Jimi Hendrix...

Hendrix estate cuts off rock star's brother

By Severin Carrell

26 September 2004

A bitter family feud over the estate of the rock legend Jimi Hendrix has ended after a judge ruled that the guitarist's brother has no right to a share of the star's royalties.

The surviving members of Hendrix's family have been fighting over the legality of a will worth some $80m (£45m) written by the guitarist's father, Al, who inherited the star's lucrative back catalogue and vast reservoir of unreleased material.

Hendrix died, aged 27, at the height of his fame and powers on 18 September 1970 after collapsing at the home of his girlfriend, Monika Danneman, in a flat off Ladbroke Grove, west London.

Since then, the company set up to market the guitarist's catalogue, Experience Hendrix, has re-released "authorised", remastered versions of his most famous albums, including Electric Ladyland and Axis: Bold as Love, as well as compilations of material left unpublished when Hendrix died.

The frequently vicious feud erupted when Hendrix Snr died in 2002, leaving everything to his adopted daughter, Janie, and cutting his other son, Leon, out of his will.

Leon Hendrix had claimed that his father had been influenced by Janie into rewriting an earlier will but was too old and senile to realise. The earlier version of the will, written in 1996, would have seen Leon inherit 24 per cent of the estate. But on Friday, Leon's long battle to overturn his father's will ended when a judge in Seattle ruled that the document was legal and binding.

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