This is the first time I’ve re-posted a song.
It’s not so much that the song is that special, but the backstory is compelling enough that the resolution is worth sharing.
Speaking as he received a lifetime achievement prize at the Ivor Novello Awards, Ashcroft announced: “As of last month, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards signed over all their publishing for Bitter Sweet Symphony, which was a truly kind and magnanimous thing for them to do.”
As a result, all future royalties for the song will now go to Ashcroft.
The singer acknowledged that it was the Rolling Stones’ late manager, Allen Klein, who had been responsible for the situation, rather than the musicians themselves.
“I never had a personal beef with the Stones,” he told the BBC. “They’ve always have been the greatest rock and roll band in the world.”
He went on to thank Jagger and Richards for acknowledging he was responsible “for this [expletive] masterpiece”.
Very nice of Mick and Keef, although I don’t think they’ll miss any meals for the gesture.
Get The Picture 
Thank you for posting this, Senator! This song is one of my faves. I can’t change, no no no.
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No problem
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I always thought it was weird (and unfair) that Mike and Keef got all publishing royalties for the song, when the part they were responsible for (sampled within the song) was only a small portion of the overall song.
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As I commented in my first post, “The moral of the story is never fuck with Allen Klein.”
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Or, fuck patent trolls like Allen Klein.
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This was a horrible injustice. There was never any plagiarism case. The sampled recording (for which they exceeded the license) was an arrangement element of Oldham’s instrumental cover of “The Last Time”, and had nothing to do with J/R’s melody or composition- and you can’t even copyright an arrangement anyway, but if any name was added it should have been ALO’s..
They were able to exploit the Verve because they had grounds, based on the over-sample, to get an injunction and pull the record off the shelves and off the charts. It was a legal mugging.
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And after reading your link, I stand corrected: the arrangement element was written by a guy named David Whitaker, not Oldham. What a screw job.
If John Lennon’s murderer had gotten to the Dakota a few minutes earlier, he could have shot Klein, who had just passed by, instead. The saddest of words: “It might have been…”
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My biggest takeaway from this is, “Holy crap, is that song really 22 years old?”
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Same. I remember standing in the parking lots between Fado’s and Cafe Tu Tu Tango (!), over-served and shivering in the cold as this was screaming out of some other bar, back when Buckhead was worth a damn.
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Thanks for posting
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