Hendrix classic albums under spotlight in UK rights battle with Sony

Jimi Hendrix's classic 1960s albums are the focus of a London lawsuit over performers' rights asserted on behalf of his British bassist and drummer against Sony Music Entertainment 6758.T, which warns that a win for the claimants could "throw the music industry into chaos".

Guitarist Noel Redding, who had recently auditioned for the 1960s blues-rock band The Animals, and pioneering drummer Mitch Mitchell joined The Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1966 and created some of the most renowned music of the decade.

Redding and Mitchell played on the group's three studio albums "Are You Experienced", "Axis: Bold As Love" and "Electric Ladyland", released in 1967 and 1968 and featuring "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze", "Foxy Lady" and other hits.

The recordings helped usher in the psychedelic music age and made Hendrix a rock superstar before his untimely death in London in September 1970, aged 27. Five decades on, The Jimi Hendrix Experience's music remains both popular and profitable.

Their albums are at the centre of a trial that began on Tuesday and seeks a share of potentially lucrative streaming royalties — a claim Sony says should be rejected.

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Redding and Mitchell died in 2003 and 2008 respectively and their descendants later assigned any rights they might have had to two companies, Noel Redding Estate Limited and Mitch Mitchell Estate Limited.

The companies sued Sony at London's High Court in 2022 and are seeking a declaration that they own a share of the sound recording copyrights of, and performers' property rights in, the three Jimi Hendrix Experience albums.

Sony's lawyers argue that in 1966 the band signed away the rights to exploit the recordings "by any method now known or hereafter to be known". They also cite releases agreed by Redding and Mitchell to drop lawsuits in the early 1970s.

But the companies' lawyer Simon Malynicz said Sony's case relied on deals signed "long before the internet revolutionised music" and the rise of streaming platforms like Spotify.

"The agreements from the 1960s and 1970s simply do not extend to the radically different modes of digital exploitation which underpin (Sony's) current business model," he said in court filings.

Sony, however, raised concerns about the wider impact of the companies' case if they succeed, which it said could prompt a slew of lawsuits from session musicians and backing vocalists.

Sony's lawyer Robert Howe said in court filings that "deals done with virtually every 1960s and 1970s artist, from The Beatles to the Berlin Philharmonic ... would be vulnerable to retrospective attack".