BBC RADIO 2 - 60s SEASON - DOCUMENTARIES

ONLY A NORTHERN SONG

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Tuesday 24 July 2007

Radio 2 2230-2330

 

Paul Sexton tells the story of how the two most successful songwriters in pop history won and then lost control of a billion dollar publishing empire.

 

Northern Songs was set up in 1963 by Dick James and Beatles manager Brian Epstein, solely to publish the songs of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. It went public in 1965, and then in 1969, that weighty songbook slipped out of John and Paul's hands, when ATV stepped in and bought Northern Songs without their immediate knowledge or consent. The programme describes how the catalogue then came to be bought in the 1980s by Michael Jackson, and how Paul McCartney and the family of the late John Lennon would effectively (but quite legally) be denied their birthright.

 

The documentary explains how Northern Songs was bought and sold with the help of eyewitnesses such as songwriters of the day Tony Hatch and Graham Gouldman; Dick's son Stephen James; Northern Songs’ lawyer Michael Eaton; Brian Southall, the author of a recent book about the company; and Paul Russell, who worked closely with Michael Jackson at CBS when he bought the catalogue.

 

It will be on listen again on Radio 2, what are your feelings about how Lennon & McCartney lost their "babies"?

I suppose they weren't all that business headed in the early days, or they would never have allowed this to happen, Then Michael Jackson would't have been able to buy it in 1985 for $48m.