Comedy legend kwadguy rebrands as Harrison insider

Here is my guess of what the situation is: The Harrison estate is, indeed, in possession of a lot of cool material that would be releasable and saleable. EMI claims contractual rights to issuing the material, based on when it was recorded and Harrison's contracts, and is offering a royalty rate consistent with his original contracts. Harrison's estate rightly believes the material is worth a much greater royalty rate, or perhaps even a contractual reversion of ownership in order to allow EMI to license and release the material. So we have a stand-off.

There is absolutely no question or reason to believe that EMI wouldn't want the material released. HOWEVER, there is also no reason to believe that they would indulge a much improved royalty rate--of a reversion of ownership--to do so.

If we take Dhani at his word, then I'd bet big money that the above explains the problem. It isn't simply that EMI doesn't want the material released, or is blocking it on any sort of artistic (or spiteful) grounds.

It is never as simple as you expect. If all the Harrison estate wanted was an increased royalty rate on the newly released material, I am sure they could come to an agreement.

They are probably either asking for an increased royalty rate on his entire catalog or else rights reversion of part/all of his recordings. Either of which would be a deal breaker for just about anyone sitting on EMI's side of the table.

It is not just a matter of getting the music out "so all can enjoy it."

Look, you're only re-reporting a single side of the story--the only side we have.

Those "sons of a bitches" (sic) at EMI would UNDOUBTEDLY like to issue this material. It would sell. But they aren't going to release the material if it requires them to relinquish certain rights, or renegotiate certain contracts. If they could confine their negotiations to only the unreleased material, and if the only issue was the royalty rate, then presumably they could come to an understanding where EMI would get a lower return, but they'd get a chance to release some interesting and saleable material.

The fact that they have not been able to reach an agreement suggests--strongly--that the Harrison estate is asking more than just an improved royalty rate on the unreleased material. And if that's true, then that makes EMI not so much SOBs as a corporation concerned with preserving their assets.

There is no question that Capitol would be willing to release a George anthology of unreleased material.

What Dhani really meant, I suspect, is that the label wouldn't pay what George's estate wanted...

Yes, I know about that. And I ask you: If you had free and clear title to release some Harrison rarities, as his label, would you? Of course. It's easy money. This is George Harrison, 1/4 of the Beatles. There was a major documentary about him. The time was ripe. You could just throw stuff out there and create some cash where there wasn't any. If you owned the stuff and had clear title to reissue it, there wouldn't be any issue at all.

Dhani would like to imply that EMI (Universal now) is just sitting on this stuff because they can't be bothered. The truth has to be financial. And not as in: EMI sees no market and doesn't want to pay the cost of rolling tape and pressing physical product. As in: The Harrison estate is asking for licensing fees that make these reissues cost prohibitive.

You need to read between the lines. Olivia keeps claiming that EMI rejects her ideas. More likely, EMI rejects the financial terms for her ideas. It's a dismal commercial environment now, and George's recordings simply don't have a huge amount of monetary worth released as albums. And things are getting worse, not better.

OK, you need to parse "did not want to issue". That is almost certainly "did not want to pay licensing costs to Harrison estate to issue". So, there are two ways of looking at this.

My read previously is that the Harrison Trust/Estate wanted too much for licensing, and so deals were a no go with Universal/Capitol. (They didn't say that explicitly, but said Universal/Capitol 'wasn't interested' and the only reason they might not be interested would be that it would be too costly).

Sometime back, I had the chance to spend time with a person who worked on the inside at universal doing special projects. It's not like we were good friends, and he wasn't going to spill all the beans all the time with me, but I actually did ask him about the rumored generous George Harrison unreleased compilation. And to that, he rolled his eyes and said, " there are certain parties that believe that what they own is worth a lot more than what it really is, and that makes it impossible for certain things that should happen to happen. " He wouldn't elaborate, but I think that's pretty clear. It wasn't a matter of the Harrison estate saying, " please put out this generous collection of George Harrison rarities" and universal saying,"no thanks, we don't think anybody wants that." It was that the Harrison estate wanted too much money.