The damages verdict
After 20 years, eventually the judge awarded the song to me… and the money that had been taken for ‘My Sweet Lord’. So I suddenly end up with ‘He’s So Fine’!
Billboard
Having lost the court case alleging plagiarism, George Harrison was liable for damages. The judge was responsible for deciding the amount; he began by determining the income generated by ‘My Sweet Lord’, and how much of that song was derived from ‘He’s So Fine’.
The case was originally scheduled to be heard in November 1976. However, it was delayed until February 1981 due to the sale of Bright Tunes to Allen Klein’s ABKCO company, and with it all litigation claims. Klein and Harrison had parted company professionally by this point, and Klein had offered to sell some of the rights to He’s So Fine to Harrison for $700,000.
Harrison argued that Klein had acted improperly by purchasing Bright Tunes, and amended his plea to request that Klein be disqualified from receiving any damages.
The district judge ruled that Klein was not entitled to profit from his purchase of Bright Tunes (and, by extension, ‘He’s So Fine’), a decision that was upheld by the appeals court. The court also found that Klein had acted improperly by sharing financial information about ‘My Sweet Lord’ to Bright Tunes before the question of liability was settled, and that he should not be rewarded by the court for breaching the fiduciary duty owed to Harrison.
Four main sources of revenue were considered in the damages hearing: mechanical royalties (the amount paid to a song’s publisher by a record company to release it); performance royalties (revenue derived from broadcasting); sheet music and folio sales; and profits from Apple Records.
Performance royalties and sheet music sales were determined at $359,794 and $67,675 respectively, according to accounting records. The other amounts were harder to ascertain.
Mechanical royalties were established at $260,103, including single and related album sales. However, the judge noted that the song’s popularity would have effectively increased revenue for the other compositions on the All Things Must Pass album, and for the single’s b-side, ‘Isn’t It A Pity’.
The court looked closely at the amount of North American radio play that each song on the album had received. Of the 22 songs, only nine had been played, and ‘My Sweet Lord’ had represented 70% of the album’s total airplay. The judge therefore ruled that 70% of mechanical royalties from the single, and 50% from those for All Things Must Pass, were attributable to ‘My Sweet Lord’.
The compilation The Best Of George Harrison was also a factor. The judge eventually determined that the gross earnings attributable to ‘My Sweet Lord’ for the single amounted to $54,526; $588,188 for the album All Things Must Pass; and $6,887 from The Best Of George Harrison. This amounted to a total of $646,601 in the USA and Canada.
A further consideration was profits for Apple generated from ‘My Sweet Lord’. Using a similar formula as before for the single and two albums, the judge found the resultant earnings were $130,629 from the single; $925,731 from All Things Must Pass; and $21,598 from The Best Of George Harrison.
The total gross earnings for ‘My Sweet Lord’ were determined by the court as $2,152,028. This was reduced to $2,133,316 after agent’s fees were considered.
Since the plagiarism had been subconscious (unintentional), and Harrison had added original elements to the song, he was not liable to pay the full amount to Bright Tunes. The judge decreed that three quarters of the song’s success was due to to the plagiarised elements, with a further quarter due to Harrison’s contributions. A sum of $1,599,987 was settled upon as the amount earned by ‘My Sweet Lord’ which could be attributed to ‘He’s So Fine’.
On 19 February 1981 the court decided that Harrison should pay ABKCO $587,000 instead of the $1.6 million, and would also receive the rights to ‘He’s So Fine’. The figure of $587,000 was the same sum paid by Klein in 1978 to Bright Tunes for the rights to the song.
Klein was ordered to hold the rights to ‘He’s So Fine’ in trust for Harrison, which would then be transferred to the former Beatle upon full payment plus interest. This decision was upheld on appeal.
Litigation continued well into the 1990s, as the finer points of the settlement were argued over. The case was finally concluded in March 1998.
The fallout
Harrison was evidently deeply troubled by the litigation. He wrote and recorded ‘This Song’, which appeared on his Thirty Three & ⅓ album, about his courtroom experiences. It contains the lines “This song has nothing ‘Bright’ about it”; “My expert tells me it’s okay”; and “This song ain’t black or white, and as far as I know don’t infringe on anyone’s copyright”.
