I suppose that the most disturbing phrase can be found in the masterful “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)” when Hendrix sings, “If I don’t meet you no more in this world, I’ll meet you in the next one, so don’t be late.” His incredible guitar work and phrasing became the ultimate tribute to the Mississippi Delta and all those who fell under its mystical spell. Jimi Hendrix’s invitation is every bit as chilling as Robert Johnson’s pronouncement in “Me and the Devil Blues”: “I said, hello, Satan, I believe it’s time to go.” Both musicians talk of escape from a tormenting world by summoning death.
The official version of Hendrix’s death states that he was unable to sleep the night of September 17, 1970, and took nine sleeping pills that his girlfriend, Monika Dannemann, had. He obviously didn’t realize the strength of the drug or he wouldn’t have taken so many. Hendrix’s usual dosage was two pills. Early the next morning, Monika left the apartment for a few minutes to buy some cigarettes. When she returned she noticed that Jimi had vomited in his sleep. She then became very alarmed when she couldn’t wake him. The first call she made was to Hendrix’s friend Eric Burdon, former lead singer of the Animals. Burdon screamed at her to call an ambulance now! She then dialed the emergency phone number and an ambulance was summoned. The attendants arrived in a matter of minutes and began CPR on the unconscious Hendrix. They assured Dannemann that Hendrix was very much alive and that he would be rushed to St. Mary’s Abbot Hospital. After a few minutes at the hospital it became futile to continue trying to revive Hendrix. He was pronounced dead and the cause of death was given as asphyxiation due to severe barbiturate intoxication and the inhalation of his own vomit. It appeared that the sleeping pills had blocked Hendrix’s gagging reflex, allowing fluid to fill his lungs and in essence drowning him.
At the time reports surfaced saying that Hendrix had died of a drug overdose. There had always been rumors passed around in the media concerning Jimi’s alleged use of drugs. Some rumors suggested that Hendrix was addicted to heroin, and that he shot up, sometimes using the veins in his neck, with speedballs (a combination of heroin and cocaine). All of these rumors were completely untrue. Jimi Hendrix was no junkie. Like many in the late 1960s, he experimented with both LSD and marijuana. However, he was never addicted to heroin and his body showed no evidence of the needle marks that signaled the telltale trademark of a serious drug user. However, many questions did remain. First, why did Monika Dannemann wait so long to call an ambulance? She simply stated that she was afraid of a public scandal and that Jimi would become upset with her.
The second question was why Jimi took the nine sleeping tablets. Was it simply a mistake or was it actually suicide? Hendrix’s last few concerts were very disappointing to him. At one show after only playing a couple of songs, Jimi apologized to the audience, stating that they “just couldn’t get it together.” He then left the stage. He was becoming despondent about his financial affairs and complained about being restricted musically. Did suicide provide the escape from this world into the next? A few days after Jimi Hendrix’s death, Eric Burdon appeared on a television show in London and suggested that Hendrix had indeed committed suicide. He formed his opinion based upon a five-page poem that Hendrix had written the day of his death. The poem was entitled “The Story of Life.” The poem ended with this simple line: “The story of life is hello and goodbye, until we meet again.” Was this a restatement of Jimi’s invitation to meet us in the next world and for us to not be late? Eric Burdon seemed convinced that his friend had calmly chosen his own exit from this room full of mirrors. Perhaps it is ironic that Hendrix’s last poem is called “The Story of Life,” since it was written the day that he died. Another irony links him to the poet Shelley, whose last work was “The Triumph of Life.” Sadly and coincidentally, both men died by drowning after the completion of their last works saluting the necessary purpose of living.
