Northern Songs: The True Story of the Beatles Song Publishing Empire

Songs.

CHAPTER 1

Robin Hood Riding Through The Glen

When a quartet of Northern minstrels who called themselves The Beatles and their manager Brian Epstein travelled south in the early Sixties they entered a new world, one which was a million miles away from their more familiar stomping grounds in Liverpool and Hamburg.

In their quest for fame and fortune they found themselves pitched into a music business which was based around contracts and agreements that invariably favoured the ruling corporations rather than the creative classes.

In 1962, just as it is today, the music business was focused around record companies and music publishers based in central London, which, via a set of well established principles that had served their industry for decades, held the fate of aspiring young musicians in their hands.

While Epstein, who cut his teeth in his father’s furniture and music retail outlets in Liverpool, didn’t need to be a genius to understand how the music business worked, having experienced advisers close at hand before actually putting pen to paper would certainly have been advisable. It wasn’t that record companies or music publishers were necessarily dishonest; it was simply that the music business was a long way from Epstein’s family retailing background and the simple love of music that inspired his favourite foursome.

He would have undoubtedly found the role of the record company easy to understand. They signed artists, gave them a small advance, waited for the record to appear and then helped sell it. A share of the money from the sale of each record was then paid to the artist as a royalty. It got a little more complicated, however, when you added in issues such as recording costs, packaging deductions, varying royalty rates for different territories and options, which always favoured the company over the artist.

On the other hand, Epstein would have found music publishing, which focused on the song and the composer rather than the performer, considerably more daunting. Publishers took a song, persuaded an artist and a record company to record and release it and in return shared the income (Mechanical Copyright) from sales of the record. Publishing the song overseas, encouraging cover versions, negotiating use in films or television (Synchronisation) and publishing the sheet music were among the music publisher’s other duties alongside the all important issue of ensuring that the income was forthcoming from live and broadcast performances of a song (Performing Rights).

This then was the music business that greeted Epstein when he arrived in London in 1962 to try and sell The Beatles to one of the big four record companies which dominated British pop music at the time. Decca, EMI, Pye and Philips were the majors which, alongside their search for new British talent, also represented the giant US corporations such as RCA and CBS and their top selling artists including Elvis Presley, Pat Boone, Doris Day, Johnnie Ray, Roy Orbison, Del Shannon and The Everly Brothers.

These four companies all had offices at various points off Oxford Street. Decca, with Tommy Steele, The Tornadoes and Billy Fury, were in Great Marlborough Street, just 50 yards away from the stage door to the London Palladium, while EMI, boasting Cliff Richard, Adam Faith and Helen Shapiro, were located in Manchester Square, a stone’s throw from Selfridges department store. Pye, famous for Lonnie Donegan, Petula Clark and Emile Ford, and Philips, with Frankie Vaughan, Anne Shelton and Ronnie Carroll, both based themselves at the Marble Arch end of London’s main thoroughfare, in Great Cumberland Place and Stanhope Place respectively.

Finding a record company prepared to put his group on the road to success, and travel with them along the way, was never going to be easy for Epstein, even allowing for the fact that he had a head start over most other aspiring young managers of the day.

He had built up the music side of the family business including setting up the NEMS (North End Music Stores) record shops. In fact it was at the second shop, in Liverpool’s Whitechapel district, that the 27-year-old Epstein was first made aware of The Beatles when a teenage record buyer asked for a copy of ‘My Bonnie’ by Tony Sheridan & The Beatles.

This event stirred Epstein’s interest in the young band who were regulars on the Hamburg club circuit and in their hometown’s Cavern club. After first seeing them at the Cavern in November 1961, Epstein made it his business to meet the boys in the group and, despite an early record company refusal, the young shop manager and the quartet of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Pete Best signed their first management contract in January 1962.

At the same time, Epstein’s standing as a well respected and successful record retailer meant that he had built up a series of useful relationships with the record companies, albeit in the area of sales, but he was intent on using these contacts to further his new found vocation as the manager of a pop group.

