Who owns the right to the Beatles songs?
During the great Apple debacle the Beatles experienced in the late ’60’s, the lads found themselves losing tremendous amounts of money and needed a lot of cash fast. This and other contributing factors (like Dick James selling his stake in Northern Songs) led to the Beatles selling the publishing rights to their songs (except for some of the early ones like “Love Me Do” which were published by various companies and are now owned by MPL — Macca’s company). The song rights were for sale again a few years back, and Paul mounted a joint effort with Yoko to buy them back — but (as Paul tells it) Michael Jackson outrageously outbid everyone, offering a really unheard of and unanticipated price. He walked away with the whole kit and kaboodle. Consider the following scenario, if you will. If “Please Please Me” was in a film and not sung by the Beatles, then Mr. Jackson did license it. He owns the song, like a book copyright, while EMI owns rights to the Beatles recordings. Presumably EMI nev
