Jimi Hendrix’s stepsister Janie Hendrix refused to believe her brother had passed away on the day he died – because the family had been targeted by a death hoax just a month earlier.

Janie, now the president and CEO of Experience Hendrix, was just nine years old when a classmate broke the news that the superstar had died on September 18, 1970.

She refused to believe her friend’s claims, and rushed home for reassurance – but was left devastated to learn the news was true.

Hendrix tells Britain’s The Sun, “I didn’t believe it because a month before someone had called the house saying Jimi had died but, of course, it wasn’t true. People did cruel things like that.

“So I walked home, and thought, ‘If there are lots of cars outside our house then it’s true.’ I walked slower and slower and, as I turned the corner, the street was flooded with cars.

“My dad hugged me and took me to his bedroom. He was crying and said, ‘Jimi passed away. Life will never be the same.’”

Hendrix was 27 when he choked to death on his own vomit in a London hotel, but the exact circumstances of the tragedy have remained a mystery.

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“Well, I was standing on stage because I was really excited because I had just won the award,” she told reporters. “And then I was really excited because Kanye West was on stage. And then I wasn’t so excited anymore after that.”

That’s a nice way of saying she was mortified and devastated.

Swift, 19, said she has no bad feelings toward Kanye. In fact, she used to be a fan.

“I don’t know him, and I’ve never met him, so …” she said. “I don’t want to start anything because I had a great night tonight.”

She also thanked Beyonce (who won video of the year), who invited her back onstage to finish her speech.

“Before the talented artist, the superstar, she’s always been a great person,” Taylor said. “And I just, I thought I couldn’t love Beyonce more, then tonight happened and it was just wonderful.”

(Updated 1:20 p.m.) According to TMZ, Beyonce’s camp went into remedy mode stat.

Almost “immediately” after her subway car performance was over, Beyonce’s dad Mathew Knowles talked to Taylor outside her dressing room

According to Taylor’s rep, Mathew wanted to see how Taylor was doing and figure out a way to make up for it that night.

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Members of the band Blink-182 dimmed the lights for a tearful moment of silence at a concert for their fallen friend DJ AM.

“This is really hard for us on stage,” said bass player Mark Hoppus as the three band members bowed their heads and cried at the concert in Hartford over the weekend.

“We are doing our very best to get through this show, but right now it’s very hard,” said Hoppus.

DJ AM, whose real name was Adam Goldstein, died in bed at his SoHo pad on Friday of an apparent drug overdose.

The recovering crack addict was found with prescription drugs and a crack pipe nearby and a near-empty bag of crack under his body.

The medical examiner has not yet ruled a cause of death pending further test results.

Goldstein’s body was released to Frank E. Campbell funeral chapel on Madison Ave. yesterday morning.

The deejay was a longtime friend and collaborator of Blink-182. They formed an even stronger bond after Goldstein and the band’s drummer, Travis Barker, survived a 2008 plane crash that killed the four others onboard.

Goldstein and Barker suffered second- and third-degree burns, but made full recoveries.

Soon after the crash, Goldstein wrote that he lived every day with “the guilt and grief of what happened that night, what I saw, who was lost and why I was spared.”

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Her smile is radiant, her eyes no longer bloodshot and her once-skeletal frame is elegant again.

Billed as the comeback of the century, Whitney Houston’s long-awaited return to the microphone could mark her salvation. The troubled diva, who had been trapped in a squalid spiral of substance abuse, is putting out her first album in seven years today. Friends believe the release caps the rescue of an American icon whose talent was nearly snuffed out.

“We all crossed our fingers that her beautiful story would end happily,” said actor and musician Jamie Foxx, speaking about the new R&B collection, “I Look to You.”

“This is a new beginning.”

Houston credits her 15-year-old daughter, Bobbi Kristina, with giving her the confidence to try to resurrect her career.

“She was with me every step of the way,” the 46-year-old former icon has revealed. “She encourages me and inspires me. When I look at her eyes and I see myself, I go, ‘Okay. I can do this. I can do this.’”

If anyone could do with another chance, it’s Houston.

Many people are still shocked that the one-time goody two shoes, responsible for an astonishing 170 million record and video sales, could fall so spectacularly from grace.

Now apparently free from the drugs and alcohol that brought her down — as well as 180 pounds of useless flab in the form of thuggish ex-husband Bobby Brown — she is determined to reclaim her self-respect and the love of fans.

Houston’s rehabilitation involves the inevitable TV interview with Oprah Winfrey, scheduled for Sept. 14. The performer is expected to reflect on how her charmed life was rudely interrupted.

