'Red wine could have led to Jimi Hendrix's death', says close friend Meic Stevens | Daily Mail Online
'Red wine could have led to Jimi Hendrix's death', says close friend Meic Stevens
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'Jimi Hendrix didn't know how to drink red wine', says close friend Meic Stevens
The doctor who attempted to save Jimi Hendrix on the night that the guitarist died said it was 'plausible' he was murdered because he 'drowned in red wine'.
But the iconic musician may have choked and died because he did not know how to drink the substance, close friend Meic Stevens has revealed.
Speaking publicly for the first time about the night leading to Hendrix's death, the singer-songwriter said the star was mixing red wine with lager and drinking the concoction from a pint glass.
He said: ‘I was with Jimi Hendrix the night he died. He had been drinking red wine with me - even though he had never drunk red wine in his life before.
The 69-year-old claimed he and Hendrix had been having a night out with Marmalade stars Gary Farr and Jimmy Cregan, as well as Eric Clapton, at the infamous Scotch of St James bar in Mayfair.
In an interview for Radio 4 documentary Free Wales Harmony, Mr Stevens claimed Hendrix was intrigued that he was drinking Louis St George Burgundy and wanted to try it.
He added: ‘[Hendrix] was drinking lager or some kind of beer and he just poured the wine in to the pint glass. I don’t think he had ever drunk red wine before – he didn’t know how to drink it. 
‘But he seemed okay. He seemed to be alright. But the next day I woke up late and somebody phoned and said Jimi’s dead. Apparently he choked on his own vomit.
Close friend: Stevens was with Hendrix the night he died and said he was mixing red wine and lager
It had long been claimed that Hendrix – one of the best loved guitarists in the history of rock – died aged 27 from choking on vomit after a drugs overdose in 1970.
But in 2009, the doctor who attempted to revive him at the now closed St Mary Abbotts Hospital in Kensington admitted it was 'plausible' that he was murdered.
John Bannister said that medical evidence was consistent with claims in a book that Hendrix was killed on the orders of his manager, Mike Jeffery.
James 'Tappy' Wright, a former road manager who worked for Jeffery, wrote in his memoir Rock Roadie, that in the early hours of September 18, 1970, a gang into the London hotel room where Hendrix was staying with his girlfriend, Monika Dannemann, and forced sleeping pills and wine down his throat until he drowned.
Back in the day: Hendrix and Stevens were good friends
He claimed Jeffery, beset with debts, had ordered the hit after taking a $2 million insurance policy out on the musician - telling him he was 'worth more dead than alive'.
More than she knew? Hendrix with girlfriend Monika Dannemann
Wright said Jeffery confessed to him he had ordered the attack before he died in an aircraft collision.
Mr Bannister agreed that the description of the murder "sounded plausible because of the volume of wine”.
He said: ‘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. 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.’
Former ice-skating instructor Miss Dannemann committed suicide in 1996 - many fans and conspiracy theorists were convinced she knew more about Hendrix’s death than she ever revealed.