Thorsten Knublach sent us this information that reveals some new information about the Tony Sheridan sessions. It may also indicate Pete Best is owed some money. (Graphics provided courtesy Thorsten Knublach.)
Article by Thorsten Knublauch
Once in a while a new document turns up
and you are happy about it because it sheds new light on a subject.
Sometimes documents turn up that raise more questions than they
answer… Here is one that answers a lot of questions!
Mark Lewisohn sent me a newly found
document recently, because he knows that I have been researching and
writing about The Beatles` Hamburg days for years, and he wanted my
opinion. This document is called "Künstlerquittung" –
"artist receipt" signed by each Beatle and an unknown
executive of Deutsche Grammophon.
Four identical documents exist – one
each for John, Paul, George and Pete… Mark was able to get the
copies pertaining to George and Pete, and each musician is listed
with his Liverpool home address. It is a receipt from Deutsche
Grammophon recording company, which documents that each Beatle was
paid for five songs recorded in Hamburg during the session of June
22nd/23rd 1961 with Tony Sheridan without receiving any formal
rights. It appears to be a standard document for session musicians.
The songs mentioned in the document are
"My Bonnie", "The Saints" and "Why",
recorded as backing musicians for DM 25 per person and song, and
"Ain`t She Sweet" and "Cry For A Shadow",
recorded by The Beatles on their own, for which they received DM 50
per person and song. Their payment was called "Pauschalentgelt
für Musiker" – “flat compensation for musicians”. With
this one-off fee all possible rights were waived by the musicians.
The period in question that the document covers is backdated April
1st to June 30th 1961 and signed June 28th 1961
This document seems to be the missing
link in the Beatles-Sheridan-Polydor-story.
Why is this document so special?
- Over the years it has been written in
the books – and perhaps understood by The Beatles themselves - that
they had a recording contract with Bert Kaempfert for the "My
Bonnie" sessions. But that is not true. Most books claim that
the recordings were done for producer Bert Kaempfert, and that he
later sold the recordings to Deutsche Grammophon. We notice that this
newly found document was issued by Deutsche Grammophon record company
and not Bert Kaempfert. In addition to that, although this document
is signed by two parties (Deutsche Grammophon and each Beatle) it
isn’t a contract – it`s just a receipt.
- It clearly shows that The Beatles
were regarded as, and paid as sessions musicians for these
recordings.
- We learn for the first time about the
amount of money the Beatles received for those recordings – DM 175
in total per person. In the books so far, a total of DM 300 was only
ever mentioned, and no source was ever citied.
- There are only five songs mentioned!
“Nobody’s Child” and “Take Out Some Insurance On Me, Baby”
are missing.
What did we know before?
We knew that only those five above
named songs were mentioned in the newspaper Mersey Beat in issue No.
2 in the famous “Beatles sign recording contract” article. This
information came directly from The Beatles. The four songs except
“Ain`t She Sweet” were released before The Beatles had a record
contract with Parlophone: Two tracks on the “My Bonnie”/”The
Saints” single in Germany on October 23rd 1961 as well as in the UK
on January 5th 1962, and all four songs on the French “Mr Twist”
EP around January 26th 1962. The other three songs were released for
the first time on “The Beatles’ First” LP in Germany in April
1964.
The Polydor documents
(Aufnahmeprotokolle) for “My Bonnie”, “The Saints”, “Why”
and “Cry For A Shadow” were logged in 1961. The documents for the
other three were only written in April 1964, shortly before their
first release. Surely, all seven documents refer in their contents to
the recordings of June 22nd/23rd 1961. (BTW: In the files, those two
dates are listed, but it is not clear if the Beatles actually were
present on both days. My personal guess is that they recorded only on
June 22nd and that mixing and editing was done a day later –
without the musicians. There was no need for more than one day to
record seven songs.)