Born into music royalty in Newark (mom Cissy was a Grammy Award-winning soul and gospel singer, Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick were cousins, Aretha Franklin was her godmother), she was cosseted by a deeply religious family who closely monitored her early career.

Houston declined a number of recording offers until 1983, when music mogul Clive Davis, then head of Arista Records, offered her a 20-year recording contract.

Houston, also in demand as a model, went on to win six Grammys, was named by Rolling Stone as one of its “100 Greatest Singers of All Time” and starred opposite Kevin Costner in a 1992 romantic thriller, “The Bodyguard.” Further movie projects included the lead in the critically acclaimed “Waiting to Exhale” and The Preacher’s Wife” with Denzel Washington.

But it was her heart-stopping, supercharged voice — belting out chart-topping hits like “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” and “Greatest Love of All” — that made her Forbes magazine’s highest-earning African-American woman in 1987.
Then she wed Brown. Six years her junior, the rapper had a bad-boy image at odds with his gorgeous bride’s. The union had mismatch written all over it.

Reports soon surfaced about the couple’s erratic behavior. There were claims of domestic violence, drug use and unsuccessful spells in rehab. In 2000, Houston was fired from the Oscars telecast because she kept fluffing her lines. A year later, she appeared at a concert in New York looking so thin and disoriented, shocking headlines implied she was close to death.

In 2002, in a now-infamous interview with Diane Sawyer coinciding with the release of her last album, a jittery Houston scoffed at claims she smoked crack.

“I make too much money to ever smoke crack,” she declared. “Let’s get that straight, okay? We don’t do that. Crack is whack!”

In 2005, she agreed to “star” with her husband in his train-wreck reality series “Being Bobby Brown.”

A few years earlier, her father, John, had warned: “Stick with him [Brown], and you’re gonna die.” His prediction almost came true in March 2006, when she hit rock bottom. The National Enquirer published pictures of Houston’s bathroom in Atlanta, a scene littered with the drug paraphernalia of a junkie.

Mercifully, the horrendous publicity proved to be a wakeup call, the start of a long trek toward stability. Eighteen months later, Houston finally divorced Brown and won custody of their daughter.

She reconnected with her Svengali, Davis, 77, now head of Sony Music. With the help of teen Bobbi, he has led her back into the light.

“Whitney is Whitney,” Davis told MTV, reaffirming his faith in his protegée. “And there ain’t nobody like her.”

Veteran singer Freda Payne, a Houston friend best-known for the hit “Band of Gold,” endorsed her return to the recording studio.

“The public will embrace her because we miss the Whitney we adored,” said Payne. “I’m so happy she is coming back. She is in my prayers.”

And in the prayers of all her fans.

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It’s no surprise that most celebrities consider themselves above the law.

But for Chris Brown, who was recently found guilty of brutally assaulting ex girlfriend Rihanna, he is also learning that sometimes in life what goes around, comes around – even if you’re a famous RnB star.

In these never seen before pictures taken in February this year – the same month in which the violent attack took place – Chris can be seen illegally spray painting a wall in downtown Los Angeles.

And now the shamed singer, who is facing 1,400 hours of community service, will be expected to wash cars – and remove graffiti from walls.

The footage shows Chris engaging in the illegal activity as he paints a face, before tagging his nickname, Breezy, for unplanned promotional shots by the LA river, near his recording studio.

Earlier this month, a judge sentenced Chris to five years’ probation and six months’ community labor for the beating of the Umbrella singer and ordered hm to stay away from his former girlfriend for the next five years.

LA Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg told Brown that he could be sent to state prison if he violated any terms of his sentence, including an order to stay 90 metres away from Rihanna unless they’re attending music industry events.

Brown will serve his sentence in his home state – Virginia – and his community labor will be overseen by the police chief in Richmond.

The judge said she wanted to ensure that Brown, 20, performs physical labor instead of community service, such as mentoring young people. He will also undergo a year of domestic violence counseling.

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A judge on Tuesday sentenced Chris Brown to five years’ probation and six months’ community labor for the beating of Rihanna and ordered the R&B singer to stay away from his former girlfriend for the next five years.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg told Brown that he could be sent to state prison if he violated any terms of his sentence, including an order to stay 100 yards away from Rihanna unless they’re attending music industry events.

A probation report prepared for Tuesday’s sentencing describes two previous violent incidents. It said the first happened about three months before the February beating while the couple was traveling in Europe; Rihanna slapped Brown during an argument, and he shoved her into a wall. In the second instance, Brown allegedly broke the front and passenger side windows on a Range Rover they were driving while visiting Barbados, Rihanna’s home country. Neither attack was reported, the probation report states.