To some investigators, as well as some of Hendrix’s personal friends, there had to be yet one more answer to the mysterious death of the guitar great. There were several missing pieces that were not examined at that time, pieces that when properly assembled might very well hint at foul play. The last few days of Hendrix’s life have been shrouded in mystery. Hendrix had told several of his closest friends that he had been forcibly kidnapped, forced into a car, and a knee placed in his back as he was driven to a deserted building. He stated that he was in constant fear for his life. He managed to escape when three men from Michael Jeffrey’s management company appeared and set him free. Also, a few hours before his death Monika drove him to an apartment to meet with some unknown friends. Hendrix entered the apartment alone. Monika Dannemann has suggested that he visited his former lover Devon Wilson to ask her to leave Dannemann alone.
When Monika picked Hendrix up from the apartment, he displayed a handful of pills that had been given to him at the party. Some insiders have stated that perhaps Wilson had provided a substance that brought about Hendrix’s death. Rumors also circulated about a mysterious phone call that Hendrix was said to have made to his former manager Chas Chandler. The message was left on Chandler’s business answering machine and stated simply, “I need help bad, man.” Supposedly the call was made shortly before Hendrix left to visit his unnamed friends. Dannemann disputes this rumor and says that Chandler didn’t own an answering machine at that time. Rumors also surfaced that Hendrix had died some five hours earlier and in some way tried to blame Monika Dannemann for the delay in calling an ambulance. I suppose the most puzzling questions have to concern the medical treatment Hendrix was given. Why was he placed in a sitting position in the ambulance instead of being placed on his side? It appears that a sitting position would allow his lungs to fill with fluid faster and in that way contribute to his death. The second question is why didn’t the doctors perform a tracheotomy to allow Hendrix to breathe? If his windpipe was obstructed it seems that this would be a proper procedure to allow the victim a chance at recovery. A few years following Hendrix’s death, one of the attending doctors was removed from the doctors’ registry; no reason was given, although there’s no evidence it was linked to Hendrix’s death.
Of course when any celebrity dies under clandestine circumstances, there are many individuals who automatically assume that a well-organized conspiracy has taken place. Noel Redding, former Experience bassist, in an interview with journalist Chris Welch mentioned that he was not sure of the events that surrounded this tragedy: “I don’t know if it was an accident or suicide or murder.” Basically, there are two conspiracy theories concerning Hendrix’s death. The first theory concerns involvement by the FBI. During the late 1960s and early 1970s a number of files were kept by the government agency concerning the counterculture. Jimi Hendrix may have been considered a threat due to his involvement with the Black Panthers. Ironically, Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison were all outspoken critics of the American involvement in the Vietnam War and protested against a number of government domestic policies. To those believers in hidden governmental conspiracies, the death of these rock icons would be a way to help silence the voice of protest.
The next theory concerns the role of Hendrix’s manager Mike Jeffrey. Jimi was upset that large amounts of his money were missing. He had asked both Chas Chandler and Alan Douglas to take over as his manager. It was rumored that Jeffrey stood to make a greater sum of money with a dead Jimi Hendrix as opposed to a living one. There was also mention of a one-million-dollar insurance policy covering Hendrix’s life made out with Jeffrey being the beneficiary. When news spread of Hendrix’s death, investigators were stunned to find that Hendrix’s residences in England and New York had been broken into. Many of his most personal items were taken, and insiders accuse Jeffrey of selling them for a huge profit.
Mike Jeffrey created a financial empire based upon the posthumous releases of Hendrix’s previously unreleased recordings. In Monika Dannemann’s The Inner World of Jimi Hendrix, the author mentions a series of threats made against her by Jeffrey. He demanded her
silence. To make the story even more interesting, as well as bizarre, Mike Jeffrey was killed in a plane crash on March 5, 1973. He was flying from Spain to England to answer a number of questions concerning his financial dealings. There are those who believe that Jeffrey faked his death by using his many contacts to add his name to the passenger list. It seems that there will always be a market for another conspiracy.
