Eric Barrett, the man who spent two years at Jimi Hendrix's side as his roadie and confidant, has broken decades of silence in a new memoir, and the rock legend's final words to him had nothing to do with music.
Barrett's book, Experienced: On the Road with Jimi Hendrix and Beyond, recounts the harrowing scene at Hendrix's last official concert on the Isle of Fehmarn, a German island where hundreds of Hells Angels overran the festival, chased off security, and, by Barrett's account, beat and robbed fans who had been camping out. Hendrix took one look at the mayhem and retreated to his room alone and sober before taking the stage.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Barrett described the concert and the minutes after it as the most dangerous of his career, and the last time he ever spoke to Hendrix face to face.
The crowd at the Isle of Fehmarn was hostile. Barrett recalled that the outlaw motorcycle club had seized control of the venue, and the atmosphere was menacing before Hendrix ever plugged in. Hendrix addressed the crowd bluntly from the stage:
"I don't give a f--- if you boo, as long as you boo in key, you mothers."
He finished his set and signed off simply: "Thank you, goodbye. Peace!" But peace was not what waited for him offstage.
Barrett told Fox News Digital that the Hells Angels surrounded the band's two getaway cars. They did not want the musicians to leave. They wanted the group to stay and party. Barrett described what happened next:
"I saw a Hells Angel about to hit [tour manager] Gerry Stickells over the head with this baton. I put my arm up to take the blow. I nearly passed out from the pain, but imagine if it had landed on Gerry's skull? We managed to get inside the car. Jimi kept looking at me because he saw me take the blow. He just said to me, 'Are you OK, Eric? Are you OK?' He kept asking me if I was OK. That's just the kind of man he was. And... that was the last thing he ever said to me."
Five words, "Are you OK, Eric?", from a man worried about his roadie's broken arm while a mob closed in around them. Barrett says that exchange captures Hendrix more honestly than any biography has managed.
Days later, Hendrix was dead. He was 27 years old. Barrett recounted the morning of September 18, 1970, when Hendrix was found unresponsive at his girlfriend Monika Dannemann's apartment in the Samarkand Hotel in London. Barrett said Dannemann told people Hendrix had taken nine of her sleeping pills, powerful German tranquilizers, by her description, and that she could not wake him.
Dannemann called Eric Burdon, the Animals frontman and a close friend of Hendrix. Barrett recounted Burdon's reaction: "He screamed at her, 'Call the f-----g ambulance!'"
Barrett's memoir lays out the sequence plainly:
"The paramedics arrived but couldn't revive Jimi. They carried him out on a stretcher to the ambulance, assuring Monika that he was going to be all right. Either lying in bed on his back or on the way to the hospital, Jimi threw up on himself. The post-mortem concluded that Jimi had died of asphyxia while intoxicated with barbiturates."
Barrett told Fox News Digital he was about 24 years old when it happened. He walked through London "in a fog." He called it a stupid, tragic accident, and he has spent the decades since pushing back on anyone who says otherwise.
In 2009, former roadie James "Tappy" Wright published a memoir called Rock Roadie alleging that Hendrix's manager, Mike Jeffery, had confessed to killing the guitarist. The claim gain tabloid attention and fed conspiracy theories that have circulated ever since. Barrett rejects it flatly.
"I don't believe for a second that Mike Jeffery was the cause of Jimi's death. I just don't believe it. The circumstances don't add up. And I was told by so many people that Tappy only wrote that to try and sell books. But I've never believed it. I will never believe it. I was there, and right now I'm probably the last man standing. All the lads are passing. So no, I wouldn't believe that for a second."
Jeffery himself died in a plane crash near Nantes, France, in 1973, unable to confirm or deny Wright's allegation. Dannemann, meanwhile, was found guilty of contempt of court in a long-running legal dispute with Kathy Etchingham, another former girlfriend of Hendrix. Two days after that verdict, Dannemann died in an apparent suicide in 1996 at age 50.
Barrett wrote in his memoir that Hendrix's death reminded him of a time he himself took too much Mandrax and his own girlfriend could not wake him. "It was easily done and could've happened to any of us in Jimi's group of friends," he wrote. "That it happened to Jimi himself was heartbreaking. But I've never heard anything to make me think Jimi's death was anything other than what it appeared."
Barrett's memoir is not all darkness. He spent two years, 1968 to 1970, at Hendrix's side, and the stories he tells paint a picture of a man who was generous, insecure, and startlingly humble for someone who could set a guitar on fire and make it sound like a hymn.
Barrett recalled a birthday spent at a house in Benedict Canyon. Hendrix came out to the pool in velvet pants and no shirt, called Barrett over, and handed him $500, a large sum at the time.
"He smiled and went, 'Happy birthday, man. Here's some money. Go and buy yourself something you really want.'"
Barrett spent every dollar at North Beach Leathers, a shop where Hendrix himself had bought clothes. He came back wearing a long leather coat. Hendrix loved it. "Wow, that's a coat!" he said. "I wish I had seen that before you."
Barrett also described Hendrix's awe at meeting Paul McCartney. "He's gasping, 'It's Paul McCartney!'" Barrett recalled. "He was just a shy man who didn't know how to take the accolades of his talent."
On a plane after a show, Hendrix turned to Barrett and asked a question that Barrett still finds hard to believe: "Eric, what do you think, will they remember me?"
"I was flabbergasted. I went, 'Will they remember you? You're huge over here.' But he was so insecure. 'Are you sure, Eric? What if the kids don't come?' I just told him, 'When it comes to success, you have nothing to worry about.' That was Jimi, a gift to the Earth from the Lord. And I miss him."
Barrett acknowledged that for decades he misled reporters about Hendrix's drug use. He said he wanted to protect the guitarist's memory. But age changed his thinking.
"I was, what, 24 when he passed? I didn't want to besmirch his memory. So I lied. I just wanted people to see him in a good light. But I came to realize as I got older that I didn't have to lie. Yes, he took drugs. Did he take heroin? I've never seen heroin anywhere near him. I've worked on many backstages for almost 50 years. I know it's a drug that has killed a lot of musicians. But I don't believe Jimi was taking it. He smoked pot. He took a lot of LSD. He took pills. But I don't believe he was into heroin."
After Hendrix's death, Barrett went on to work with Madonna, David Bowie, and Aerosmith across a career spanning nearly five decades behind the scenes. He calls himself "probably the last man standing" from Hendrix's inner circle.
The man who took a baton for a tour manager, who lied for decades to protect a friend, and who now puts the truth on paper at the end of a long career, Barrett's account is worth hearing precisely because he waited until he had nothing left to sell but honesty.
