Let Us Now Praise David Jacobs

 I recently finished reading Darryl H. Bullock's entertaining book The Velvet Mafia.  The subtitle pretty much explains the whole premise: The Gay Men Who Made The Swinging Sixties.  The book  presents a detailed portrait of some people I know a lot about – Larry Parnes, Brian Epstein, Sir Joseph Lockwood, Joe Orton and Joe Meek as well as people I knew a little bit about including Robert Stigwood, Lionel Bart and the infamous Lord Boothby.  All of these players were instrumental in the British entertainment industry of the 1960s and, coincidentally, they were all gay.

 

The character who fascinated me the most is David Jacobs, the solicitor to the stars.  At one point he had offices in both London and Hollywood.  He had both The Beatles and Brian Epstein as clients as well as Winston Churchill's daughter, Judy Garland, Diana Dors, Shirley Bassey and John Profumo.  At one point he sued the Daily Mirror for libel on behalf of Liberace, for implying that Liberace was homosexual – and won!  He apparently was known to appear in court in full makeup.

 

Tragically, Jacobs died a sad death  – found hanging in his garage.  The book questions whether his death was a drug induced suicide or something far more sinister.

 

I found the story of David Jacobs positively inspiring in some ways.  One doesn't hear about entertainment lawyers being as interesting as their clients.  The idea that Jacobs could be negotiating major deals for Brian Epstein one minute and getting a famous politician’s daughter out of the jail the next makes most contemporary law practices  seem positively dull. 

 

It’s a fascinating book and gives a lot of deep background into the entertainment business in London before and during the British Invasion. I have only one criticism. In an otherwise well written work, I came across  the worst sentence I think I've ever read:  "According to the inquiry, Halliwell used a hammer to strike Orton, whom he had met at RADA,  on his head at least nine times."

Beatles History Lesson...You Do The Math

For half a century (!) Beatles' fans have been debating the fact that Capitol Records released different versions of the Beatles' recordings than their British counterpart Parlophone Records, a practice that lasted through the release of Revolver.  Capitol generally released albums with fewer songs, combined songs from different UK albums or EPs or created completely different compilations of songs.  First generation American fans are still jarred when they hear the British versions of albums like Help!  and Rubber Soul. On the other hand, this practice led to some purely American classics like the Beatles’ Second Album and of course Yesterday and Today.

            I've always subscribed to the theory that this practice was motivated by pure greed, i.e. Capitol could sell more records if they offered less songs per album than the British company.  I think that my theory has been slightly modified by the esteemed Bruce Spizer.  As an aside, all Beatle fans owe a debt of gratitude to Spizer, a New Orleans tax attorney who has published a series of fascinating and detailed books on the history of the Beatles' recordings in both the United States and England.  Although expensive, his books are well worth seeking out.

            In his book The Beatles Story on Capitol Records Volume 2, Spizer points out that in 1964 the statutory mechanical royalty rate (i.e. the amount the record company had to pay the music publisher per song per record) was 2 cents.  By contrast the rate today is 9.1 cents.  To quote  Spizer "although this may sound trivial today a reduction in the number of tracks on an album could cause significant savings when considering the value of money at that time."  Spizer goes on to say that by putting 12 songs on an album instead of 14 (as most British labels did) the company could save $40,000.00 per each million records sold and they could save an additional $20,000.00 by reducing the number of tracks to 11 (Spizer, P. 24).

            That's obviously a lot of money in 1964 dollars – according to the consumer price index calculator $60,000 in 1964 would be $461,309 today.  Of course all of this sounds silly when you're talking about the Beatles catalog but remember that no one in the record business in 1964 figured that this music would still be around in 50 years (or  that we would be gladly buying the records over and over) It's even more interesting to look at the Beatles' artist royalty rate on their early recordings, but that's another story.

Bob Dylan, Cliff Richard and UK Copyright Law

I have been reading some interesting articles lately about the changes in English and European copyright law and how different copyright owners have dealt with them.  Until recently, British law provided that sound recordings entered the public domain 50 years after their initial release.  I sort of noticed that the last time that I was in the HMV Store in London and saw a number of dodgy-looking CDs featuring early jazz artists and rock and roll from the 1950s.

            It appears that artists and record companies led an appeal to change the law.  Their symbolic leader was Sir Cliff Richard, who became a figurehead for the new law much like Walt Disney did for copyright extension in the United States.  As Evan Marshall writes in Record Collector "and so it came to pass that Cliff's law is about to take effect and this year should see a change to the legislation governing copyrights which extends the protection to recordings from 50 years to 70 years."

            To dig a little deeper, artists like the Beatles, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones essentially escaped by the skin of their teeth.  For example while the much bootlegged Beatles recordings from the Star Club, the Decca auditions from 1962, the Beat Brothers recordings and even the single "Love Me Do" and "P.S. I Love You" are technically in the public domain in the United Kingdom, the remainder of their catalog is safe for another 20 years.

            The most interesting development from this UK copyright law change came from the Bob Dylan camp.  Recognizing that the new law would protect only recordings that were released within the last 50 years – and was not retroactive, Bob Dylan's label Sony released what looks to be its own bootleg, called The 50^th Anniversary Collection (in France and Germany it's called the Copyright Extension Collection Volume 1).  The collection is apparently comprised of four CD-R's with a paper insert listing the tracks.  I haven't seen a complete track listing but the set appears to include 24  outtakes from the Freewheelin' Bob Dylan plus some well-known live recordings like the Finjan Club and the so‑called Minneapolis Hotel Tape.  Dylan fans know that there is a treasure trove of this stuff floating around out there.

            This collection was allegedly limited to 100 sets per country so the purpose was not to make money.  Also the very process of releasing the material (some of which was truly unreleased and unavailable before) makes it available to the legendary enormous Bob Dylan bootleg audience.  Thus Sony must have felt that the security of copyright protection for these songs was worth letting them get into the hands of Dylan enthusiasts.  As such, this is a fascinating example of a copyright owner taking a calculated risk to be able to secure the benefits of copyright law.  I'm sure there will be more developments in this area.