A friend sent me this: "The last story I heard/read was that Experience Hendrix bought/owned ALL the film footage of the Atlanta Pop Festival '70 and have since 'mined' the Jimi Hendrix audio & film material from it for their own releases. The Brothers were the hometown 'hosts' that year playing 2 shows opening & closing the festival. {snip} Anyways, the Hendrix organization owns the rights to the ABB footage & it's theirs to do as they please. Unfortunately for us, they choose to just sit on it."
Any thoughts?
Billastro
Clearly the Hendrix estate doesn't care for the Allman Brothers Band any more than they do Moby Grape or Doug Clark and the Hotnuts.
Has anybody got to them pleading that there is an audience for the Brothers material? There is isn't there? Or is it just us hard core fans on this site?
What footage which has slipped out onto YouTube has been pulled by someone every time. But this first song from the night show has been on YouTube for four months now.
after all this time, doubtful it’d show a profit after licensing/ownership/copyright fees & other legalities
mayb they could have big-screen showings at select theatres
but doubtful, they would only have agreed to that idea when the soundtrack was released 20 years ago
@stephen Yes it's too late to release it with making money and selling a pile of DVDS.
Maybe they will have a heart and put it on YouTube for free for the ABB fans who have been waiting for 45 years while a few of us are still living and not so old we wouldn't know what we were looking at on the screen.
If this is true then I understand why it never came out. The rights to it are owned and controlled by people who are only interested in the Jimi Hendrix footage.
A friend sent me this: "The last story I heard/read was that Experience Hendrix bought/owned ALL the film footage of the Atlanta Pop Festival '70 and have since 'mined' the Jimi Hendrix audio & film material from it for their own releases. The Brothers were the hometown 'hosts' that year playing 2 shows opening & closing the festival. {snip} Anyways, the Hendrix organization owns the rights to the ABB footage & it's theirs to do as they please. Unfortunately for us, they choose to just sit on it."
Any thoughts?
Billastro
Interesting, can you ask your friend where he heard Experience Hendrix owns the film rights to all the Atlanta Pop video?
I had read a private collector owned the ABB footage and showed it at a private viewing.
As far as I could find the person who shot the footage still owns the tapes. Seems to imply that in this article on Hendrix from a year ago
https://www.loudersound.com/features/jimi-hendrix-atlanta-international-pop-festival
One reason why Atlanta 1970 has been less celebrated than Woodstock or The Isle of Wight was its lack of accessibility. Audio bootlegs of Hendrix’s set have been doing the rounds for years, but the visuals have proved far more elusive.
Filmmaker Steve Rash, who went on to direct The Buddy Holly Story and Can’t Buy Me Love, shot footage of the entire festival, but his plans to release a documentary were scuppered when his Hollywood distributors reneged on a deal.
“In those days there were no ancillary markets, it was theatres or nothing else,” Rash explains. “And by the next summer it was old news.”
The film lay in his basement for a decade, then spent the next 20 years in his barn in Pennsylvania. It was only in 2000, after he saw an ad in Popular Science magazine from a company who specialised in restoring old 16mm film, that he began to think it was saveable. A lab in New York eventually salvaged around 80 per cent of the footage Rash shot (4,000 reels of the stuff), after a year’s work.
“It was an absolute miracle,” he said. “As well as the Hendrix material for Electric Church, I also have six hours of people like the Allman Brothers Band, Procol Harum, Grand Funk Railroad, John Sebastian and The Chambers Brothers.”
And Rash supposedly has an unreleased documentary in the can
https://www.atlantamusicguide.com/film-review-hotlanta-the-great-lost-rock-festival/
Butch (RIP) wrote on his blog back about it in 2011 and put some of the video up but was forced to take it down by the owner. Was it Experience Hendrix?
Bill, thanks for the further info and the links. I'll ask my friend; maybe he can fill in some gaps. In the meantime I'll look into the pointers you provided.
The whole concept of ownership of intangibles has gotten way out of hand. There's an old Latin saying that translates to "Who benefits?" Seems to fit this situation.
Billastro
I've just come from visiting a relative in a nursing home (SENIOR Care Center). I was accompanied by some teenage relatives and was wearing an Allman Brothers t-shirt. Several of the residents - aged between 75 - 90+ took interest in my shirt, many saying that they saw the Allman Brothers when they were much younger.
Leaving the nursing home, me and several of the teenagers crossed a street single-file in a crosswalk. "We look like the Beatles!", I quipped (referring to the Abbey Road cover shot). The answer from the three teens: "Who?"
About 15 years ago I wrote to the Bill Graham Foundation - who I understood owned the rights to all the Filmore film footage. Part pf my plea for immediate release was that the number of people who even care about the Allman Brother's Band is dwindling year by year. If they - or the Hendrix folk who reportedly own the Atlanta Pop footage want to ever see any kind of profit from this material - they need to strike while the iron is still warm. Just sayin'.
If it's money they want, whether Hendrix or the guy who might still have it or whomever, there's a win-win path here I think:
The ROI trying to sell the ABB footage for profit I can't imagine is too positive and trending towards negative with the window closing rapidly as classic rocks fans age and leave the planet.
So why not go non-profit route?
Get a 3rd party valuation of the licensing rights NOW and gift them to an ABB charitable entity ( Big House? ). The entity pays to extract the footage and distribute benevolently ( I would happily donate to help make happen ) while the owner gets a tax break that's likely much larger than any potential return.
I'm sure I'm over-simplifying and missing things here but hey, one can dream...
Clearly the Hendrix estate doesn't care for the Allman Brothers Band any more than they do Moby Grape or Doug Clark and the Hotnuts.
Has anybody got to them pleading that there is an audience for the Brothers material? There is isn't there? Or is it just us hard core fans on this site?
What footage which has slipped out onto YouTube has been pulled by someone every time. But this first song from the night show has been on YouTube for four months now.
Love the Doug Clark and the Hotnuts reference. They were a must see when I was in college.
