Northern Songs: The True Story of the Beatles Song Publishing Empire
Language: English
Pages: 352
ISBN: 184609996X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The story of how Lennon and McCartney lost the most valuable song publishing catalogue in the world. This is a staggering saga of incompetence, duplicity and music industry politics.
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by most people involved in the music industry in those days to be unusual to say the least. The international music industry was littered with the names of both music publishers who were also songwriters and songwriters who became music publishers, but the creation of a company such as Northern Songs – by the act’s manager and a music publisher – to look after and exploit the songs of two members of a pop group was almost certainly a first in the British music business. Songwriters Bill Martin
was busy issuing a denial that Apple had gone broke. Klein’s view, laid out in his 1970 affidavit for the High Court in the case of McCartney against Lennon, Harrison, Starkey and Apple Corps, was that in order to have a million pounds to spend you had to earn considerably more before tax. He reckoned that if the million pound advance from EMI was going to have to be paid back out of The Beatles’ royalty income, then earnings of around �2 million would be needed. During his check on The
think he felt they might also try to obstruct the deal.” Also present at the meeting was Ono who recalls that Dick James was called in by John and Paul because, “they were upset with what Dick had done without telling them that he had done it.” James, in fact, was quoted as saying that at the time ATV took over Northern Songs “the wolves stopped baying”. He firmly believed that it would have been wrong to sell Northern Songs to either Lennon or McCartney individually but, even so, he admitted
songwriters. It was also agreed that all monies due to Lennon & McCartney from the songs published by Northern Songs would be paid directly to the writers and in return both Lennon’s representative and McCartney, along with Northern Songs, Maclen Music Inc and Maclen (Music) Limited agreed to withdraw and discontinue all outstanding litigation. With the lawsuit over, ending a dispute which had been off and on for 15 years, the speculation immediately started up as to whom, alongside McCartney,
Outstanding Service to British Music and been recognised for his Unique Achievement in Popular Music by the UK’s Performing Right Society, the final legal nail was banged into the coffin to end two decades of law suits between the Beatles/Apple and EMI-Capitol. A formal announcement confirmed that “all outstanding lawsuits” stretching back over 20 years – including the Nike ‘Revolution’ advert issue, claims over American session payments, US cut-outs and deletions and EMI’s reluctance to release