In an October 1976 edition of Melody Maker, Ringo Starr spoke to journalist Ray Coleman about the legal episode. “George was very unlucky,” Starr said. “There’s no doubt that the tune is similar but how many songs have been written with other melodies in mind? George’s version is much heavier than The Chiffons – he might have done it with the original in the back of his mind, but he’s just very unlucky that someone wanted to make it a test case in court. If I’d written ‘He’s So Fine’, I guess I’d have sued if I’d wanted some money.
In his 1980 Playboy magazine interview, John Lennon doubted that Harrison really had subconsciously plagiarised ‘He’s So Fine’. “He walked right into it,” Lennon told David Sheff. “He knew what he was doing. He must have known, you know. He’s smarter than that… George could have changed a few bars in that song and nobody could have ever touched him, but he just let it go and paid the price. Maybe he thought God would just sort of let him off.”
Earlier that year, Harrison’s book I Me Mine was published by Genesis Publications. Speaking of his legal troubles surrounding ‘My Sweet Lord’, Harrison said: “I don’t feel guilty or bad about it, in fact it saved many a heroin addict’s life. I know the motive behind writing the song in the first place and its effect far exceeded the legal hassle.”
I have read differently about the “George O’Hara-Smith Singers” in other sources. This was just a pseudonym for George Harrison singing along, via overdub. Most of the vocals and backup vocals for the ATMP sessions took place in late August and September 1970 (At this time, Eric Clapton and Bobby Whitlock were in America on tour with Derek & The Dominoes). George was having a bit of studio fun by himself doing a lot of overdubbing.
“Cyril and Betty” were mentioned in the liner notes of the ATMP remaster (released in 2001) and was probably just a joke. I don’t think Cyril and Betty actually existed.
January of 1970 the 4 BEATLES HAD SEVERAL CHESTNUTS IN THE BAGtowards a new album. What might have been
Maybe I’m amazed
My sweet lord
Instant karma
Back sear of my car
Junk
It don’t come easy
Isolation
Working class hero
Hear me lord
That would be something
Love
I found out
All things must pass
Mother
Cold turkey and Art of dying as a single
Alan White (not Andy, although that would have been cool) played drums on MSL
@archie – as a matter of fact, it is Andy, not Alan, White who claimed to have drummed on this track in an interview in Uncut magazine. But most other sources I’ve found say it’s Ringo and Jim Gordon.
Bobby Whitlock plays harmonium
The fact that Alan Klein became involved for money as well as revenge surprised no-one and as Harrison later said ” it just proved that Paul ( McCartney ) was right about him all along “
I’m convinced there are some errors in the list of contributions on the track. For a start, George played acoustic guitar also (he added the slide guitars much later). As he says: “I spent a lot of time with the OTHER rhythm guitar players to get them all to play exactly the same rhythm so it just sounded perfectly in synch.”
Also, I’m surprised to see Alan White’s recollection being taken as gospel. He’s given the very same story about If Not for You (and I think it is that track he’s thinking of, which fits with Simon Leng and Bruce Spizer’s song credits), and he’s also sworn blind that Lennon played rhythm guitar on one of the ATMP songs (which would’ve been impossible, because John was in LA with Arthur Janov when the basic tracks were recorded!). Anyway, White keeps changing his mind about which songs he played on; from what I read, most Beatles biographers ignore what he says. Besides, George named the drummers as Ringo and Jim Gordon – how can White’s version overrule that?
Peter Frampton added more acoustic guitar, with George again, towards the end of production. Someone also added those lovely zithers – George once again, I guess (they sound like the autoharp(s) he plays on Ravi’s I Am Missing You).
I agree with Barry Smith about the backing vocalists. “Cyril” and “Betty” were just examples of George joking in his 2001 credits, along with the credit for Phil Collins on Art of Dying; ditto for George saying something about how working with Spector helped him “realise the full potential of the Hare Krishna Mantra”. (I didn’t get that last joke until I read a couple of authors pointing it out.)
Whitlock may have been one of the singers, although I always get an uncomfortable feeling he’s a little too ready to credit himself for all and everything. But I don’t where the idea came from that he *and* Clapton sang on this song – Whitlock doesn’t say that, and Bruce Spizer only mentions them as singing on “some of the songs”, but not necessarily My Sweet Lord. (Whitlock and Clapton sing on All Things Must Pass, Let It Down and Awaiting on You All.)
I agree with you and I myself noticed the omission of George’s acoustic guitar credit.
I found a second-hand copy of the 45 “My Sweet Lord” from the late Bev Benson amongst a pile of records that she gave me when I was 11 1/2 years old. I remember when I first played the 45 on my record-player, I found that I rather liked the song.