I didn't know about this fact, and I thought I would have shared the article...
http://www.undercover.com.au/2002012...eharrison.html
The My Sweet Lord plagiarism story by George Harrison
Undercover News; Tuesday, January 22, 2001
With George Harrison sitting atop the UK charts this week with the 31 year
old "My Sweet Lord", we recall the story of how the song changed legal
history.
When George Harrison talked to Undercover in the mid 90's he gave a detailed
answer to the story behind one of the most famous music court cases in
history.
Not long after releasing "My Sweet Lord", Harrison was sued for plagiarism by
the publisher of the early 60's Chiffons hit "He's So Fine".
The court cased tied up 18 years of his life.
"It didn't really effect my songwriting" George told Undercover. "I did
record `This Song' which was kind of a comment about the situation. The thing
that really disappoints me is when you have a relationship with one person
and they turn out to betray you, because the whole story of "My Sweet Lord"
is based upon this fellow Allan Klein, who managed the Beatles from about
1968 or '69, through until 1973.
When they issued a complaint about "My Sweet Lord", he was my business
manager. He was the one who put out "My Sweet Lord" and collected 20%
commission on the record and he was the one who got the lawyers to defend me,
and did an interview in "Playboy" where he talked about how the song was
nothing like the other song.
Later, when the judge in court told me to settle with them, because he didn't
think I'd consciously stolen their song, they were doing a settlement deal
with me when they suddenly stopped the settlement, some time elapsed, and I
found out that this gut Klein had gone around the back door, in the meantime
we'd fired him. He went round the backdoor and bought the rights to the one
song "He's So Fine" in order to continue a law suit against me. He on one
hand was defending me, then he switched sides and continued the law suit and
every time the judge said what the result was, he'd appeal, and he kept
appealing and appealing until it got to the supreme court. I mean this thing
went on for 16 years or something, 18 years, and finally it's all over with
and the result of it is I own "My Sweet Lord" and I now own "He's So Fine"
and Allan Klein owes me like three or four hundred thousand dollars cause he
took all the money on both songs, it's really a joke, it's a total joke.
There's definitely a book, because now with any kind of law pertaining to
infringement of copyright, they always quote this case. It's become the
precedent in all these law students' books.
We did keep a lot of lawyers employed for years and we still are in one way
or another. There's always some kind of bullshit going on".
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"Because there wasn't any reason left to keep it all inside"
- Paul McCartney, 1982
MSL Plagiarism Story by George Harrison
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