***
Fittingly, Jackson had sealed his biggest deal by throwing in a personal appearance as a sweetener. It wasn’t an easy favor, either—he would have to fly fifteen hours from Los Angeles to Sydney, change planes, and then fly another five hours to Perth. But not even a pack of dingoes could have stopped him from getting his catalogue.
Bandier later learned that Jackson had offered another perk. Holmes à Court’s daughter was named Penny, and they were willing to exclude the song “Penny Lane” from the deal so that the billionaire could give it to her as a present (Jackson’s company continued to administer the song for her). It was far from a minor concession.
“Any song that you own of the Beatles earns money,” says Bandier. “There’s only like two hundred fifty of them, and everybody has a favorite of the two hundred fifty. Believe me, ‘Penny Lane’ is a popular song.” But the kicker was the appearance in Perth. “We knew that we couldn’t do the moonwalk, so there was no question,” Bandier remembers. “It wasn’t going to happen.”
Jackson’s single-minded focus on buying the catalogue despite vociferous objections from the record industry’s brightest minds might strike some as impetuous. But in hindsight, it’s clear that he was correct to follow his instincts, even to those who doubted him at first—and that his sense of the value of copyrights was impeccable.
“I think if you were his advisor at that time you would have told him, ‘Don’t do it,’ ” says Yetnikoff. “Turns out that it was a very lucrative investment. . . . So I would have to say that his business acumen is better than mine.”
Jackson certainly never forgot that he’d been right. In 2007, on a conference call with Bandier, the executive recounted the story of ATV’s 1985 sale. Jackson was delighted to relive the experience.
“See,” he said. “I told you I knew the music publishing business.”
The above text is adapted Michael Jackson, Inc, published by Simon & Schuster’s Atria imprint on June 3rd. Like the rest of the book, it is based almost entirely on original interviews; see Michael Jackson, Inc.’s bibliography for a full list of sources. For more, follow me on Twitter and Facebook.