Brown will serve his sentence in his home state – Virginia – and his community labor will be overseen by the police chief in Richmond.

The judge said she wanted to ensure that Brown, 20, performs physical labor instead of community service, such as mentoring young people. He will also undergo a year of domestic violence counseling.

Rihanna did not attend Tuesday’s sentencing.

At one point, Brown, who was accompanied by his mother, agreed to the terms of the sentence before Schnegg had finished going through them all.

The hearing had been planned for Thursday afternoon, but Brown’s lawyer, Mark Geragos, asked to move up the singer’s sentencing to Tuesday. A previous attempt to sentence Brown was postponed when Schnegg said she hadn’t received adequate assurances that Brown would perform physical labor if allowed to serve probation in Virginia.

The judge said she was satisfied with a letter presented by Geragos that Richmond Police Chief Bryan T. Norwood will directly oversee Brown’s labor program.

After Brown pleaded guilty to felony assault in June, Schnegg ordered the pair to stay away from each other and to not contact one another. Her order Tuesday essentially extended that until Brown completes his sentence.

Donald Etra, Rihanna’s attorney, has said he didn’t think the strict rules were necessary, but that he and Rihanna favored a less-stringent ruling that simply ordered Brown not to annoy, harass or molest the 21-year-old pop singer. He said after Tuesday’s hearing that Rihanna did not object to the stay-away order, which allows the former couple to be within 10 yards of each other if they are attending music industry events.

Schnegg said she was aware of reports that Brown had been spotted on several occasions in the same places as Rihanna.

“I am not amused with the chatter that has been on the airwaves and any violation of your probation in this case comes with the potential for state prison,” Schnegg told Brown.

A felony charge of making criminal threats was dropped during Tuesday’s sentencing.

“We feel that the sentence for Mr. Brown is an equitable one,” said Sandi Gibbons, a district attorney’s spokeswoman. “He has his future in his hands. He has control of his fate.”

Gibbons said Brown’s charge could eventually be reduced to a misdemeanor if he completes his sentence.

Brown was arrested Feb. 8, hours after he was accused of beating Rihanna.

The attack occurred in Los Angeles’ Hancock Park neighborhood as Brown drove a rented sports car. A Los Angeles police detective described a brutal attack in a search warrant affidavit filed in the case, stating Brown hit, choked and bit Rihanna and tried at one point to push her from the car.

Brown’s career suffered after his arrest, with sponsors dropping him and radio stations refusing to play his music. Both he and Rihanna had to cancel several high-profile appearances, including planned performances at the Grammy Awards the day of the attack.

In a probation report released after the sentencing, Brown is quoted as saying he was “depressed” since the attack and that he “‘does not want to carry on that cycle.’”

The report included letters of support for Brown from RCA/Jive Label Group Chairman Barry Weiss as well as an entertainment lawyer and a pastor.

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When she appears on “Good Morning America” in September, instead of singing live, her performance will be pre-taped the day before. “Lots of singers don’t like to perform at 7:30 in the morning,” explained an insider. Lesser stars would be forced to perform live, but Houston is such an icon, the producers couldn’t say no. “She’s the music ‘get’ of the season. They are so happy to have her,” our source said.

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LeAnn Rimes opened up about relationships gone wrong during her performance at the Deer Valley Music Festival in Utah Saturday night.

“It is inevitable that sometimes in a relationship, you will have your heart broken,” said the singer, who has been separated from her husband of seven years, Dean Sheremet.

“Sometimes you don’t do anything, but sometimes you want revenge. Sometimes you don’t, and that’s when you just leave it in God’s hands and know that He will take care of it,” she said before breaking into her song, “God Takes Care of Your Kind.”

Rimes, 26, was not wearing her wedding ring on stage.

On Saturday, a source told Us Rimes and Sheremet are “leading separate lives…but still in each other’s lives as best friends. They are not divorcing yet, but working though things and taking time apart…while they figure things out.”

Sheremet posted on Twitter shortly after: “Thanks to everyone for all the support through a very difficult time!”

The separation news comes the same week Us Weekly reports Rimes is still carrying on an affair with Eddie Cibrian. (Us first broke the news of their relationship in March.)

Cibrian’s wife, Brandi Glanville, confirms to Us she left him as a result.

“Eddie and I have decided to take some time apart,” says Glanville, mother of Mason, 6, and Jake, 2. “I want to do what is best for our children. Eddie and LeAnn [Rimes] deserve each other.”

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