From smashed guitar to smashing reality

1992: A fragment of the guitar Jimi Hendrix smashed at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival is purchased in a Sotheby's auction for $8,800 by an undisclosed buyer. Who could it be . . .?

September 1992: Paul Allen proposes to the Seattle City Council opening a museum dedicated to Jimi Hendrix. Initial projections estimate the museum would draw 200,000 visitors in the first year, take up about 10,000 square feet of space, cost about $400,000, and include a fragment of a smashed and burned guitar Jimi Hendrix once wielded.

October 1992: City Council approves Allen's museum proposal. The museum is referred to as the Jimi Hendrix Museum.

Early 1993: As the copyrights on Jimi Hendrix's songs begin to expire, Al Hendrix, Jimi's father, files a lawsuit against lawyer and former Hendrix family friend Leo Branton and music producer Alan Douglas. Hendrix wants to regain the rights to his son's music, saying the Hendrix family was cheated out of millions. Allen silently finances the suit, costing him more than $5 million, according to estimates. Skeptics whisper that Allen may have his own motives for gaining control of Hendrix's music using Al Hendrix as a pawn.

September 1993: The Seattle School District and Seattle Center discuss the possibility of demolishing Memorial Stadium, or moving it to the site of the old bus barn, to provide space for the Hendrix Museum. It has now expanded in Allen's imagination to encompass the history of Northwest music to the tune of about 90,000 square feet. Opening date is pushed back to 1996. Revised estimates put the cost somewhere around $10 million.

June 1994: Allen scopes out two more possible sites, one near the Seattle Art Museum and the other in the International District.

November 1994: The Seattle Times learns from federal court documents that Allen is planning to spend about $80 million to create the museum. The opening date is now targeted for 1997.

February 1995: The museum is officially renamed the Experience Music Project, and will take up 100,000 square feet in Seattle Center, finally selected as a site. Latest price tag comes in at between $50 million and $60 million, and as the price rises, so does the number of patrons. Museum officials now expect foot traffic from 400,000 to 600,000 annually. Ticket prices are planned to be in the area of $4 to $6.

July 1995: Al Hendrix regains the rights to Jimi Hendrix's music. In the following months Allen and Al Hendrix part ways, not entirely amicably. This "falling out" between the Hendrix and Allen families is kept tightly under wraps.

June 1996: Allen taps architect Frank O. Gehry to design the museum. The opening is scheduled for 1999, and the museum now has more than 20,000 artifacts to display.

July 1996: Area fans get a taste of what the museum will offer with the Tacoma Art Museum exhibit "Strats, Studios and the Seattle Sound," a modest sample of the exhibits and memorabilia Experience Music Project will house. It moves to the Pacific Science Center in December.

October 1996: Gehry and Allen unveil the first model of the museum, fascinating and horrifying many.

June 13, 1997: EMP's groundbreaking ceremony is held, and Allen still hopes to open the museum in 1999. The final design is unveiled, is a little more swoopy and still horrifying to some; Gehry and Allen say they were inspired by concepts of electric guitars and nightclubs. Space expands to 140,000 square feet. A month later the Web site is launched.

March 1998: Experience Music Camp is announced and has its first session in the summer of 1998.

October 1998: Museum officials finally set a realistic opening date of mid-2000.

September 1999: Another slap of reality. The building now costs about $100 million. The exterior is taking shape, and more people are horrified, but most are simply curious.

June 23, 2000: EMP opens with more than 80,000 artifacts in its collection and a total cost of $240 million - $100 million for the building and $140 million for its innards. EMP kicks off the weekend with a series of parties and huge concerts.

--------------------------- Shares from a guitar Paul Allen successfully bid, anonymoulsy by telephone, for the two pieces on auction at Sotheby's in London in 1991. The two pieces of a red guitar, smashed on stage by Hendrix at his London farewell concert, are the germination of Allen's dream for a Hendrix museum. Hendrix smashed the guitat at the finale of a concert at the Saville Theater on June 4, 1967. Hendrix rarely smashed guitars, but what makes these pieces especially valuable is that they come from a guitar Hendrix personally painted with psychedelic designs.

Jim Hendrix's handwritten lyrics for the "Electric Ladyland" album Considered the brightest gem of Emp's vast Hendrix collection, it's a song book for the 1968 double album, with lyrics for all the cuts. The book was one fo the first artifacts gathered for EMP. It is on display in the Hendrix Gallery and is used in an interactive video showing how Hendirx composed songs. It is of particular value because it is bound volume. Other Hendrix handwritten lyrics, such as one for "Purple Haze" at theRock and Roll Hall of Fame, are on single sheets.