After The Beatles cut up, George Harrison mentioned individuals got here in “grabbing and plundering as much as they could.” Everyone needed a bit of one of the crucial profitable bands of the Sixties. Nonetheless, George mentioned they wouldn’t get away with it.
The Beatles’ cut up was good, based on George
Many individuals blamed Yoko Ono for The Beatles’ cut up, however George advised Dick Cavett on The Dick Cavett Show that the group had issues lengthy earlier than she met John Lennon. He mentioned he had fun in the band, but it surely was additionally good to hold on doing one thing else. They didn’t need to compromise anymore.
By 1970, The Beatles had grown aside. Paul McCartney was busy making his songs. John needed to make music with Yoko and protest the world’s issues. George needed to make religious albums and presumably cease making music altogether. Ringo was completely happy to play drums on anybody’s data and his personal.
Nonetheless, when The Beatles broke up, they left room for everybody to come back in and steal every part they’d executed.
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After The Beatles cut up, George mentioned individuals got here ‘grabbing and plundering’
In a 1987 interview with Creem Magazine, George spoke about what occurred to The Beatles’ catalog shortly earlier than they cut up.
The Beatles’ music writer, Dick James, who earned a excessive share of the band’s publishing firm, Northern Songs, bought the corporate to ATV Music with out letting John or Paul purchase him out. Then in 1985, Michael Jackson purchased ATV Music. George was grateful he didn’t write as many Beatles songs as John and Paul.
ATV Music owned the publishing rights to all of The Beatles’ songs, whereas EMI and Capital owned the recordings. Nonetheless, that wasn’t the one factor stolen from the group.
“Through the years, it seems, all this stuff has seeped into society and they tend to look upon it as public domain,” George mentioned. “It’s the identical with that Beatlemania stuff we needed to attempt and cease individuals from doing these items in order to determine, ‘Look, we’re right here, we’re people, we exist, and there’s legal guidelines of names and likeness.’
“They’re doing it in every single place: However they’re doing it to us and we’re not even useless but. It’s just like the Beatles had been probably the most ripped off individuals of all time, and, as for the record firm, they need to be ashamed of themselves.
“It’s one thing to treat some artist who’s here today and gone tomorrow with your crummy little royalty rate and treat ’em like trash, but a band like us who survived twenty-some odd years, sold a billion records for them at the lowest royalty rate you’ve ever heard of, and then still steal from you?! I’d be ashamed, I couldn’t do it…”
After The Beatles cut up, George mentioned the file corporations got here and took every part. He continued, “But all this stuff that you read in the papers about Nike and Capitol, that’s what’s been going on for years. They’ve all taken advantage of it because after the Beatles split up everybody was sort of not talking to each other, so they all came in, grabbing and plundering as much as they could.”
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George needed to combat the file corporations
With how the file corporations handled The Beatles earlier than and after their cut up, George needed to go after them till they gave every part again.
“But if this thing with Capitol comes to court they’ll be lucky to end up owning the masters,” George continued. “There’s probability we’ll get again all our masters and every part… However now that is going to be pursued to the top, and even when all of us die in the method, our kids and our kids’s kids can be after Bhaskar Menon (Chairman and CEO of
EM/ Music Worldwide) and Capitol till he realizes he’s simply being a dong.
“There’s no way we can lose. Because if you just put all the cards on the table and see what we’ve got and what they’ve
got, I think a blind man on a galloping horse would say that Capitol isn’t being fair. It’s just the balance: the law of nature
demands that all things be equal, and this isn’t equal.”
Ultimately, Paul bought The Beatles’ masters, but it surely didn’t occur in George’s lifetime. In 2016, years after Jackson’s demise, Sony grew to become the complete proprietor of The Beatles’ catalog. In 2017, Paul filed a lawsuit towards Sony/ATV, siting the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. The act permits songwriters to reclaim copyright from music publishers 35 years after they gave them away (per Biography). Early Beatles songs grew to become eligible in 2018; later songs will qualify in 2026.
So, the combat towards the file corporations lasted into Paul’s grandchildren’s lives. Luckily, Paul resolved it earlier than he and Ringo died. George can be completely happy.