02-12-2004, 04:47 PM
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#11 (permalink)
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Apocalypse Nerd
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Relating to the Thread Title... and Flashing back a few years
Quote:
Jackson angers ex-Beatles
Fellow artist who bought publishing rights 'cheapened' songs by using them in adverts
Angella Johnson
Monday November 6, 1995
The Guardian
The three surviving members of the Beatles attack fellow singer Michael Jackson in a magazine article published today for 'cheapening' their work by allowing it to be used in advertising.
Jackson, who bought the publishing rights to the Beatles ' music for £50m in 1985, allows songs to be used in TV commercials for products including Nike trainers. He is thought to have received about $250,000 (about £166,000) for one advert.
They are, not surprisingly, a little miffed and a row has been brewing for some time. George Harrison warned: 'Unless we do something about it, every Beatles song is going to end up advertising bras and pork pies.'
He was backed by Paul McCartney, who said Jackson - with whom he recorded two singles in the 1980s, Say Say and The Girl Is Mine - had 'cheapened' the songs released.
The bitter comments are made in the latest edition of Elle magazine, just ahead of the release of the Beatles Anthology album this month, which will feature the first new tracks for a quarter of a century.
McCartney was outbid by Jackson for the rights and is said to still be furious at his refusal either to sell them back or, more gallingly, to increase his royalties, despite stories that Yoko Ono has re-negotiated the share due to her late husband, John Lennon.
It is perhaps an even more painful pill to swallow because, as he reveals in a book, McCartney: Yesterday And Today, by Ray Coleman, that it was he who advised Jackson, at a lunch party given by singer and actor Adam Faith, to get into publishing.
The 4,000-song ATV catalogue includes over 159 Lennon-McCartney Northern Songs gems and almost 100 other Beatles compositions. The group own neither their greatest compositions nor their most treasured recordings.
Despite the row, Jackson sees himself as a custodian of the great recordings of the 1960s, and recently blocked a rap album of Beatles' songs.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/thebeatles...606544,00.html |
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