KPM Music complains to Northern Songs about “All You Need Is Love”

On this day, music publishing company KPM Music contacted Northern Songs to claim a copyright infringement. This was due to the inclusion of a few bars of Glenn Miller’s “In The Mood” in the fade-out of “All You Need Is Love.”

Because producer George Martin had not checked Miller’s piece’s copyright status before including it in the song’s ending, EMI had to pay royalties to KPM.

George Martin always has something to do with it, but sometimes more than others. For instance, he wrote the end of ‘All You Need Is Love’ and got into trouble because the ‘In The Mood’ bit was copyrighted. It was a hurried session and we said (to Martin), ‘There’s the end, we want it to go on and on.’ Actually, what he wrote was much more disjoined, so when we put all the bits together, we said, ‘Could we have “Greensleeves” right on top of that little Bach thing?’ And on top of that, we had the ‘In The Mood’ bit. Sometimes, George (Martin) works with us, and sometimes against us. But he always looks after us. I don’t think he does as much as people think. He sometimes does all the arrangement and we just change them.

Paul McCartney – From “The Beatles: Off the Record” by Keith Badman, 2008

It duly went to number one. Unfortunately, there was a sting in the tail for me. I was being paid the princely sum of fifteen pounds for arranging the music and writing the bits for the beginning and ending, and I had chosen the tunes for the mixture in the belief that they were all out of copyright. More fool me. It turned out that although ‘In the Mood’ itself was out of copyright, the Glenn Miller arrangement of it was not. The little bit I had chosen was the arrangement, not the tune itself, and as a result EMI were asked by its owners for a royalty.

The Beatles, quite rightly I suppose, said: ‘We’re not going to give up our copyright royalty.’ So Ken East, the man who had by then become managing director of EMI Records, came to me and said: ‘Look here, George, you did the arrangement on this. They’re expecting money for it.’ ‘You must be out of your mind,’ I said. ‘I get fifteen pounds for doing that arrangement. Do you mean to say I’ve got to pay blasted copyright out of my fifteen quid?’

His answer was short and unequivocal. ‘Yes.’

In the end, of course, EMI had to settle with the publishers.

George Martin – From “All You Need Is Ears“, 1979

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