"It's even more sweeter than it was before." That's what Richard Ashcroft of the Verve said about getting back royalties from his 1997 hit "Bitter Sweet Symphony" last month. I'll start at the beginning:
In 1965, the Rolling Stones released a song called "The Last Time," written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Later that same year, the Andrew Oldham Orchestra released an instrumental cover version of the song. To be clear, covering a song like this is perfectly legal, providing you pay mechanical licensing rights to the copyright holder, which Oldham did.
This striking arrangement (by David Whitaker) caught the ear of Richard Ashcroft in the late '90s when he used a sample from that recording as the basis for the Verve's song "Bitter Sweet Symphony." To use a sample legally, you need to get clearance from the copyright holder; it's not an automatic right, like covering a song. So Ashcroft contacted Decca Records, who owned the copyright to the Andrew Oldham recording, and secured the rights...or so he thought.
The problem is that even though Ashcroft secured the rights to use the Oldham recording, the Rolling Stones' manager, Allen Klein (whose name I knew because he also used to manage the Beatles) owned the copyright of the song itself. This means that while Ashcroft expected to get 50% of the royalties from sales of "Bitter Sweet Symphony" with the other half going to Klein, Klein sued for 100% of the royalties. Even though the suit was settled outside of court, the Verve did indeed relinquish their royalties to Klein in 1997.
However, Ashcroft has been vocal about this perceived injustice even since. Klein passed away in 2009, and his son Allen Klein Jr. took over his record label, ABKCO. However, as of last month, the tables have turned. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards signed over all the publishing rights to "Bitter Sweet Symphony" back to the Verve. I haven't read anything about back royalties, but Ashcroft seems grateful all the same. And apparently, the song is still selling a significant amount of copies even twenty years later.