THE BIG STORY: As first reported by Billboard last week, Universal Music Group has been quietly fighting a legal battle for years with the estate of a legendary Abbey Road sound engineer — over what it says is the “first known Beatles recording.”
Geoff Emerick, the band’s chief engineer on Sgt. Pepper and other seminal later albums, died suddenly in 2018. When his estate searched his home, they found a cultural artifact: A demo tape the Beatles recorded in 1962, months before the band broke out, with Pete Best still on the drums.
Did Emerick rescue a piece of history that was going to be destroyed? Or did he steal company property that now, all these later, still belongs to UMG? Depends on who you ask — and a judge is soon going to have to decide. But regardless of the outcome, that tape is a big deal.
“It’s like finding another original copy of the Constitution,” Bob Spitz, a Beatles biographer, told me with a laugh. “It’s like the Shroud of Turin.” For all the wild details, go read my entire story here — and stay tuned at Billboard as the case moves ahead.
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Other top stories this week…
–Michael Jackson’s daughter Paris won a key ruling against John Branca and John McClain, the executors of her father’s estate, in a bitter dispute over the estate’s finances.
-In other Jackson news, Jermaine Jackson was ordered to pay $6.5 million for allegedly raping a session musician coordinator in her Los Angeles-area home in 1988.
-Real Madrid won the dismissal of a criminal investigation into alleged noise pollution from concerts at its Bernabéu Stadium, a venue that’s hosted Taylor Swift and Karol G.
–Usher won a court ruling allowing him to proceed with a lawsuit claiming music producer Bryan-Michael Cox owes him $700,000 stemming from a failed Atlanta restaurant.
-The bitter legal battle between Fuerza Regida and its label Rancho Humilde heated up with arguments over California’s so-called seven-year rule on service contracts.
–George Clinton sued Universal Music Group over accusations that the music giant is “financially crippling” him by freezing more than $1 million in his royalty accounts.
-Democrats sharply criticized the settlement cut by the Trump administration with Live Nation, calling it a “trivial and pathetic slap on the wrist” made worse by the fact that Ticketmaster ultimately lost at trial.
-A fashion brand called Chrome Hearts dropped a trademark lawsuit it had filed against Neil Young over his use of “The Chrome Hearts” as the name of his new backing band.
-A Los Angeles psychiatry clinic that prescribed Xanax to Aaron Carter before his 2022 overdose death settled a lawsuit filed by the late singer’s family.
-A Spanish court acquitted Shakira of tax fraud and ordered the country to return 60 million euros ($69 million) to the Colombian superstar.
