Lotis
07-21-2009, 10:34 AM
Jimi Hendrix's doctor says guitarist 'may have been murdered'
Jimi Hendrix and the Experience: guitar-burning guitar gods or self-indulgent histrionic hippies?
John Bannister says the singer 'drowned in a massive amount of red wine'
The doctor who tended to Jimi Hendrix on the night he died in 1970 says it is "plausible" that the iconic guitarist was murdered.
John Bannister was speaking in relation to claims in a new book written by Hendrix's former roadie that his manager Mike Jeffery had had the star killed.
In his book 'Rock Roadie', James 'Tappy' Wright says that Jeffery admitted having Hendrix murdered shortly before he himself died in an aircraft accident.
He alleges that Jeffery hired a gang to break into Hendrix's Notting Hill hotel room and force sleeping pills and wine down his throat.
Bannister, who was the on-call registrar at the now defunct St Mary Abbots Hospital in Kensington on September 18, the day of Hendrix's death, has now backed up the roadie's theory, saying it: "sounded plausible because of the volume of wine" found in Hendrix's lungs and on his body.
"The amount of wine that was over him was just extraordinary. Not only was it saturated right through his hair and shirt but his lungs and stomach were absolutely full of wine. I have never seen so much wine," The Times reports Bannister as saying.
"We had a sucker that you put down into his trachea, the entrance to his lungs and to the whole of the back of his throat. We kept sucking him out and it kept surging and surging. He had already vomited up masses of red wine and I would have thought there was half a bottle of wine in his hair. He had really drowned in a massive amount of red wine."
Wright says that Jeffery told him that Hendrix was "worth more to him dead than alive", and had filed a $2m life insurance policy on the guitarist shortly before his death.
source: nme.com (http://www.nme.com/news/jimi-hendrix/46213)
Jimi Hendrix and the Experience: guitar-burning guitar gods or self-indulgent histrionic hippies?
John Bannister says the singer 'drowned in a massive amount of red wine'
The doctor who tended to Jimi Hendrix on the night he died in 1970 says it is "plausible" that the iconic guitarist was murdered.
John Bannister was speaking in relation to claims in a new book written by Hendrix's former roadie that his manager Mike Jeffery had had the star killed.
In his book 'Rock Roadie', James 'Tappy' Wright says that Jeffery admitted having Hendrix murdered shortly before he himself died in an aircraft accident.
He alleges that Jeffery hired a gang to break into Hendrix's Notting Hill hotel room and force sleeping pills and wine down his throat.
Bannister, who was the on-call registrar at the now defunct St Mary Abbots Hospital in Kensington on September 18, the day of Hendrix's death, has now backed up the roadie's theory, saying it: "sounded plausible because of the volume of wine" found in Hendrix's lungs and on his body.
"The amount of wine that was over him was just extraordinary. Not only was it saturated right through his hair and shirt but his lungs and stomach were absolutely full of wine. I have never seen so much wine," The Times reports Bannister as saying.
"We had a sucker that you put down into his trachea, the entrance to his lungs and to the whole of the back of his throat. We kept sucking him out and it kept surging and surging. He had already vomited up masses of red wine and I would have thought there was half a bottle of wine in his hair. He had really drowned in a massive amount of red wine."
Wright says that Jeffery told him that Hendrix was "worth more to him dead than alive", and had filed a $2m life insurance policy on the guitarist shortly before his death.
source: nme.com (http://www.nme.com/news/jimi-hendrix/46213)