Are the estates of Jimi Hendrix’s bandmates entitled to royalties from the rock legend’s catalog? The thorny legal question will be decided at a trial that began this week in London’s High Court.
Court proceedings kicked off on Tuesday (Dec. 9) in long-running litigation between Hendrix’s estate and Sony Music on one side and the heirs of Hendrix’s former bandmates in The Jimi Hendrix Experience — namely bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell — on the other.
Redding and Mitchell’s estates allege they’ve been unfairly deprived of royalties from three classic Hendrix Experience albums, including the 1968 chart-topper Electric Ladyland. According to The Independent and Agence France-Presse, barrister Simon Malynicz KC argued in a written submission Tuesday that both musicians “died in relative poverty, having earned almost nothing from the recordings that defined their careers and their lives.”
Malynicz reportedly told the court that Hendrix “would have wanted his fellow musicians to receive everything to which they are entitled.”
The barrister for Sony Music Entertainment UK, Robert Howe KC, countered in his own written submission on Tuesday that Redding and Mitchell forfeited the right to sue during probate proceedings that followed Hendrix’s 1970 overdose death.
Howe also argued that Redding and Mitchell’s heirs are going after the wrong party by suing Sony, which distributes Hendrix’s music under a licensing deal with his estate.
“In essence, what the claimants have done in this action is the equivalent of suing the sub-tenant of one room in a house for trespass, as a device to try to obtain a declaration as to their alleged ownership of the house,” wrote Howe, per The Independent.
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The trial’s liability phase is expected to run through Dec. 18, with a written judgment to follow. If Redding and Mitchell’s heirs win their claims, the court will then hold a second trial to determine financial damages.
Hendrix, Redding and Mitchell collaborated via The Jimi Hendrix Experience from 1966 to 1969. The group’s 1968 album Electric Ladyland spent 40 weeks on the Billboard 200, including two weeks at No. 1, and the set’s hit track “All Along the Watchtower” peaked at No. 20 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The legal feud began in 2021, when Redding and Mitchell’s heirs began asserting rights to Hendrix’s music and claiming they were owed millions in royalties. Dueling lawsuits ensued, both in New York and the U.K., and the English court case was ultimately granted precedence.
A London judge ruled at the beginning of 2024 that the dispute would have to go to trial, unpersuaded by Sony’s arguments that the claims were entirely barred by Redding and Mitchell’s 1973 probate settlements. Those settlements, which resolved the musicians’ claims against Hendrix’s estate, amounted to one-time payments of $100,000 and $247,500 each.
An appeals court agreed with that assessment this past February, teeing up the current trial in London.
