Kill the Music: Storybook Perils, Storybook Rescues

As his fame grew, Jimi Hendrix devoted more time and effort to political activism. In 1969, the Federal Bureau of Investigation began its Hendrix file, presumably because of his participation in the US civil rights movement and his financial (and vocal) support of the Black Panthers. He also played for free in a number of benefit concerts, among them one to raise money for the Chicago Seven defense fund.

But as a group of University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) students found out in 1979, the FBI’s interest in Hendrix went beyond passive monitoring. Pursuant to a FOIA request, the school’s newspaper asked the Bureau to release its Hendrix file in order to do a piece on his life. The Feds sent UCSB six pages, each one so heavily redacted as to make them useless. The Bureau cited Executive Order 11652, a Nixonian directive that required the suppression of material harmful to “the interest of national defense of foreign policy,” as the reason for the censorship. On appeal, the FBI reluctantly turned over seven more pages that revealed that the FBI had placed Hendrix on the Security Index.

The FBI’s Security Index was a listing of people whom the Bureau would illegally arrest in the case of national crisis--politically threatening people for whom the Justice Department had no legal grounds to prosecute. Hendrix’s appearance on this list meant that after extensive investigation, the FBI had nothing on him. Nevertheless, they thought of him as a threat to foreign policy, a particularly odd assessment since Hendrix, like most rock stars, had no involvement with US foreign policy.

The FBI almost had grounds to prosecute Hendrix in 1969. In February of that year, Toronto police arrested Hendrix for heroin possession after Pearson Airport security found the narcotic in one of his carry-on bags. Jimi explained that he had just received the drug from “a girl” (she’s never identified) whom he had just met in town. She gave it to him wrapped in a small bag claiming that she “put in something that’s good for colds,” which Hendrix had at the time.

Despite the unbelievable explanation, Toronto authorities bought it, and for good reason. First of all, Hendrix did not use heroin, and testing indicated this. Secondly, there were witnesses to the exchange. Toronto police allowed him to leave the country after posting a mere $10,000 bond, and a jury acquitted him that December.

Had Hendrix landed in the US with the heroin in his possession, the FBI would have then had jurisdiction for an arrest, and the heroin itself could have provided evidence for a successful prosecution. Yet, Hendrix never suspected the Bureau of planting the dope on him. He believed someone else set him up. As Monika Danneman (left) wrote in her banned 1995 biography of Hendrix:

In May 1969 Jimi was arrested at Toronto for possession of drugs. He later told me he believed [his manager, Michael] Jeffery had used a third person to plant the drugs on him—as a warning, to teach him a lesson.

Jeffery 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.... Jeffery 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 Jeffery could use to influence and try to manipulate him.

According to Michael Jeffery's father, sonny boy spent most of his military career in “civvies,” spoke fluent Russian, could rarely talk about his work with him, and moonlighted as a private investigator. One New York firm Jeffery associated with, Seingarten, Weeden & Weiss, had reputed ties to the Mafia. The alleged Mafia connection could explain how Jeffries managed to plant heroin on Hendrix from the other side of the Atlantic It could also explain one of the defining moments in Jimi’s life.

After finally firing Jeffery in August 1969, four men, whom Hendrix regarded as Mafiosos, kidnapped him in New York the following month. As he told his friend and former front man Curtis Knight:

Before I realised what had happened I found myself forcibly abducted by four men. I was blindfolded and gagged and shoved rudely into the back of a car. I couldn't understand what the fuck was going on as I lay there sweating with some one's knee in my back.

I was taken to some deserted building and made to believe that they really intended to hurt me. They never did tell me why they abducted me. The whole thing seemed very mysterious because after a while I realised that if they really had intended to hurt me they would have already done it by this time.

And the whole thing seemed even more mysterious when I was rescued by three men supposedly sent by the management. They really effected a story book rescue.

Hendrix’s rescuers then forced Hendrix, still strapped in a chair, to make peace with his ex-manager over the telephone. Jeffery told him that the kidnappers had sent him the ransom note, hence his calling in the commandos (so to speak). Jeffery then cryptically explained how Jimi’s career affected a number of anonymous people, and that it was paramount to retain his services as manager. Otherwise, without Jeffery there to protect him, Hendrix would be murdered.

After the kidnapping incident, Hendrix correctly predicted to friends that the next time he went home to Seattle, it would be in a pine box. After all, Jimi could see himself handing Jeffery another pink slip. In fact, Hendrix would fire Jeffery again...two days before he died.

To read later posts in this series, click here.