the beatles

Did The Beatles publish other people's compositions as their own?

A nice cuppa with Liz The Finnish organ player and composer Erkki Ertama performed his instrumental track "Lappland Magic Song" on British TV as early as 1955, after which the composition found its way to worldwide repertoires of such people as Yvonne Carré.

Ertama claims that when The Beatles heard the song, they wanted to buy its rights from him to put it under their own credits. The year was supposedly 1966. The Beatles and their manager Brian Epstein met Ertama about the deal but he refused, since he wanted to keep the composition as his own.

Ertama, talking to the writer Petri Kuljuntausta in 2001, couldn't remember to which Beatles member the composition would have been credited, but claims that The Beatles would do this kind of purchasing other people's songs all the time and "wrote" many of their compositions this way: "They bought songs every time when they found some nice young and unknown composer, paid him and he would keep quiet about the deal."

- from Petri Kuljuntausta's On/Off - Eetteriäänistä sähkömusiikkiin (Helsinki: Like Books, 2002 - a history of Finnish electronic music on 1950s and 60s)


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Links:

  • The Beatles - Official
  • The Beatles - About The Beatles
  • The Beatles @ Wikipedia
  • The Beatles @ Yahoo

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