James ‘Tappy’ Wright, author of Rock Roadie, claims that Hendrix’s manager, Michael Jeffery, made a drunken confession to killing the American guitar legend a year after the star’s death in September 1970.

Wright claims Jeffery was worried that Hendrix was preparing to find a new manager when their deal was due to end in December 1970. According to Wright, Jeffery said he went to the hotel room and stuffed Hendrix full of pills and wine.

Hendrix choked to death on his own vomit in London’s Samarkand Hotel when he was 27. The official cause of death was “barbiturate intoxication and inhalation of vomit,” but the coroner recorded an open verdict as the exact circumstances of his death weren’t clear.

Wright also claims that Jeffery told him he had taken out a life insurance policy on Hendrix worth $2 million with Jeffery as beneficiary. Had the cause of death been suicide it would have given the insurers an escape clause.

An ambulance crew found Hendrix’s body in the room of Monika Dannemann, a girl he had known for just a few days, although it’s not known who had made the emergency call.

Wright claims Jeffery made the confession at his apartment in 1971, two years before he died in a plane crash.

“I can still hear that conversation, see the man I’d known for so much of my life, his face pale, hand clutching at his glass in sudden rage,” Wright says in the book.

He says Jeffery told him: “I had to do it, Tappy. You understand, don’t you? I had to do it. You know damn well what I’m talking about.”