Years later, when talking about the man who guided the band’s career, Lennon remarked how important their manager’s background had been in building up a trusting relationship with The Beatles. We had complete faith in him when he was runnin’ us. To us, he was the expert. I mean originally he had a shop. Anybody who’s got a shop must be all right. He went round smarmin’ and charmin’ everybody.

The trials and tribulations Epstein went through to get his new band signed have been well documented over the years but in 1963, L.G. Wood, the man who, as Managing Director of EMI Records, authorised the company’s contract with The Beatles, saw fit to set down on paper the true facts about how The Beatles arrived at EMI.

His eight point memo detailed how the band – who had made that original recording with Tony Sheridan in 1961 for the German Polydor label – finally ended up with Britain’s oldest record company.

(a) A Beatles Polydor recording was submitted by Brian Epstein to Mr R. N. White¹

(b) Mr R. N. White submitted this disc to Mr Ridley and to Mr Newell² Both turned it down on the basis that it sounded like a bad recording of The Shadows – and apparently it did!

(c) Epstein then took the Polydor disc to Decca. Their pop A&R Manager, Dick Rowe was in America, so his deputy³ decided to give The Beatles a test, and in fact did so.

(d) Dick Rowe returned from America and the test recording was played to him. His reaction was that electric guitars were now ‘old hat’ and he was not interested in The Beatles.

(e) A depressed Brian Epstein then sent to our private recording department in the Oxford Street store (HMV)⁴ a tape of some of The Beatles own compositions which he wanted transferred to disc.

(f) The engineer at Oxford Street was quite impressed with some of the compositions and referred them to Syd Colman.⁵

(g) Colman then phoned George Martin, said he thought he ought to hear the tape, and Martin agreed.

(h) Brian Epstein then took the tape to George who agreed to give the Beatles a recording test – Martin took the test himself – was impressed with what he heard, signed them to a contract and the rest is public knowledge.

For Wood, who joined the original Gramophone Company in 1929 (before the merger with the Columbia Graphophone Company in 1931 which led to the creation of EMI), the signing was just one among many. Signing The Beatles was just like signing any another group, was how he saw it but he did confirm that Epstein, who was always EMI’s guest at the Associate Music Industries annual dinner, had benefited from his position as a major retailer. I believe that because of our relationship he brought them to us first in 1961.

The contract that Epstein was offered by George Martin, on behalf of EMI’s Parlophone label, was a one year deal, effective from June 4, 1962, with three one year options. The final expiry date was June 5, 1966 and The Beatles signed up to receive 1d (one old penny/0.417 new pence) per double sided single – split between the four of them plus Epstein!

Possibly embarrassed by Martin’s decision to sign The Beatles just six months after he had turned them down, EMI’s general manager Ron White, who chaired the company’s weekly repertoire meeting, wrote to Epstein explaining the company’s position while at the same clearing himself of any blame. I hasten to say that I am very pleased that a contract is now being negotiated as I felt that they were very good but our Artistes Managers who heard the record felt at that time that they had the greatest difficulty in judging their quality from the record.

He finished by saying: My only reason for writing is to endeavour to explain what must appear to you an anomaly in our organisation. I can assure you that our Artistes Manager did hear the record but I know you will appreciate that even Artistes Managers are human and can change their mind! Ever the gentleman Epstein replied saying that it is a great pleasure for me to be associated with EMI in this manner.

Working in the EMI press office at the time was Brian Mulligan, who went on to become one of the UK music industry’s most respected journalists, and he recalls White announcing the news of the company’s latest signings. Ron White came into the A&R meeting and said we had just signed this band called The Beatles. He was not terribly impressed with them but said we had to sign them because their manager was our number one HMV dealer in Liverpool.

While George Martin was seemingly the only repertoire manager within EMI who saw any promise in The Beatles, he would have needed approval from the company’s senior executives such as Wood before completing the signing and it’s likely that approval was given, at least in part, because of Epstein’s importance as a record dealer.

