We found this interesting question and answer dialogue online, so we thought we’d share it with you our readers.
Dear Cecil:
My understanding is that Michael Jackson slyly acquired the copyrights to the entire Beatles library, much to the dismay of his ex-friend Paul McCartney. I also hear that despite much pleading, he refuses to sell any of them back. Does this mean that he can overdub the masters with his own voice? Are we liable to see copies of “Abbey Road” with five people crossing the street and mysterious falsettoes throughout?
— Saddened fan from Oregon
OK so clearly this ‘saddened fan’ has got a whole lot of jokes. Anywhooo, we are more interested in the response below…
The response
Come on. Think of the Sgt. Pepper cover, with all the boys in uniform. Michael Jackson would fit right in. (Although you’d want the guy missing the glove to be Paul.) Don’t worry, no musical travesties are going to happen, or at least they’re not going to happen as a result of Jackson owning the Beatles library.
What Michael Jackson bought for $47.5 million in 1985 was the publishing rights to 159 or 251 Beatles songs, depending on who’s counting. To maybe oversimplify a complicated business, publishing rights are basically the sheet music rights. When Paul McCartney wanted to print the lyrics to “Eleanor Rigby” and other Beatles classics in the program for his 1989 world tour, he discovered he’d have to pay a fee to Michael Jackson. The owner of the publishing rights (hereinafter the publisher) also gets a royalty when someone plays a Beatles song on a jukebox or the radio or does a cover version of a Fab Four tune. Particularly in the case of elevator music, to which, let’s be frank, a lot of Beatles tunes are well suited, this can earn the publisher some serious cash.
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Vee-Jay Records founded in Gary, Indiana, was the first U.S. company to have the Beatles. In one month alone in early 1964, they sold 2.6 million Beatles singles. Two years later, the company was bankrupt. Vee-Jay acquired the rights to some of the early Beatles recordings in a licensing deal with EMI in which the main attraction at the time was another EMI performer, Frank Ifield.
Vee-Jay’s biggest successes occurred in 1962-1964, with the ascendancy of the Four Seasons and the distribution of early Beatles material (“Please Please Me” and “From Me to You” via Vee-Jay and “Love Me Do”, “Twist and Shout”, and “Do You Want to Know a Secret?” via its subsidiary Tollie Records), because EMI’s autonomous United States company Capitol initially refused to release Beatles records. Vee-Jay’s releases were at first unsuccessful, but quickly became huge hits once the British Invasion took off in early 1964, selling 2.6 million Beatles singles in a single month.
Cash flow problems caused by Ewart Abner’s tapping the company treasury to cover personal gambling debts led to the company’s active demise; Vee-Jay had been forced to temporarily cease operations in the second half of 1963, leading to royalty disputes with The Four Seasons and EMI. The Four Seasons then left Vee-Jay for Philips Records, and EMI’s Capitol Records picked up the U.S. rights for both The Beatles and Frank Ifield.Read More
Stella McCartney said, “For years now I’ve wanted to create a collection for kids. It’s really exciting for us to do a boys and girls collection with Gap for the first time. I think it has a mix of the playful and practical. I tried to create a whole kids wardrobe. There are pieces that are classic and sort of timeless and hopefully very chic, mixed with more playful and a little bit cooler pieces. It’s a reflection of our brand and a great way to experience it.”
Nydailynews.comReports: Here’s a chance to dress like two kings, a Prince and a knight – the royalty of rock ‘n’ roll.
Eye-popping outfits worn by the King, Elvis Presley, and the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, are up for grabs in an online memorabilia auction by the midtown shop Gotta Have It.
Also available for the taking in the gottahaverockandroll.com sale running through March 10 is a gold tunic rocked by Sir Paul McCartney and a polka-dotted waistcoat worn by Prince.
But owning a piece of music history won’t come cheap.
Minimum bids are $10,000 for Elvis’ red suede jacket and $15,000 for Jackson’s vintage orange jumpsuit – and prices could skyrocket as bidders jump in.
“All it takes is two people, till one gets tired or doesn’t want to spend any more money,” said store co-owner Peter Siegel, who said a Presley jumpsuit sold for $300,000 in the shop’s August 2008 auction.
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by English rock band The Beatles. Released in the UK on 1 June 1967, it became a defining album in the emerging psychedelic rock style; it has since been recognised by prominent critics and publications as one of the most influential albums of all time.
The Grammy Award-winning album packaging was art-directed by Robert Fraser, designed by Peter Blake and his wife Jann Haworth, and photographed by Michael Cooper. It featured a colourful collage of life-sized cardboard models of famous people on the front of the album cover and lyrics printed on the back cover, the first time this had been done on an English pop LP. The Beatles themselves, in the guise of the Sgt. Pepper band, were dressed in custom-made military-style outfits made of satin dyed in day-glo colours. The suits were designed by Manuel Cuevas.
Among the insignia on their uniforms are:
MBE medals on McCartney’s and Harrison’s jackets. MBEs had been awarded to all four Beatles.
The Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom, on Lennon’s right sleeve
Ontario Provincial Police flash on McCartney’s sleeve
Art director Robert Fraser was a prominent London art dealer who ran his own gallery and sponsored exhibitions at the Indica Gallery, through which he had become a close friend of McCartney, and it was at his strong urging that the group abandoned their original cover design, a psychedelic painting by The Fool. The Fool’s design for the inner sleeve was, however, used for the first few pressings.
REMOVE THAT SCARF! YOUR HANDSOME!
Awww…
