8.2 Pop Heresiarchs: Sammi Redfoot and Her Bad Beau’s Hendrix Assassination Theory
DC punk scene and Riot Grrrl zines
Sammi Redfoot and Her Bad Beau’s Hendrix Assassination Theory: part 2 of 3
In 1986 Sammi had a brief fling with her private tutor, got pregnant and had an abortion. A year later, she was packed off, still a bit shell-shocked, to America in a vain attempt to reconcile with her father. She enrolled in Georgetown University, where she majored in politics and economics, while living a parallel life – like a select few of her fellow students – on the DC punk scene. It was here that she adopted her old alias Redfoot and started wearing thrift-store dresses teamed with white socks and sneakers. She was also introduced to a reinvigorated punk zine culture with a decidedly contemporary feminist slant. Jigsaw, Bikini Girl and Girl Germs were all zines which came out of the radicalised college culture of the Pacific Northwest and ended up in DC as part of the baggage of touring riot grrrl bands. Sammi couldn’t get enough of them. The scrappy Xerox aesthetic was like the face of an old friend while the anarcho-feminist political content, with its raw confessional urgency, connected with her on a deep level.
There were stories on the way sexism was enforced through covert acts of male violence, through street harassment, incest and rape. There were arguments that derogatory labels like ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ could be reclaimed as terms of self-empowerment, as the gays had done with ‘queer’ and the blacks with ‘nigga’. Sammi was especially drawn to the exercises in alternative canon formation, which promoted the importance of British female post-punk bands such as the Slits, the Raincoats and Delta 5. She was disappointed, though, by the room given to Chrissie Hynde, who she felt was too much like Siouxsie Sioux, another daddy’s girl who loved looking good on camera a little too much.
Sammi would have preferred an emphasis on Marianne Faithful, the Swinging London it girl who had walked out on Mick Jagger to live as a heron addict on the streets of Soho. She had destroyed her beauty through an over-indulgence in sex and drugs, ruined her melodic girly singing voice, and then gone on to make one of the most caustic rock albums of all time, Broken English. Marianne Faithful went from rock groupie to rock artist in the course of a gruelling decade. Now that, thought Sammi, was a career worth celebrating.
She produced the ‘Marianne’ issue of her zine, the second issue of I Love Myra, in 1990. It brought her to the attention of Bradley, who cornered her one night in the old 9:30 Club and said he liked the chaotic feel of its design, with its almost illegible hand-written screeds and its arbitrary red, blue and black backgrounds. He said it was a fine example of ‘ecriture feminine’ and Sammi, despite herself, was flattered. In fact, she was so flattered she let him lead her outside the club to an alley near the cavernous J Edgar Hoover FBI Building, where she got on her knees and took his big beautiful cock in her mouth.
Sammi later confided in me that she had fallen hard for Bradley. She was secretly pleased that he managed to make a good impression on her father, who – with the affected Southern gentility of his later years – insisted on calling him her ’beau’. Sammi loved Bradley’s long eyelashes and his shy smile, his intensity and introversion, his grand flashes of temper. She was also attracted to his vulnerability. He used to write these really sappy ballads on his amplified electric guitar, songs about true love and failed romance, the kind of thing Crass had satirised with their trashy give-away song ‘Our Wedding’. When it was time to audition, he gave his songs big political titles like ‘Gulf War Blues’ and ‘Jesus Was An Oil Man Too’. He was surprised that he kept failing to get into grunge bands. But the punks didn’t know what to make of him. Looking back, said Sammi in one of our long late-night phone calls, what was so compelling about him in the early days was that he was his own particular kind of mess. Of course, that in itself was what later repulsed her about him.
Like Sammi, Bradley was a child of divorce. His father Bill worked for the CIA as a film technician. Together, Sammi and Bradley would lie awake at night on the futon, smoke pot and make up wild tales about their fathers working together as a secret team for the American military-industrial complex. First, Frank was organising weapons sales to Iran while Bill was channelling funds to the Contras in Nicaragua. Then, Frank and Bill were together in Panama, as part of the op that blasted ear-splitting rock music at Noriega to force him out of his bolt-hole. The elaboration of this particular fantasy was the trigger for their first break-up.
Bradley said he reckoned the Clash were on the ‘Get Noriega’ playlist. The ‘Frank and Bill’ playlist, said Sammi. Right, right, said Bradley. They should definitely have featured Bad Brains and Minor Threat on it. What about Nirvana? asked Sammi. Or is the chronology not right? She was feeling a bit foolish. Technically feasible, said Bradley, in lordly fashion. But I don’t see Frank and Bill being that hip, do you? They were probably playing Rick fucking Astley, let’s face it. Of course, he said, they should have been playing Hendrix. He was suddenly quite solemn. Like the black US Marines did at the siege of Khe Sanh in Vietnam. They stacked their tape-decks up on the trench walls and bombarded the attacking gooks with those heavy, heavy guitar solos from Purple Haze. Don’t say gooks, said Sammi. It’s dehumanising.
