However, by the time The Beatles had released their earliest albums, Lennon and McCartney had lost majority control of their own publishing rights. It’s a crazy story that ended decades later with Michael Jackson owning the rights instead. Sources (History.com, Beatlesbible.com, Cheatshet.com, theGuardian.com)
It began with a bad Lennon-McCartney deal in 1963.
Looking back at the deal Lennon and McCartney signed, it’s clear it was no accident that the duo ended up without the rights to their own music. The deal provided publisher Dick James with a 50% stake in the company, Northern Music, while Lennon and McCartney retained 20% each.
Epstein told George Martin that he was considering letting US company Hill & Range, publishers of Elvis Presley's songs, handle John Lennon and Paul McCartney's original compositions. Martin suggested that he instead consider somebody smaller and "hungrier" for success, and put forward Dick James' name.
But that wasn’t the only terrible aspect of the deal. Just as bad (possibly worse), the agreement included all songs they would write through 1973. Once The Beatles broke up in 1970, they had to figure a way out of the contract.
After all, the four members of the group were about to embark on their own successful solo careers. The last thing anyone needed was a bad publishing contract hanging over their heads.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the Beatles’ primary songwriters, did something slightly more complicated. The publishing agreement they signed was with a company of which they were also part owners. That company, called Northern Songs, Ltd., was formed in 1964 expressly to generate revenues from the growing catalog of Lennon-McCartney compositions. In this way, every sale or other commercial use of the song “Yesterday” earned Lennon and McCartney a songwriting royalty that they split with Northern Songs. And part of Northern Songs’ share would then come back to Lennon and McCartney as part owners of the company.
But that meant The Beatles would have to sell their remaining share of the deal (which by then was a publicly traded company). So Lennon and McCartney sold out and went solo without control of the Lennon-McCartney songbook from their Beatle days.
Michael Jackson made his move in the ’80s.
This wild story took an even wilder twist in the 1980s. By then, Lennon had passed away and McCartney was still a beloved recording artist doing what he’s always done (i.e., write popular songs in his sleep). Naturally, he would need to work with the reigning King of Pop, Michael Jackson.
According to reports of the their collaboration on “Say Say Say,” McCartney spoke with Michael about the value of owning publishing rights. (By then, Paul had acquired an impressive collection of his own.)
Jackson listened carefully and would soon take action. In 1985, the rights to the Lennon-McCartney songbook (and many others) went up for public auction. The King of Pop swooped in and bought the collection of 4,000 tunes (including 250 by Paul and John) for $47.5 million.
Paul, who was among the losing bidders, was not happy about the result. It took more than 30 years for him to finally get control of some of that music back.
In 2017, he settled with the original publisher after McCartney sued for rights to his music. It had been 54 years since he originally signed away the rights
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