SEATTLE – Allegations of greed, excessive salon visits and dubious paternity were the order of the day Monday as relatives of late guitar legend Jimi Hendrix began fighting over his legacy in court.
The messy situation concerns the last will of Jimi’s father, Al Hendrix, who inherited the rights to Jimi’s music when the rock star died in 1970. Jimi’s brother, Leon, says he was unfairly written out of the will at the behest of his stepsister, Janie Hendrix, who runs the company in charge of the legacy, Experience Hendrix LLC, with Jimi’s cousin, Robert.
“This is about greed,” Leon’s lawyer, Robert Curran, told King County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ramsdell during his opening statement. “Janie has lived a very, very good life. She travels the world first-class; her family goes with her. They get picked up in limos. They stay in first-class hotels.”
She also gave herself low-interest loans, a bonus that exceeded her salary, and visited a Gene Juarez salon 110 times in a one-year period with a corporate credit card, he said.
Meanwhile, other relatives who, under Al Hendrix’s final will, were supposed to receive money from Jimi Hendrix’s posthumous releases, royalties and merchandising struggle to make ends meet while working as hardware store clerks or in other low-paying jobs, he said.
The money “benefited so few, when there is enough to benefit so many,” Curran said.
The case is one of several that have entangled the Hendrix estate in the last decade. Leon, 56, is suing to have Janie ousted as the company’s boss and to have his father’s will revised to include him. Al Hendrix died in 2002 at age 82.
Janie rolled her eyes and shot dismissive glances as lawyers for Leon Hendrix and other family members recited a long list of allegedly excessive spending. Her lawyer, John Wilson, told the judge that some of it has been repaid and a special audit will determine how much more she and Robert Hendrix should repay.
But Wilson stressed that what is at issue is Al Hendrix’s will, not the company’s performance – and Al Hendrix did not want Leon or Leon’s children to have any involvement in the company or receive any money from it.
A 1996 version of Al’s will would have directed 24 percent of the legacy to Leon, 38 percent to Janie and the balance to other beneficiaries, but it was rewritten in 1997 to exclude Leon, whom some in the family regarded as a freeloader and possibly not Al’s biological child. Leon’s paternity is sealed in court records.
Leon’s six children, now ages 13 to 30, were also excluded from Al’s final will.
Wilson insisted that Al Hendrix decided on his own to write Leon out of the will, but Leon’s lawyer said Hendrix was infirm in his old age, could not comprehend even the simplest legal issues and would sign any document a lawyer placed before him.
Janie Hendrix exerted undue influence and urged Al to turn the lion’s share of the legacy over to her, and he complied, Curran suggested.
Curran also said the lawyers who prepared Al’s will had a conflict of interest, because they also represented Janie and Experience Hendrix.
Jimi Hendrix had released just three albums before he died at age 27, but he had an extensive catalog of unreleased tracks. For about two decades after his death, his legacy was run by a California attorney who sold many of the copyrights off to other companies.
At Janie’s urging, Al Hendrix sued the lawyer in the early ’90s to regain the rights he had sold; that case was settled but left the company in debt. According to Janie, Al did not want money paid to the beneficiaries listed in his will until the debt was paid off. That is expected to happen in 2010.
In the seven years Janie has headed Experience Hendrix, it has brought in $45 million, compared to the $38 million it earned in the preceding decades.
The case was set to resume Tuesday with Janie’s lawyer continuing his opening statement.
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