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With a little help from our friends -- the urban legends site Snopes.com, Cecil Adams' Straight Dope column, and Yahoo! News -- we found the answer to your question. Back in 1963, the Beatles gave their publishing rights to Northern Songs, a company created by their manager, Brian Epstein, and a music publisher, Dick James. Northern Songs went public in 1965, and John Lennon and Paul McCartney each had 15% of the company's shares, while Dick James and the company's chairman, Charles Silver, held a controlling 37.5% of shares. In 1969, James and Silver sold Northern Songs and its assets to
the Associated Television Corporation (ATV). In 1985, ATV's music catalog was sold, and Michael Jackson was the high bidder. Jacko paid a reported $47 million for the publishing rights to somewhere between 159 to 260 Beatles songs. A decade later, Jackson and Sony merged their music publishing businesses. Since 1995, Jackson and Sony/ATV Music Publishing have jointly owned most of the Beatles songs. While the Jackson-Sony collection includes practically all of the Beatles' greatest hits, they don't have every little thing. Paul McCartney bought the rights to "Love Me Do," "Please, Please Me," "P.S. I Love You," and "Tell
Me Why." Northern Songs never owned these early tunes, so they weren't included in the ATV deal. In the past few years, the media has speculated that Jacko may need to sell the Beatles' rights to pay for his extravagant lifestyle and mounting legal costs. Sony reports that Jackson used his half of the Beatles' catalog as collateral for a loan from the music company. If Jackson defaults on the loan, Sony has the right to buy his share. In 2001, Jackson stated: "The Beatles catalogue is not for sale, has not been for sale and will never be
for sale." But who knows? Maybe he'll try to take a sad song and make it better by cashing in.
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