We also learned before that the Beatles
had a real contract with Bert Kaempfert Productions, effective July
1st 1961. Three copies of those contracts exist and were shown in the
booklet for the Bear Family “Beatles Bop” boxed set from the Bert
Kaempfert files or were sold in auctions – the latest one in the
Uwe Blaschke Collection auction at Heritage in September 2015. This
contract signed on June 19th 1961 (ahead of the sessions) had a
duration of a year – until June 30th 1962, with a term of notice of
three months. In this contract the Beatles were obligated to record
at least four tracks for Bert Kaempfert on their own. It wasn`t clear
among Beatles experts if the songs recorded with Tony Sheridan in
June - or at least those two songs recorded on their own during that
session - were counted in this contract (see Mark Lewisohn in Tune In
– full edition - p. 916 who suggested that they were outside the
contract).
When the Beatles were to get a contract
with Parlophone they had to terminate that contract with Bert
Kaempfert. It wasn`t terminated during the three month period,
though, and a dissolution contract needed to be made on June 25th
1962 - the day after The Beatles’ final session for Bert Kaempfert,
recording “Sweet Georgia Brown” and the missing “Swanee River”,
together with Roy Young. In this dissolution contract the Beatles
gave away their rights to the recordings – it does not specifically
say which recordings - it was just a disclaimer for all kinds of
future demands. The Beatles gave away their rights, and, on the other
hand, were released from the obligation to record the above-mentioned
number of songs, which, at the time, might have been two additional
tracks, since “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “Swanee River” were
already on tape. As no other documents were known at the time, the
experts weren`t sure if with this contract also the rights to the
1961 recorded songs were given away.
What do we know now with the newly
found document?
We know now for sure that the Beatles
gave away their rights to the above mentioned five songs shortly
after the recordings were done in 1961 – or, more precisely: they
never had any rights to these songs, as they were only session
musicians. They were even seen as session musicians for their own two
tracks! For a fee of DM 50 per person they sold away “Cry For A
Shadow” and “Ain`t She Sweet”, respectively. As they were only
session musicians the record company could have added vocals or more
musicians to those tracks without asking– and this was indeed done
when the tracks were released in the United States in 1964. They
signed this document on June 28th 1961 – the same day that John and
George signed away their composers’ rights for “Cry For A Shadow”
to Alfred Schacht – most likely for a one-off fee, if any at all
(the pages with those details were never published)! Therefore, the
Bert Kaempfert contract becoming effective on July 1st 1961 was a
contract for NEW recordings, and this was ended with the dissolution
contract dated May 25th 1962.
The period between April 1st and June
30th 1961 mentioned in the receipt is almost identical with the
engagement at the Top Ten Club Hamburg (lasting until July 1st) but
does not make sense what the starting date is concerned. They did not
meet Kaempfert before early May 1961!
What we still have to find out is the
reason why this document came from Deutsche Grammophon and not from
Bert Kaempfert (as stated over the years in many books- even my own).
I think the explanation is very simple: There never was a contract
with Bert Kaempfert prior to the July 1961 contract! We all were
misled by that famous contract – and most likely the Beatles were,
too…. Only Tony Sheridan had a contract with Deutsche Grammophon
starting October 1st 1961 for a year (printed in "Beatles Bop").
(If it was not cancelled in time it was automatically renewed –
and, as far as I know, finally lasted until 1967.) Surely, the
document paying The Beatles must have been made with Deutsche
Grammophon as well! Kaempfert was only the producer for Deutsche
Grammophon and didn`t act on his own for these recordings.
Without really knowing what to do with
The Beatles, Kaempfert offered them a contract with his production
company for a period of time AFTER the sessions – which turned out
to become The Beatles’ first record contract. Perhaps The Beatles
thought this was a contract for the “My Bonnie” sessions, because
it was signed ahead of the session and therefore told Bill Harry so
for his Mersey Beat article. The Beatles were happy to sign anything,
most likely without knowing what they did… If you look at
interviews done with The Beatles – until today – those Tony
Sheridan sessions were rarely mentioned – and it seems there was a
lot of disappointment about them, for various reasons… One should
also remember that this contract was difficult to fulfill – The
Beatles left Germany a couple of days later, after the sessions on
July 2nd 1961 and didn`t return until April 1962 to open the
Star-Club…
But hey – now there are still two
questions left! Why are there only five songs listed in the receipt?
