Tight-fisted McCartney too cheap to bid on his own music likely would not have returned publishing rights to Little Richard because McCartney, as he told Jackson, liked to make money off other people’s music. So Jackson returned to Little Richard what was rightfully his–his songs. The Beatles benefited from the fact that North American radio segregated, suppressed, and appropriated African Americans who originated the rock & roll sound. The TRUE King of Rock & Roll taught the Beatles their early stage presence, song delivery, and style that appeared so unique to North American audiences. Not only that, like Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles toured with Little Richard before they were known. Since Paul McCartney showed Michael Jackson “how to do it,” Jackson realized that McCartney had no problem making profits from the music of others, likely many fellow musicians known to Jackson who struggled financially having lost control of their publishing rights to McCartney. Michael Jackson’s business moves in buying the publishing rights to the Beatles and Elvis Presley and Little Richard were farsighted, shrewd, and well-thoughtout. Neither McCartney nor Jackson seem(ed) particularly altruistic when it comes to business deals.
What’s more, he only gave Little Richard his songs back because MJ’s mother advised him to treat the singer well. The artists should have received royalties from these albums and if they didn’t, and had signed away the publishing rights, well that’s hardly The Beatles’ fault, is it?Īs for Michael Jackson doing a wise and vigilant thing, he wasn’t doing it for the African Americans – he was doing it to make money. The Beatles covered a lot of black R&B artists in their early days such as The Shirelles, Arthur Alexander and The Marvelettes, and made their songs well known in a number of countries where they previously weren’t (I don’t mean the US I’m thinking of a lot of European countries, the Far East etc). Yours seems to be a very selective reading of the situation, and of The Beatles’ achievements.
I’m not sure how you can class Michael Jackson’s ownership of Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane, for example, as “making Paul pay for what he did not create in the first place”.
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