Sometimes it’s hard to know who to root for.
Roger Friedman at Fox News has a wonderfully reported piece today on the financial travails of Michael Jackson. There’s a fair amount of detailed information about how Jackson has for years been mortgaging this piece of property to pay off that loan, and so forth.
The most interesting stuff at the bottom. Jackson, apparently, got a loan from Sony Music. A big loan. It was secured with the Beatles’s song catalog. Sony is also Jackson’s record company. There are rumors going around that Sony has been laggard in promoting Jackson’s latest record — to the point of not releasing singles from it — in hopes that the record will do so badly that the company will be able to foreclose on the song catalog. The Beatles catalog is worth about $200 million.
Paul McCartney has publically been expressing his frustration that he doesn’t own his own music anymore; he had tried to buy it back the last time it was on the market, only to be outbid by Jackson. He must be fit to be tied over this last development. John Lennon, on the other hand, is probably laughing, wherever he is.
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