971, Buddha Records’ Bobby Bloom was killed in a shooting sometimes described as “accidental,” sometimes “suicide,” at the age of 28. Bloom made a number of solo records, including “Love Don’t Let Me Down,” and “Count On Me.” He formed a partnership with composer Jeff Barry and they wrote songs for the Monkees in their late period. Bloom made the Top 10 with the effervescent “Montego Bay” in 1970. Other Mafia-managed acts of the late 1960s were equally apolitical: Vanilla Fudge (“You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” “Bang, Bang”),9 or Motown’s Gladys Knight and the Pips.10 In the ’60s and beyond, organized crime wrenched unto itself control of industry workers via the Teamster’s Union. Trucking was Mob controlled. So were stadium concessions. No rock bands toured unless money exchanged hands to see that a band’s instruments weren’t delivered to the wrong airport.11

  Intelligence agent or representative of the mob? Whether Jeffrey was either or both—and the evidence is clear that a CIA/Mafia combination has exercised considerable influence in the music industry for decades—at a certain point, Hendrix must have seen something that made him desperately want out of his management contract with Jeffrey.

  Monika Dannemann, Hendrix’s fiancé at the time of his death, describes Mike Jeffrey’s control tactics, his attempts to isolate and manipulate Hendrix, with observations of his evolving awareness that Jeffrey was a covert operator bent on dominating his life and mind:

  Jimi felt more and more unsafe in New York, the city where he used to feel so much at home. It had begun to serve as a prison to him, and a place where he had to watch his back all the time.

  In May 1969 Jimi was arrested at Toronto for possession of drugs. He 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.

  Jeffrey had realized not only that Jimi was looking for ways of breaking out of their contract, but also that Jimi might have calculated that the Toronto arrest would be an easy way to silence Jimi. . . . Jeffrey did not like Jimi to have friends who would put ideas in his head and give him strength. He preferred Jimi to be more isolated, or to mix with certain people whom Jeffrey could use to influence and try to manipulate him.

  So in New York, Jimi felt at times that he was under surveillance, and others around him noticed the same. He tried desperately to get out of his management contract, and asked several people for advice on the best way to do it. Jimi started to understand the people around him could not be trusted, as things he had told them in confidence now filtered through to Jeffrey. Obviously some people informed his manager of Jimi’s plans, possibly having been bought or promised advantages by Jeffrey. Jimi had always been a trusting and open person, but now he had reason to become suspicious of people he didn’t know well, becoming quite secretive and keeping very much to himself.12

  Five years after the death of the virtuoso, Crawdaddy reported that friends of Hendrix felt “he was very unhappy and confused before his death. Buddy Miles recalled numerous times he complained about his managers.” His chief roadie, Gerry Stickells, told Welch, “he became frustrated . . . by a lot of people around him.”13

  Hendrix was obsessed with the troubles that Jeffrey and company brought to his life an
d career. The band’s finances were entirely controlled by management and were depleted by a tax haven in the Bahamas founded in 1965 by Michael Jeffrey called Yameta Co., a subsidiary of the Bank of New Providence, with accounts at the Naussau branch of the Bank of Nova Scotia and the Chemical Bank in New York.14 A substantial share of the band’s earnings had been quietly drained by Yameta. The banks where Jeffrey opened accounts have been officially charged with the laundering of drug proceeds, a universal theme of CIA/Mafia activity. The Chemical Bank was forced to plead guilty to 445 misdemeanors in 1980 when a federal investigation found that bank officials had failed to report transactions they knew to derive from drug trafficking.15 The Bank of Nova Scotia was a key investor in the Bank of Commerce and Credit International, (BCCI), once described by Time magazine as “the most pervasive money-laundering operation and financial supermarket ever created,” with ties to the upper echelons of several governments, the CIA, the Pentagon, and the Vatican.16 BCCI maintained warm relationships with international terrorists, and investigators turned up accounts for Libya, Syria and the PLO at BCCI’s London branch, recalling Mike Jeffrey’s military intelligence interest in the Middle East. And then there were bank records from Panama City relating to General Noriega. These “disappeared” en route to the District of Columbia under heavy DEA guard. An internal investigation later, DEA officials admitted they were at a loss to explain the theft.17