Jimi Hendrix’s funeral took place on October 1, 1970, in Seattle, Washington, at the Dunlap Baptist Church. Al Hendrix, Jimi’s father, received a message from one of Jimi’s fans advising the grieving father to go down to the funeral home and check Jimi’s body to make sure that he was really dead. The fan believed that Jimi had magical powers and might simply be in a state of suspended animation. Monika also mentioned that Jimi had previously asked her, in the event of his death, to stay with his body for three days to make sure that he was really dead. She was unable to do this since she was not his wife.
Eric Clapton was deeply moved by Jimi’s sudden death. (Hendrix once told Chas Chandler, his first manager, who took him to England and started his career, that if he was going to England then Chandler would have to introduce him to Eric Clapton. Jimi loved to hear Clapton play the blues.) Clapton had told many of his friends that he didn’t expect to live to see his thirtieth birthday. He told his friends that he “wanted a voice as tortured as the chords he wrenched from his guitar, a voice like Ray Charles at the height of his addiction.” When he heard the news of Hendrix’s death he stated, “I went out in the garden and cried all day because he left me behind … Not because he’d gone, but because he hadn’t taken me with him. It made me angry, I wasn’t sad, I was just pissed off.”10
The guitar great had previously mentioned what he intended for his funeral: “I tell you, when I die I’m not going to have a funeral, I’m going to have a jam session. I want people to just play my music, go wild and freak out.”11 After the emotionally moving funeral and burial in Greenwood Memorial Park, Jimi’s friends rented a hall and honored his last request. For a guitarist completely devoted to the blues, and especially to Robert Johnson, it has to be a strange twist of fate that the cemetery that holds Hendrix’s body has the same name as the town in Mississippi in which Robert Johnson died in 1938. Perhaps Robert Johnson would agree with this statement made by Jimi Hendrix: “You have to die before they think you are worth living.” The black cat’s bone and the voodoo chile are now forever joined together at the crossroads of eternity.
In Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “To a Skylark” the poet mentions that “our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.” Perhaps the greatest blues singer to share her pain through her songs was Janis Joplin. Only two weeks following the death of Jimi Hendrix, on October 4, 1969, word came that Joplin had died of a heroin overdose at the Landmark Hotel in Hollywood, California. Janis had left her Port Arthur, Texas, home at the age of seventeen. She then made her way to San Francisco to make it as a singer but returned home that next year. Back in Port Arthur she awaited a marriage that didn’t take place. That was to become the source of her greatest pain, unfulfilled love. At times her fans didn’t realize that her hit song “Piece of My Heart” was truly autobiographical. During high school, she was overweight and also had a bad case of acne. Her classmates referred to her as “pig face.” During her short college career some reports claimed that her fellow students nominated her for “Ugliest Man on Campus.” Janis imagined she could escape from the pain by dulling her senses. Her drinking increased tremendously, but later she would make it a part of her stage act. She was so convincing that she got Southern Comfort to purchase a fur coat for her because of her ringing endorsement of their product. Eventually, she needed much more than hard liquor to buffer her from painful rejection. On that day, she was introduced to “the white lady”—heroin.
In 1967, Joplin left Texas once again, but this time she was to try her hand as the lead vocalist for Big Brother and the Holding Company. Shortly after joining the group, she became a sensation, especially after her performance at the Monterey Pop Festival. Her powerful voice sent chills throughout the crowd as she belted out her trademark “Ball and Chain.” She belted out the blues in the style of her idols, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday. Sadly, her life would also follow in their tragic footsteps. Everyone in attendance that night knew that a star was born. Ironically, three starcrossed superstars were born at that festival. Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin burst across the night sky in Monterey, California, like blazing shooting stars, but just as quickly they were gone.
By 1969, Joplin had left Big Brother and formed her own band, the Kosmic Blues Band. During the fall of that year she was happy, even to the extent of calling City Hall to check on a marriage certificate so that she could marry her new boyfriend, Seth Morgan. She was working on a new album with a new band and she appeared to have every reason to live and finally find the happiness that had so coldly eluded her.