I know, said Bradley. He started to talk about the genius of Hendrix’s sound engineers, men like Roger Mayer, who invented the Octavia, an effects pedal which reproduced the guitar input signal one octave higher, and then mixed the two sounds together with added fuzz. Hendrix called the Octavia the secret of his sound and used the effect extensively on Purple Haze.
Sammi yawned. Somehow, they had got on to Hendrix again, always the favourite subject for one of Bradley’s rock music lectures. Hendrix’s sound engineers, said Bradley, had enabled the rock guitarist to make a real breakthrough by placing an emphasis on the musical possibilities of noise rather than melody. He went on to talk of ‘musique concrete’ – Sammi was beginning to find out how much Bradley loved his little French phrases – and Fluxus. He was in full flow.
Sammi lit a cigarette as Bradley droned on about how the 100-watt Marshall amplifier was a technological invention essential for the evolution of Hendrix’s sound. It was high-volume and high-gain, he said, which enabled Hendrix to modulate the feedback from his guitar and master its use as a sound effect. Hendrix’s drummer had personally introduced him to Jim Marshall when he first came to London from America and formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience. It was one of the great rock encounters, said Bradley, up there with Bowie meeting Ronson or Strummer meeting Jones.
Sammi said that if Bradley were interested in the avant-garde use of noise in rock music, then he should check out the first side of Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band, where Yoko really got into the whole primal scream thing. That album should have been top of the ‘Get Noriega’ playlist, she said. Bradley laughed. He said that 20 minutes of Yoko Ono would be enough to make any man crack.
At that point, Sammi dug her nails into Bradley’s nipples. Hard. He howled. Sammi sat up and straddled him. She said that Yoko was the first girl punk rocker, that she had saved John Lennon from a life of mind-numbing complacency in the corporate rock world. These thoughts weren’t original to Sammi. She was quoting from a Tobi Vail article in an old issue of Bikini Kill. Furthermore, she had never actually listened to Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band. But Bradley wasn’t to know that. And, besides, the Yoko Ono article expressed how she felt about girls being sidelined in the music scene by male rock bores. Bradley said there was nothing wrong with being a rock star. It was a way of connecting with people. He was busy thrusting up inside of her. Sammi ground down on him with the full weight of her hips. She said that he would never be a rock star. He was too much of a little prick. Bradley threw her off the futon. She landed awkwardly and hurt her elbow. Bradley picked up his flannel shirt and stormed out of the bedroom.
When Sammi graduated from Georgetown, she applied for jobs in journalism. Then, her father died of a pulmonary embolism. She refused to go to the funeral. She was too upset. She ignored her mother’s phone calls. She clung to Bradley. They started doing crack cocaine together. He’d score at the Strip and bring back the little bag to their rented room in DC. She’d fashion a pipe from a Bic biro and smoke the little rocks from a plastic soda bottle. Bradley used to strum his guitar and watch while his girlfriend got high.
Sammi called 1992 her lost year. She didn’t go out very much and relied on her boyfriend to make sure the rent was paid out of the small legacy her father had left her. Bradley was now talking about writing a biography of Hendrix, or at least a history of the circumstances surrounding the singer’s unexpected death in London in 1970. Scotland Yard had been prompted to consider reopening the case by Kathy Etchingham, one of Hendrix’s first English girlfriends, a decent sort by most accounts. The coroner had originally returned an open verdict based on a post-mortem which found the musician had choked on his own vomit after over-dosing on barbiturates. But since the declassification of Hendrix’s old FBI file in 1984, rumours had spread that Bureau boss Hoover had subjected him to surveillance for fear of his association with the Black Panther Party, who were Public Enemy Number One in the old man’s book. Bradley picked all this up from his drug buddies standing in line at the Strip. One old junky told him that the CIA had put out a contract on Hendrix as part of their covert assassination programme. It was, apparently, well known.
Bradley wasn’t quite sure if he believed the rumours. But he did think that the riddle of Hendrix’s death could be solved if the police spoke to the last person to see him alive. This was Monika Dannemann, one of his many London girlfriends, the moonstruck Monika, as Bradley called her. He ranted on about Monika as Sammi hit the crack pipe. Hendrix had been approached by the pretty ex-ice skater on tour in Dusseldorf. They went to bed together and she followed him home to London. Is that right? said Sammi. Monika, said Bradley, was a jealous girl, a needy girl, a liar, a stalker and a Vesparax addict. She had driven Hendrix to a party in Great Cumberland Place in London’s West End on the night of his death. He made her wait outside while he went in to spend time with Devon Wilson, his long-time on-again off-again girlfriend from New York. Classy dude!, said Monika. Anyway, said Bradley, Monika kicked up such a fuss in the street outside that Hendrix had to leave the party to calm her down. She ended up dragging him back to her grey little basement flat at the Samarkand Hotel in Notting Hill. This would have been at 3 o’clock in the morning. Sammi inhaled the smoke and nodded. How rude of Monika, she said.
