The Big Hurt: Pratt falls

This comment is posted on behalf of James 'Tappy' Wright author of Rock Roadie. These are his answers. Check with Borkowski PR in the UK for confirmation. "You say that my claims are unlikely but I knew what Mike Jeffrey had done and I kept quiet for all this time because I was terrified. It wasn’t just me and him involved – the Mafia were part of this and Mike owed them money. He was paying out $30,000 a month to pay back the money he’d borrowed – I know this because I drove Bob Levine out to New Jersey to borrow it for him. I was one of his closest employees. If I hadn’t kept quiet, you’d have been reading about me in the obituaries. All this happened in 1973, not 1971 as has been reported, just months before Mike died in a plane crash. "I waited to tell the truth because I was scared and there were people still alive who were involved. Some of them could still be alive today. I started to write the book ten years ago because Rod Weinberg told me I had a moral obligation to get the truth out there – he was right, but it would have been suicide not to wait. After talking to Rod I realised that it was my duty to set the record straight. That’s why I started writing the book ten years ago. "Mike Jeffrey had Jimi killed because he needed the money. Jimi’s girlfriend Devon tried to take him away from Mike and she died – I believe she was thrown off the roof of the Chelsea Hotel. I don’t think she just fell. If I’d said anything before now, that could have been me. "This is not about some broke roadie cashing in on a story. I’m comfortably off. It’s about a moral obligation. Of course I’d like the book to sell, but it’s not about the money. It’s about getting the truth out there. I was Mike Jeffrey’s longest serving employee, right from before The Animals were even called that – there’s no story about Hendrix without the Animals. What happened to Jimi Hendrix is not the only story in the book, but it was important to tell it. "I remember all these things happening. I started writing the books ten years ago and I have thought long and hard about getting every memory down. I never took drugs during the 60s – except once, when Eric Burdon spiked me with acid. Girls, yes I slept with a lot of girls. But I never deliberately took drugs. So my memory is damned good and what gaps there were I filled in by talking to all the people who were involved and thinking back on what happened. You look at all the Hendrix books that have come out in the last 40 years and it’s all the same regurgitated shit. I knew the right people to ask and with their help I have remembered most of it. "I’ve also been asked to think about the past a lot since those days. The papers in the North East of England come to me regularly for anecdotes when people like Elvis and Ike Turner die – all the people I met and worked with. I have kept the memories alive over the years."