The deal on offer to Epstein was a standard EMI deal for new artists at the time and acts such as Cilla Black, Gerry & The Pacemakers and The Hollies would all have been offered similar terms. One reason the royalty rate was so low was because there were no recording costs to recoup as, in those days, all records were made in EMI’s own Abbey Road studios at the company’s rather than the artists’ expense. Throughout the Sixties and into the Seventies all EMI’s UK based acts were encouraged to use Abbey Road and no artists signed to other labels were allowed to record there.*

While the contract provided for a maximum royalty rate of 11/2d in the second and third option years, EMI voluntarily increased it to 2d in June 1963 with the added clause that The Beatles received half royalty rate on sales outside the UK. This was at a time when The Beatles first n 7" single cost the record buyer the princely sum of 6s 71/2 (33p) which went up to 6s 11d (35p) by the time their second record came out.

Having enthusiastically agreed the deal, Epstein was also happy for Martin to produce the Beatles’ first recordings. Martin, who oversaw the Parlophone label, was one of four well established and all-important in-house producers at EMI in the early Sixties. He operated alongside and in competition with Norrie Paramor at Columbia, Wally Ridley from HMV and Norman Newell who was closely linked with Columbia but eventually operated on a freelance basis.

With The Beatles’ first single ‘Love Me Do’ (with ‘P. S. I Love You’ on the B-side) scheduled for release in October 1962, Epstein, whose understanding of music publishing extended no further than selling sheet music in his Liverpool stores, was left with the problem of finding a publishing deal for at least these two songs written by group members John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

The easy route was to sign with Coleman – the man who had introduced them to Martin – and the Ardmore & Beechwood company which he ran. According to Wood, Coleman was keen to sign a publishing deal with Epstein as soon as he heard the two Lennon & McCartney songs. In his autobiography A Cellarful Of Noise, Epstein admitted his ignorance of this aspect of the business and assumed Coleman’s early interest, and the mention of advances, might mean a much needed injection of cash. "So ignorant was I at the time that I thought this meant an immediate £50 on a publishing advance, because I really had no idea what publishing meant."

However, Coleman’s enthusiasm eventually paid off when Epstein, his record deal signed, returned to the company’s offices above the HMV shop in Oxford Street and completed an arrangement which, in those important, early days, when Epstein was busy learning all he could about the fast developing pop music business, kept everything under the one EMI roof.

Signed on September 7, 1962, the original agreement was between Brian Epstein, on behalf of Lennon/McCartney (referred to as the composers) and Ardmore & Beechwood Limited and it stipulated the payment of a 1/− (5p) as an advance against royalties in return for full copyright for the world in the two songs.

As a result of this first deal, the two composers received 50% of all royalties from record sales both in the UK and overseas plus 50% of fees received by the company from the Performing Right Society until Lennon & McCartney became members of the PRS and were paid direct. Epstein signed this agreement on behalf of the two Beatles despite the fact that the first management agreement between Epstein’s NEMS Enterprises and the two songwriters would not be formally agreed for another month. This agreement sat alongside Epstein’s management contract with The Beatles as a group, again through NEMS, which gave him a sizeable 25% chunk of the group’s earnings.

Winning a 50/50 deal with a music publisher was standard practice in 1962 when companies such as Peter Maurice Music, Mills Music, Southern Music, Essex Music and Robbins Music were among the major players. And, according to million selling composer Bill Martin, they were all more important than the record companies when it came to finding new talent. Publishers and songwriters were the A&R men of the business in those days – they found the talent, says the man who lists ‘Congratulations’ and ‘Puppet On A String’ among his most successful compositions.

Bill Martin was just one of a host of struggling songwriters who trudged up and down London’s Tin Pan Alley trying to sell their songs in the early Sixties when British pop music was riding high on the back of new stars such as Tommy Steele, Cliff Richard and Adam Faith. We wrote songs and took them to publishers who then made demos which they took to the record companies who at that time were on the look out for songs for the likes of Cliff Richard, Adam Faith and Marty Wilde. None of the new British pop or rock stars wrote their own material so there was always a chance of getting a song published, recalls Martin.

Located opposite Foyles bookshop on Charing Cross Road, Denmark Street was known as Tin Pan Alley and was London’s equivalent to New York’s Brill Building as the home of the UK’s music publishing business, and it attracted hopeful songwriters like moths to a flame.

