What is there not to say about the Beatles? The Fab Four broke so many boundaries in the 1960s that they rewrote the whole pop song experience. The influence is heard to this day. I believe that the band have done more for music than anyone else in music history.
Even the influencers have influences. If you listen to the early albums by the band, then you can hear multiple covers from the likes of The Marvelettes (Please Mr. Postman), Little Richard (Long Tall Sally) and Chuck Berry (Roll Over Beethoven)
It was one of Chuck Berry’s songs that hindered John Lennon’s solo career. Many court battles and a promoter trying to make a quick buck plus other eccentricities made it an interesting story. This week The Beat Marches On to the 17th February 1975.
Come Together is one of the Beatles most popular tracks. The proof is there if you search on Spotify and Amazon Music for the band it’s number two in the number of times streamed, a top-five song on Apple Music. Only Here Comes the Sun is streamed more, which is interesting and raises more questions.
Let’s just concentrate on the former song as that is the main subject for this story. It’s the opening track on the last recorded album by the Beatles: Abbey Road. Although it was the song that opened the album it was the one of the last recorded. Often said by Lennon to be one of his favourite Beatles songs. The opening “Shum-dum” is one of the most recognisable introductions to a song in music today.
The opening to the song isn’t an issue either, it’s the opening lyrics that are a problem: “He come old flat top// He come groovin’ up slowly” The lyric was used by one of the Beatles big inspirations. Chuck Berry.
Artists accuse other artists of plagiarism all the time in the music industry. The most recent biggest suit was the estate of Marvin Gaye suing the producers of the song Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams, claiming it was too similar to the Gaye song Give It Up. There have been disputes with Led Zeppelin and their song Stairway to Heaven with a band they used to tour with Spirit. The Rolling Stones sued Britpop band The Verve over their most famous song Bittersweet Symphony and won. So now every time you listen to the song Mick Jagger and Keith Richards get the royalties, even when played when the England football team play on ITV.
It wasn’t until 1973 that anyone realized that John Lennon took the opening lyrics of Come Together from a Chuck Berry song. Originally released in 1956 the song You Can’t Catch Me was on the feature film soundtrack Rock, Rock, Rock produced by Payola expert Alan Freed. Midway through the second verse, the lyrics mention “He Come A Flat-top// He Come a Movin’ Up With Me” It seems quite obviously stolen when you listen to the song.
In an interview in 1972, Lennon said that he was inspired by the Berry song at the time when he was writing Come Together. Before he ripped off the lyrics of the Chuck Berry song it was going to be a campaign song for the Cannabis and LSD pioneer Timothy Leary, who was aiming to be governor of California running against future US President Ronald Reagan. This didn’t come to fruition as Leary was imprisoned, and Lennon had said he was struggling to get a flow in the song for the campaign.
It wasn’t Chuck Berry who sued Lennon for damages. Berry performed with Lennon only a year before the whole lawsuit started. The copyright to the song was owned by music mogul Morris Levy. A savvy businessman who had investments all over the music industry and was not one to do things by the books either. Known over the years to have Mafia ties he managed to swindle musicians out of their well-earned royalties. He even owned the term Rock and Roll! Taken from his “friend” Alan Freed.
Always one to make a quick buck Levy sued Lennon as soon as he got wind of Lennon’s admittance. The issue was at the time Lennon was having deportation issues, so the quick buck wasn’t going to be quick at all. The stress of it all led Lennon to run away to Los Angeles for a “weekend away” (which ended up being 18 months)
Lennon eventually settled out of court with the Levy charge in late 1973. Part of the agreement was that three songs that Levy owned had to be recorded by the former Beatle on his next release. While in LA he was talking to legendary producer Phil Spector about doing a rock and roll covers album. It seemed the settlement had helped push the recording.
The Levy-owned songs Lennon chose to record for these sessions were Angel Baby, Ya Ya and You Can’t Catch Me. Yes, he decided to cover the song that started it all. By January 1974, eight songs were recorded but Lennon wanted about 12 songs. A disagreement occurred between Spector and the former Beatle which ended up with the producer firing a gun into the ceiling of the studio and running away from the situation with the master tapes. Two months later Spector had a car crash and was in a coma. Finishing the album looked bleak.
In October 1974 John Lennon released a new album Walls and Bridges. It was full of new material which broke the court settlement with Levy. Phil Spector still had the master recordings of the covers while recovering from his accident and didn’t want to relinquish them. Explaining the situation to Levy he didn’t sue Lennon again. Yet.
Levy helped Lennon get back on track with his Rock and Roll covers album by letting him use his music studio. Within two weeks Lennon recorded nine songs. After finally getting Spector to relinquish them, they could touch up the original recordings. As a thank-you gesture, Lennon said he could release the album through his mail-order record label Adam VIII. In which the former Beatle didn’t have any right to do so.
By February 1975, Levy was sent a rough copy of the recordings that would become the Rock and Roll album. Capitol Records, Lennon’s label at the time, had already told Levy that he couldn’t distribute the album but being the savvy businessman he ignored the strict warning from the label. Before anyone realised Levy cleaned up the tapes and distributed the album through his mail order service.
Capitol Records were not happy. In reaction to the mail-order album coming out, they brought the album release date forward and rushed the production which didn’t help the overall sound and the public noticed. Critics gave it less than enthusiastic reviews the album took a while to get the sales to cover the cost of recordings. The incidents that happened that led up to the recording of the album as previously mentioned amounted to a heavy cost. They were looking for someone to blame.
Lennon sued Levy but that wasn’t before Levy decided to sue Lennon again when the Capitol album was released. But not for the reason you might think. Levy didn’t have any issue with the album only having two of the three promised songs being on the album. The issue he had was a breach of an oral agreement with the distribution rights. Even though there were only 3000 pressings at the time the lawyers got involved, only 1270 of which were sold.
The reason Lennon countersued was because of a damaged reputation and loss of profits. The loss of profits seemed a little extreme considering the small amount sold. In the end, the court found in favour of the former Beatle and awarded around $135,000 in damages. Levy did win some $7000 in damages too but only covered the costs post-Spector.
The album that came out of this fiasco was to be John Lennon’s last before he died. Although most of the Double Fantasy album was finished it didn’t get released until after his death. Rock and Roll was eventually a gold-selling album but was the least popular of his solo career.
Judge for yourself. Below are links through YouTube of the two songs:
The Beat Marches On is a music blog written by Jimmy Whitehead. Jimmy has been blogging for six years specialising in Sports (especially American Football). If you want to follow Jimmy on Twitter: @Jimmy_W1987
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If anyone reading this would like to read more about this story, the sites used for research were:
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2016/04/john-lennon-and-the-rock-n-roll-lawsuit/
http://abbeyrd.net/lenlevy.htm
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