Beatles company Apple Corps has confirmed it is planning legal action against a business which is planning on releasing live recordings of the Beatles singing various cover version during their pre-fame residency days in Hamburg.
As previously reported, Miami based Fuego Entertainment announced in January that they had acquired the rights to the live recordings off one Jeffrey Collins, a producer and promoter who says he represented the DJ who actually recorded the live Beatles show at Hamburg's Star Club back in 1962. They plan to release an album from the recordings, which will include Paul McCartney performing Hank Williams' 'Lovesick Blues' and McCartney and John Lennon singing together on 'Ask Me Why'.
The copyright situation regarding the recordings is a bit hazy. Collins says the DJ who recorded the gig had permission to do so from the venue, though it seems unlikely the band gave their go ahead - but crucially these aren't dodgy 'audience member takes tape player into back of venue' recordings. Collins and Feugo both seem convinced the recordings can be released without infringing the copyrights of the band who appear on them, presumably because technically speaking - assuming you accept the recording was sanctioned - the sound recording copyright would originally belong to whoever made the recording, in this case Collins' DJ.
But the Beatles' own company aren't convinced. Apple Corps this weekend announced it would sue Fuego over the recordings, claiming that they were made illegitimately and therefore neither Collins nor the Miami based company had the right to distribute them. Their lawsuit adds that releasing the live recordings would "dilute and tarnish" the band's memory, mainly because, Apple Corps claim, the recordings are of a poor quality. The company's lawyer Paul LiCalsi added: "This appears to us to be a garden-variety bootleg recording".
But Fuego chief Hugo Cancio denies any wrongdoing, arguing that the recordings were made with permission, and that his company came into ownership of them entirely legitimately. He says that Apple can't "claim that these were just bootlegged", and that "it's unfair to millions of Beatles fans not to allow this recording to be put out. The world deserves to hear these tracks".
Responding to Apple Corps' lawsuit he told reporters that the litigation had come as a surprise because the Beatles firm had been participating "in good-faith conversations" with him about the recordings until just a few weeks ago. That said, the Beatles company previously knocked back an approach by Collins to collaborate on the recordings, and when Fuego announced it had acquired the recordings back in January an Apple spokesman told Billboard "we don't have a comment as such but not surprisingly are looking into the claim".