Anish Moonka@anishmoonka
In 1981, Paul McCartney showed his friend Michael Jackson a notebook of songs he had bought from other artists. They were earning him $40 million a year. Four years later, Jackson used that advice to buy 251 Beatles songs for $47.5 million.
He now owned Yesterday. Hey Jude. Let It Be. Strawberry Fields. Every hit Lennon and McCartney had ever written. McCartney could have bought them himself but thought the price was too high. Jackson didn't think so. McCartney later said about the deal: "To be someone's friend, and then buy the rug they're standing on."
The Beatles had lost their rights decades earlier, when Lennon and McCartney were barely out of their teens. In February 1963, John Lennon and Paul McCartney walked into a small house in Liverpool. John was 22. Paul was 20. A music publisher named Dick James handed them a contract. He told them it would set them up for life. They signed it without a lawyer in the room. They didn't read it. McCartney later called it a "slave contract."
The contract created a company called Northern Songs. Northern Songs would own every song Lennon and McCartney wrote together. Dick James and his business partner got 50% of the company. Lennon and McCartney each got 20%. Their manager Brian Epstein got 10%. George Harrison and Ringo Starr weren't part of the deal at all. The Beatles didn't own their own songs.
In 1965, Northern Songs went public to help the Beatles save on taxes. Their shares dropped to 15% each. In 1969, Dick James quietly sold his half of the company to a British media giant called ATV without telling the Beatles. Lennon found out from a newspaper headline while on his honeymoon with Yoko Ono. He called Paul in a panic. They tried to outbid ATV. They lost.
ATV is what Michael Jackson bought in 1985 for $47.5 million. He then sold half of it to Sony in 1995 for $95 million. Sony bought the other half from his estate in 2016 for $750 million. The catalog was worth more than a billion dollars by then.
In 2017, McCartney sued Sony. His lawyers had found a clause buried in an old American copyright law from 1976. It said songwriters could take back the rights to their old songs after 56 years. Sony settled out of court. On October 5, 2018, the rights to "Love Me Do" came back to McCartney. By 2026, every song he ever wrote with Lennon will be his again.
A 20-year-old signed a contract in 1963 without reading it. It took 56 years and an obscure American law for him to take it all back.
