How did Michael Jackson get rights to the Beatles tunes?

Factual Questions
1

It’s pretty obvious McCartney is still bitter about how MJ overbid him to get rights to the Beatles tunes. Can’t blame him, really, seeing how McCartney wrote most of the songs.

My question is, how was he ever in a position to have to buy back his own music? Shouldn’t he have owned them as the (partial) creator of them? :confused: How did the music publishing house get these rights? And what kind of scam are they running that they should they make a bloody fortune on the talent of someone else?

It’s akin to Picasso having to pay an art reproduction company for the rights to his own paintings…

(As a side note, did you read where McCartney said Yoko was after HIM first. :eek:)

2

I hate smilies. I meant :eek:

3

Funny you should ask … we went over this a couple of days ago.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=95837

There’s a link there that goes over the history of the Beatles’ publishing company.

4

Since this has been discussed so recently, I’ll close this thread and direct any further comments to the earlier thread, linked to above.

bibliophage
moderator GQ