Yeah? said Bradley. Anyway, they crashed out together fully-clothed. Then later that day at 11.18am, Monika phoned for an ambulance, saying her boyfriend was lying in bed, unconscious and unresponsive. She said that ten minutes later she was helping a groggy Hendrix into the back of the ambulance. But that’s contradicted by statements from the ambulance crew, Bradley went on. They arrived in Lansdowne Crescent to find themselves confronted by the two decaying multi-storey buildings of the Samarkand Hotel and no Monika. The door to her basement flat was open and the gas fire was still lit. But Hendrix’s body was cold and covered in dried vomit. He had been dead for many hours. So what really happened that day? asked Bradley. The bitch killed him, said Sammi. It’s obvious. She was mumbling.
Maybe, maybe, said Bradley. There are stories that before she phoned for an ambulance, like hours before, closer to dawn, she had phoned Hendrix’s management. They sent round a clean-up crew to get rid of the hard drugs and other incriminating evidence before any police arrived. Sammi nodded off. So, yeah, maybe.
Bradley developed his Hendrix assassination theory over the succeeding months. It all hinged on Hendrix’s business manager, Michael Jeffrey, the shady British character who handled his money. Bradley found a clipping in the Library of Congress which had a photo of Jeffrey. It showed a mysterious fellow in a suit and regimental tie, his face obscured by dark glasses, an operator, a spiv. He had apparently worked with MI6 in Western Europe during the 1950s and boasted to business rivals of his CIA contacts, his mafia connections. Bradley discovered that Jeffrey had taken most of Hendrix’s money and laundered it through the same banking system in the Bahamas used by the CIA. Soon he convinced himself that Jeffrey had picked up the CIA hit job on Hendrix, the one which his dubious buddy on the Strip had told him about. Sammi remembered that Bradley used to pace the room as he theorised, shambling around in ever-decreasing circles. Hendrix had got wise to his manager’s corrupt dealings, said Bradley, and by April 1970 was talking about breaking his contract with him. The contract was due to last until 1972 and so Jeffrey was looking at a two year loss of earnings from his 20% share in Hendrix’s royalties and publishing rights.
The over-dose was no accident, said Sammi, one eye still open. Right, right, said Bradley. Monika was probably an old CIA honey-trap asset from West Germany, first hired by Jeffrey to spy on Hendrix and keep him dosed up on drugs, then directed by him to poison Hendrix and make it look like an accident.
Hey, that’s my theory!, said Sammi. Except maybe, you know, Monika didn’t need a man to tell her to do the job, some fucking CIA clown. She did it herself, okay. Maybe, said Sammi, Hendrix was such a pain-in-the-ass boyfriend, such a dick, that she just decided to off him on general principle, to make a point. Like when Valerie Solanas shot Warhol. Maybe Hendrix was stealing Monika’s ideas, huh? Sammi asked Bradley if he’d ever thought of that!
Sammi told me that was when the idea came to her for an issue of I Love Myra dedicated to the girls in Hendrix’s life. The ‘Hendrix Girl Band’ issue of I Love Myra. She knew from Bradley’s background chatter that Hendrix, like Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page, was almost constantly in the company of groupies throughout his career. Sammi wanted to reclaim the term ‘groupie’ and turn it into a badge of respect, an honorific, in recognition of the vital and undervalued role these women had played in the 1960s rock revolution. She also wanted to give Hendrix groupies like Monika and Kathy the chance to do a Marianne Faithfull, to reinvent themselves as rock stars in their own right. And the only way that could happen was in ‘what if?’-style fantasy. So Sammi made up alternative biographies for Monika and Kathy as members of a fictitious girl group who in her mind represented the feminist alternative to the cock-rock of the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
What if Monika had played drums for the Hendrix Girl Band and Kathy had played bass? thought Sammi. And what if they backed not Jimi Hendrix, but his old New York flame Devon Wilson, who by all accounts was glamorous, aggressive and a little bit crazy. Now, how cool would that have been? Sammi wrote a whole story about it. She also, in passing, lamented the actual fate of Devon, a Milwaukee runaway who flitted between Jagger and Hendrix and gave inspiration to both, before getting hooked on junk and occultism and dying a lonely death in New York in 1971. Sammi noted that Devon was reputedly a member of the Black Panthers and mounted fierce guard over who came and went when Hendrix was jamming in the studio. Sammi speculated that it was Devon who had radicalised Hendrix, pushing him to oppose the Vietnam War and get more involved with black musicians and funk music after the break-up of the Experience.
Next
Sammi Redfoot and Her Bad Beau’s Hendrix Assassination Theory: part 3 of 3