“People have had a free-for-all”: The Beatles project so bad George Harrison refused to see it
If Simon Cowell had been born a few decades earlier and got his grubby mitts on The Beatles, he would have undoubtedly labelled them a brand, not a band.
Dollar signs would have rolled in his eyes as he realised the lucrative potential of a group so ubiquitous and adored. And sure, as history has rolled on, The Beatles have become something of a retrospective brand, used by various people and places to cash in on cultural nostalgia. But that was never the case during the important and active parts of their career.
The band were music first, which is ultimately why they knocked touring on the head as such a heightened stage of their career, giving up the opportunity to cash in on their popularity to instead focus on creativity and innovation within the four walls of the studio.
But as ever, their success caused sharks to circle. They may not have had Simon Cowell, waiting with his hand over the top of a big red buzzer, but they had plenty of music moguls watching them with similar fury. So by the time the band decided to split at the end, lawyers were inevitably involved, mediating this frenzied break-up of icons.
Who really profited from this was the question. Well, besides the lawyers racking up eye-watering fees, it was brand-focused creatives, profiting off The Beatles’ identity without a care in the world.
George Harrison once outlined exactly why, saying, “All those naughty Broadway shows and stupid movies that have been made about The Beatles, using Beatles names and ideas, are all illegal. But because we’ve been arguing among ourselves all these years, people have had a free-for-all.” He doubled down on his disgust for how people keep using their name for profits, adding, “It’s terrible, really. People think we’re giving all these producers and people permission to do it and that we’re making money out of it, but we don’t make a nickel. So it’s time that should be stopped.”
But the one project that did, in fact, play by the rules and secure the rights to The Beatles’ discography was the one that got Harrison’s harshest criticism. The directly titled Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was a musical, set to late-period Beatles hits, that told the story of Sgt Pepper’s famed musical group.
It was simple really, and was meant to be a clear and easy celebration of the band’s music, but not to Harrison, who noted, “Although I suppose the Sgt Pepper film is all right because they’ve paid the copyright on the songs and made up their own storyline. The reports on it were so bad that I didn’t want to see it. But maybe it’s good. I don’t know.”
The bottom line of it all is that art shouldn’t really be meddled with for financial gain. Even with the right permission, Sgt Pepper was a dud because of how it sought to commercialise something that wasn’t made to be commercialised. Art is art and commodities are commodities, and surely years of legal battles between the band taught everyone that pretty sharply?
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