UK trial opens in dispute over Jimi Hendrix recordings

A legal dispute over the Jimi Hendrix Experience recordings went to trial in London. Photo / Getty Images

A legal dispute over the rights to recordings made by the 1960s British-American rock band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, has gone to trial at the High Court in London.

Owners of the estates of Hendrix’s British bandmates, bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, are suing Sony Music Entertainment UK arguing they were shut out of royalties for decades despite the continued commercial use of the band’s recordings.

They say they are entitled to copyright and performers’ rights on three albums recorded in the 1960s by the Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland.

At issue in the liability-only trial which commenced on Tuesday is whether contracts written for the era of vinyl records also apply to digital uses, such as streaming, and whether new performers’ rights, created in UK law decades after the band split, mean the Redding and Mitchell estates merit a payment they say never arrived.

If the claimants succeed, a separate trial will later determine damages.

Redding and Mitchell, who died in the 2000s, formed the band with American rock legend Hendrix in 1966.

The group broke up shortly before Hendrix, the famed guitarist from Seattle, died after a drug overdose in September 1970.

“Both men died in relative poverty, having earned almost nothing from the recordings that defined their careers and their lives,” the claimants’ lawyers said in written submissions.

The pair was “marginalised” by producers, administrators of the Hendrix Estate and now, by a “major multinational which refuses to recognise or remunerate their copyright and performers’ rights”, the claimants’ submission added.

Sony Music UK rejects the claim.

It argues that ownership of the copyright to the sound recordings lay with producers, not musicians under a 1960s agreement, and that releases signed in the 1970s granted consent for the recordings to be exploited “by any means and method whether then or thereafter known,” effectively settling the issue decades ago.

The claimants counter that digital exploitation, including streaming, could not have been contemplated when those releases were signed.

The trial is due to conclude on December 18 with a judgment expected in writing at a later date.

-Agence France-Presse