Another of the aspiring young songwriters was Tony Hatch who was later to sign and produce The Searchers for Pye but, as a 16-year-old fresh out of school and in his first job with a music publisher, he got noticed because of his musicianship. Every music publisher had a piano and at least one person in the office who could play and because I could play and transpose music into various keys, it was seen as one of my major assets.

Struggling writers, however, had no chance of getting to the major record company producers of the day such as Newell and Paramor so, being linked with a major publisher was the best way for them to get a foot in the door. Having moved down from Glasgow to pursue a career in music, Bill Martin was a regular around the publishing houses, going from company to company trying to sell his songs. If you were lucky you could get a fiver or a tenner on a Friday for a song you had written. If might never come out but it was a way in to the record companies.

A professional songwriter signed to a music publisher would traditionally be offered exactly the same 50/50 deal as Epstein negotiated for Lennon & McCartney with Coleman but, according to Martin, that was not always important. We sold individual songs to the publishers for the cash. We sold the rights and in some cases our royalties as well just to get a song published.

With his EMI Parlophone recording contract and the Ardmore & Beechwood publishing deal safely tucked away, all that was left for Epstein to do was sit and watch – and hope – as The Beatles’ debut single was released.

While ‘Love Me Do’ charted – it peaked at 17 in a UK chart featuring EMI rivals such as Frank Ifield, Rolf Harris, Joe Loss and Cliff Richard alongside US stars Elvis Presley, Del Shannon and Duane Eddy – the sales were disappointing. EMI’s Wood recalled that it didn’t do that well and described sales of 17,000 by Christmas 1962 as not all that good.

This poor performance by the first Beatles single came about despite Epstein reportedly ordering 10,000 copies for his NEMS outlets and also organising a campaign of letter writing to both Radio Luxembourg and the BBC while Epstein’s mother Queenie visited Liverpool record stores, asking for ‘Love Me Do’.

According to Peter Brown, who took over running the original NEMS music store from Epstein and went on to become a director of both NEMS and Apple, The Beatles’ manager’s reaction to a first minor UK hit was, Could anything be more important than this? On the other hand McCartney, confessing to a friend that he had not eaten all day, quipped: Somebody had to pay for those ten thousand records Brian bought.

However, when ‘Love Me Do’ stalled, Epstein was in no doubt about who was to blame for the failure of his group’s first release and he made his views known to the record’s producer George Martin. Brian was furious with Ardmore & Beechwood over their poor performance with ‘Love Me Do’ and decided not to give them any more Lennon/McCartney songs.

In the early Sixties a lot was expected of a music publisher. In addition to publishing, registering and producing sheet music, they were also responsible for plugging the recording of their song to radio and lining up television appearances for their artists. This, according to Epstein, was where Ardmore & Beechwood let him down.

In fact the music publishing arm of EMI was not one of the industry’s big players, having been set up in 1958 as a small local subsidiary of the company’s American Beechwood Music operation after EMI’s chairman Sir Joseph Lockwood wrote to Charles Thomas, the first managing director of the newly formed EMI Records division. In a note written in 1957, Lockwood reminded Thomas that it was down to him to work out how EMI could set up a publishing company to handle the work of artistes and composers who would be prepared to use it.

Tony Hatch, who wrote his first hit song in the Sixties with ‘Look For A Star’ by Garry Mills, is not surprised that Epstein turned his back on EMI’s music publishing arm. In those days record companies rarely owned music publishing companies and there was never a huge push from the top for them to get into publishing.

EMI, however, saw some potential and focused their efforts on expanding its music publishing business around attempts to buy the world renowned and well established Chappell Music publishing company. When a proposed deal fell through because the price was too high, EMI were left to try and develop the fledgling Ardmore & Beechwood division which, with only four years experience, was probably not the best company to meet the demands of an ambitious young manager and an exciting new group who recorded their own songs.

On October 1, 1962 Epstein signed the composers Lennon & McCartney to an exclusive three year NEMS management contract which continued the 50/50 split in income between the composers and whichever music publisher he signed them to after the initial Ardmore & Beechwood deal. The agreement also stipulated that the two aspiring songwriters would supply not less than 18 musical compositions – composed by one or either of them which shall be considered suitable and acceptable for publication – during a three year period from February 28, 1963.