Could this mean that The Beatles never played on those two other
recordings? Was that the reason only five songs were mentioned in
Mersey Beat No 2?
OK – no one doubts that the Beatles
played on those undocumented tracks. Nor do I, as there was no other
recording session with Tony Sheridan in Hamburg at the time, apart
from the “My Bonnie” album session in December 1961. Those
sessions were done with different musicians in a different studio,
and the overall sound and playing appears to be different compared to
the sessions with the Beatles.
But why were two songs left out? Even
if those songs were not intended to be released at the time I would
imagine that they would at least have been mentioned in the receipt.
Surely, if they had wanted to save money at the time Deutsche
Grammophon would never have paid for material that was not supposed
to be published, and this is the only reason I can imagine why they
are not mentioned…
Some experts theorise that those two
missing songs were only given to Polydor after the success of the
Beatles from the archive of Bert Kaempfert and were to be released in
April 1964. I totally agree with that because there are three clues
suggesting it:
- Firstly, it is proven in a way by the
1964 dates of the “Aufnahmeprotokolle” documents.
- Secondly, those songs were missing in
the receipt.
- And there is a third clue – and
previously most likely a misinterpretation. In “Beatles Bop” the
sound engineer Richard Moore has checked the sound picture of all
recorded songs from that first session. He claims that the sound
picture of “Nobody’s Child”, “Take Out Some Insurance On Me,
Baby” and “Ain`t She Sweet” is different from those other four
tracks - perhaps because of a different setting in the studio. His
conclusion is that those three tracks were recorded on a different
day (in other words: the second day of the session). I am no expert
in those details and I can’t prove it, and, as stated above, still
believe that one day was enough to record seven songs – but all
three songs were not released shortly after the session, but more
than two years later. Is it possible that they were mixed or (in case
of “Ain`t She Sweet”) remixed much later to be included in “The
Beatles’ First”, which resulted in a different sound picture than
the songs mixed directly after the session?
To cut a long story short: Kaempfert
delivered only five songs to Deutsche Grammophon, and they only paid
The Beatles for five songs at the time. That is the simple reason why
there are only five songs listed on the document… Strange but lucky
for us that the tapes were never wiped.
And this leads to the final question:
There is no known contract or receipt between either Bert Kaempfert
and The Beatles nor Deutsche Grammophon and The Beatles for a
financial compensation for “Nobody’s Child” or “Take Out Some
Insurance On Me, Baby”!
There is no doubt that Tony Sheridan
was paid for those two tracks when they were finally released –
even though his Polydor contract only guaranteed him small
percentages, which annoyed him until his death.
The Beatles only got their session fee
for the five songs recorded in 1961 as proven by that newly found
document! The dissolution contract of 1962 was only valid for the
songs recorded in May 1962. The two 1961 leftover songs were first
released in April 1964 on “The Beatles’ First” and rereleased
extensively ever since.
Looks like it might be a good idea for
Pete, Paul, Olivia and Yoko to get a date with their lawyers, doesn’t
it?
Thorsten Knublauch, author of Komm, gib
mir Deine Hand – Die Beatles in Deutschland 1960 -1970 and
Bravo-Beatles-Blitztournee.
Additional sources:
Komm, gib mir Deine Hand – Die
Beatles in Deutschland 1960 -1970 by Thorsten Knublauch & Axel
Korinth
Tune In by Mark Lewisohn
Facts & Fiction by Eric Krasker
Beatles Bop CD-Booklet by Hans Olof
Gottfridsson
Many thanks to Mark Lewisohn, Joachim
Noske and Eric Krasker.
(You can see related Beatles legal documents below.)