Her critics, however, always seemed to mention that she could never capture the magic of her live performances on tape. This time she was sure that the results would be different. Like many other performers, Joplin now turned to heroin to dull her pain. It helped her deal with what she viewed as rejection and a fear of being alone. On the night of October 3, 1969, the hotel clerk remembered Janis asking for some change for the cigarette machine. She had purchased some high-quality heroin earlier in the day and went to her room to mainline the drug into her waiting but already much abused veins. Then she would simply relax and silently drift away from her anxieties.
When she didn’t appear for the recording session the next day her band became very concerned and checked the hotel. When they entered her room her body was found. She was pronounced dead at 1:40 A.M. from a heroin overdose. Joplin’s body was cremated and her ashes spread about the California coastline. However, there were a few strange ironies concerning her death. The morning of her death she was to finish a vocal track for what was now to be her last song, “Buried Alive in the Blues.” It was never completed. The Landmark Hotel had also earlier been the scene of another rock and roll tragedy. Bobby Fuller (“I Fought the Law”) was found dead in a parked car near that same location in 1966. The common thread that joins Janis to the other members of the club was that she had told her friends many times when they begged her to stop using drugs something to the effect of “Let’s face it, I’ll never see thirty.” Tragically, she was dead right.
Cheri Siddons was married to Bill Siddons, the Doors’ manager. What she remembered the most about James Douglas Morrison was his irresistible grin. She also remembered what would prove to be a prophetic conversation that she had with Morrison on his birthday: “On his twenty-fifth birthday we were walking down the stairs of the Doors’ office and he said to me, ‘Well, I made it to twenty-five, do you think I’ll make it to thirty?’ And we both knew he wouldn’t make it to thirty.”12 A year later, after drinking with some friends, Morrison calmly stated, “You’re drinking with number three.”13 This was a reference to the tragic deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin that had occurred within seventeen days of each other in the fall of 1970. Curiously, Morrison was in Miami standing trial for obscenity charges when he read of Hendrix’s death. He turned to his friends and calmly suggested, “Does anyone believe in omens?”14
Jim Morrison loved to experience life by living at the very edge. He was a rock singer, a poet, and some say a shaman. He supposedly was haunted by the vision he had when he was but four years of age. In “Peace Frog” (Morrison Hotel) and “Dawn’s Highway” (An American Prayer), Morrison tells the story about being with his family as they drove through the desert. At dawn they came across a terrible accident that involved a group of Native American workers. At that time, Morrison was able to see one or two of the dead men’s spirits: “Is that the souls of the ghosts of those dead Indians? … maybe one or two of ’em … were just running around freaking out, and they leaped into my soul. And they are still there.” At times, Morrison felt
that the dying men’s spirit inhabited his own body and became his spiritual guides.
During his concerts, Morrison danced and leaped across the stage. At times he was said to have felt the presence of the Indian shamans controlling his movements. On stage, Jim Morrison controlled an audience like no other singer before or after. His lyrics became at times almost hypnotic and when he called for action the crowd responded. Promoters feared that the Doors’ concerts could easily be turned into riots as Morrison used the stage as his personal soapbox for the spreading of his opinions upon the ills of society and what he saw as a police state. Due to his appeal to the counterculture, the FBI had a very real interest in the “Lizard King.”
The personal side of James Douglas Morrison was very complex. His father was an admiral in the U.S. Navy, but Jim, even at an early age, became a nonconformist. His IQ was rated at 149. He was asked to join the most popular fraternity in high school; however, he declined the invitation. Jim Morrison was a voracious reader. One of his English teachers mentioned that Jim enjoyed reading offbeat books. The teacher wasn’t even sure if the books existed, so she asked a fellow teacher who just happened to be going to the Library of Congress to check and see if the books Jim was reading for his reports actually existed: “I suspected he was making them up, as they were English books on sixteenth-and seventeenth-century demonology. I’d never heard of them, but they existed, and I’m convinced from the paper he wrote that he had read them, and the Library of Congress would’ve been the only source.”15
Take a Walk on the Dark Side Page 23