With music publishing now an important issue for Epstein, he was anxious to have a new publisher in place by the time the follow-up single was due for release. To this end he turned to his new friend and contact, Parlophone producer George Martin.

Epstein’s first inclination was to take the songs of Lennon & McCartney and give them to Hill & Range, the American publishers of Elvis Presley’s hit songs but Martin had other ideas which certainly disappointed the EMI executives who thought that Martin, as an ‘EMI man’, should have put up a better argument on behalf of his colleagues at Ardmore & Beechwood.

His plan was to find an eager, honest, determined, local publisher who would take care of the business that Ardmore & Beechwood had failed to cover. I suggested Alan Holmes of Robbins Music, David Platz of Essex Music and Dick James but in the end I recommended Dick because he was hungrier than the others and his was a British company.

James, the son of Polish immigrants, was born Isaac Vapnick and he became a singer with leading British bands led by Geraldo, Henry Hall and Cyril Stapleton. Famously, he become the first British male singer to chart in America when his 1948 recording of ‘You Can’t Be True’ hit number 19. His biggest success, however, came with his Fifties recording of ‘Robin Hood’, the theme to a popular TV show, which – produced for Parlophone by Martin – sold over half a million copies and hit number 4 in the UK chart. James’ chart entry in February 1956, alongside Eve Boswell’s ‘Pickin’ A Chicken’ and Eamonn Andrews’ ‘The Shifting Whispering Sands’, represented Martin’s most successful week in his first year as head of the Parlophone label.

When he retired from singing and the constant touring, James moved into music publishing with Sydney Bron and, using his wealth of industry contacts, made a successful start in his new career. Encouraged by his progress, James left Bron to form his own music publishing company in 1961 with support (and a £5,000 loan) from his accountant Charles Silver.

Included in a hand written note from James to the Performing Right Society in September 1961, advising them of the creation of Dick James Music, with James and Silver as joint partners, was a list of song titles to be included among the company’s first publications. Alongside four songs written or co-written by Dick James, there was a track entitled ‘Double Scotch’ which listed as its composer, George Martin, the man who within a year would produce The Beatles and introduce James to Epstein.

James was a regular visitor to EMI’s offices in the late Fifties and early Sixties, usually ending up in Martin’s Parlophone division, but he was not always a welcome one, according to Brian Mulligan. "At that time music publishers were seen as a pain in the arse because all they ever wanted was free records. You had as little to do with them as you could because they were always on the hustle for records. The general perception of Dick was that he was a struggling pop singer who became an equally struggling music publisher – but quite a nice bloke.

I don’t think there was any real surprise when Dick got The Beatles’ music publishing, in view of his friendship with George it sort of made sense.

Following Martin’s advice, in late 1962 Epstein set out to meet all the recommended music publishers but, according to James’ son Stephen, his father needed some guidance before he could meet with Epstein. My father asked me if I had heard of a group called The Beatles. I said I had and that they had had a top 20 hit with ‘Love Me Do’. Dad said he was going to meet their manager and asked ‘Should I sign them?’ I said yes even though I’d heard only the one song – they were very different.

Dick James operated an open door policy towards writers, managers and artists in his offices at 132 Charing Cross Road, on the corner of Denmark Street and, when Epstein walked into the office, business began to look up for the fledgling publisher. Since he’d opened the company in 1961, my father hadn’t had any great success, explains Stephen James. It’s a fact that he was actually running out of money, so yes, he was hungry.

Before he arrived at James’ offices for his 11 o’clock appointment, Epstein had been due to meet another publisher at 10am but when he had not shown up by 10.20am, Epstein left and walked round to James’ office. The identity of the publisher who was late for the meeting – and possibly missed out on signing the duo destined to become the world’s most successful and profitable songwriters – remains a mystery but Simon Platz, son of Essex Music chief David Platz, is adamant that it wasn’t his father. He was never late for any meetings, says Platz, who now runs Bucks Music, while Eddie Levy, from Chelsea Music, learnt that