Legal Stuff

Today I’m more interested in the legality of things. The song I’m animating is one that my husband co-wrote many moons ago. Gosh! He even had a minor hit in 1979 (got to 11 and 3 appearances on TOTP)) and we get about 60p a year from the song, but it might have been £1.20 if he hadn’t signed away 50% of the publishing rights early on – that’s a whole pint of milk!

Now the song I’m interested was a ‘B’ side of their third single that sank even further than their second (43 in the chart), and then the band broke up.

The thing is we don’t know what the publishing rights were on the songs that weren’t a hit, and how long the contract was in force. Paperwork was never a strong point for my husband (read non-existent). I eat legalese for breakfast and still have problems finding out the nitty-gritty. Mechanical rights are fine because we’re using an old demo tape recorded in a flat; it’s not that far off the studio version and needed a bit of cleaning up. The master tapes are lost – the album didn’t include the song after being double baked.

It doesn’t help that my husband won’t talk to his ex-manager, who was also owner of the publishing house. Check out his Youtube account (http://www.youtube.com/user/lovedupbritgit) and you might understand why.

I contacted PRS who told me to contact MPA. I did that on 27 February, and have just reminded them that I haven’t had a reply from them yet.

An eighth may be better than nothing, but I want my husband to get a quarter if I make it a hit. Is it too much to ask?