Who owns the rights to these Lennon songs?

Thank you for your lovely response, lavender1905! And I will return later today after my (split)shift is over; then I will have the time to offer a more detailed reply. I'm looking forward to it. :)
'Till then.

**Have an A1 day**

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Hi tzogas, how are you doing?

 

Quite alright, thank you for asking!

Just wanted to thank you for looking into that "who owns the rights" question and for your thoughtful comments.

 

You are very welcome, and thank you for perceiving my comments as thoughtful. My friends have been known to occasionally become impatient with me for “going too deep”; “reading too much into things” and “thinking too much”.

Unfortunately, this only serves to send me into a deep contemplation of how anyone can ever possibly do too much thinking; especially with all of the problems needing to be solved in the world today. However, I refrain from also questioning them on this; their heads hurt too much already. But if one more of them sends me a Facebook post with another simplistic feel-good pithy little message (I call them “fridge magnets”) about “insert world problem here” without a backup (and defensible) personal philosophy, I think my head is going to explode. (edit for clarity: It's frustrating to see people give lip-service to concepts and ideals which deserve discussion and contemplation. We've gotten to the point we are by not thinking about what we say, and not examining how we arrive(d) at our opinions/beliefs.)

I was a little confused about some of them ( "documentary on the evils of communism" ?? ) 

You're going to need backstory on this one:
1) Many years ago, I watched an old documentary on John Lennon's and Yoko Ono's “Bed-In” (remember?). I believe it was in black-and-white, and the interviewer seemed, well, unsympathetic to their intentions and actions. I don't remember him saying so directly.....but it was in his mannerisms, his tone of voice (subtly sarcastic, almost mocking) and there was an air of insinuation about him.

I could feel it, even through the dead pixels of television. I was only a kid, just starting to percieve the ways of adults. I got a little confused – I thought, “Aren't interviewers just there to ask questions? Is the couple in the bed really doing something wrong?”

And then John rescued me from my confusion by asking the interviewer why he was being such an a-hole. At that point, I knew it wasn't just me. This interviewer was representing for the Establishment, and his interview was slanted so as to provoke John and Yoko. It was the first time I realized that it was “ok” not to trust (or at least to question) the man in the suit and tie. Before that, to me, the suit and tie uniform was a signal of “respectability” and “responsibility”. That day, I learned who was more deserving of my respect. An honest, plain-talking couple who were hurting no one with their actions and expression of protest.

My point is, the Establishment needed to discredit John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and their beliefs as “corny garbage”, as you put it. The Establishment needed everybody to just “grow up” and “start being adults” and STOP “believing in fairy tales” (of a peaceful earth). He is dead now, and as you might know, this world is not anywhere near the better for it. In fact, perhaps this movie has arrived right on time. Could you not feel anything of John Lennon's spirit in this “corny” movie? A little bit of his presence, however light-hearted? I know I did – right from the moment Danny Collins begins to comprehend what he holds in his hands, and “Imagine” starts to play. This song, decades old, censored from the radio in the days following 9/11......and to me it was brand-new.....once again.

I wish everyone could feel as I did at that moment. For me, the scene did what I sincerely believe it was intended to do. It brought John Lennon back for a single moment. I try to make that moment stay – as we all wish wonderful moments would. Ah, perhaps all that sounds corny to you as well, but hey, not everything hits every mark in every person, every time. Just thought you should know that for some people, that moment was there for them, and sorry it didn't do the same for you. Reading you call it “corny garbage” brought back the memory of that old interviewer, and I worried that you'd lost whatever it was that meant so much to you in Lennon's music, and that you'd become cynical. That would be a waste, I think. Why did I “worry”? I can't say at the moment. I guess I'll have to think on **that**...some more.

To sum up #1: Had the Establishment succeeded in making a complete mockery out of these two people, I could possibly see an alternate future in which we would be watching anti-Communist propoganda with Lennon's music playing in the background as some kind of evil joke.

and

2) I'm a bit of a smart-ass.

Certainly you put a lot more thought into this than I did, I admit my remarks were very off-the-cuff and I am sort of surprised that anyone even read them.

 

I am a surprising person. I've been criticized on here for my, uh, “varying tone” - but I believe that people are like diamonds; they have many sides and facets, and they change depending on how the light is hitting them at the moment. Your post seemed worth it to respond to. And I believe somewhat in serendipity. I have a desire to learn from others, and I'd like to believe I have something to offer in return.

I also appreciate that you are not one of the legion of knee-jerk Yoko-bashers. Kind of like you say, anyone with respect for John ought to respect his choice of life partner. 

Let me be clear: I think Yoko Ono deserves respect first and foremost because she is a human being. I suggested that she deserved respect as John Lennon's wife because this is the context in which we the world in general were introduced to her, and knew her in that context from that point onwards. Before she was his wife, she was a conceptual artist, I believe, with her own thing going on at the time.

I grew up in an environment which welcomed any chance to bash Ono, or any famous woman, for any reason. Once I was out from under the influence of that community, I began to learn to truly think for myself – including questioning the “Yoko hate”. Such are the consequences of “thinking too much”. Le sigh c'est la vie.

So I'm not going to defend or retract my first impression of this movie (or respond to trolls who don't know the meaning of a smiley face, **NOT YOU!!** I mean like the one who posted on this thread before you did).

You know, it's funny......I posted that second comment without ever having seen your response to that person. As per #2 above, I am well aware that I can risk getting off on the wrong foot with people who do not know me very well. Alternatively, sometimes people simply misunderstand me because perhaps they've become accustomed to people thinking the worst of them – most especially when meeting on the web. That second post was a prophylactic measure against such a possibility.

I just did not put that much thought into it. 

At least no one could accuse you of “thinking too much” - which doesn't feel quite as good as people may think it might. :)

Thanks for the movie suggestion – I may look into it. :)

Ta.

**Have an A1 day**

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It's not really price about the Beatles songs, Apple owns the actual recording of the songs, the performance, so Paul, Ringo, and the John Lennon and George Harrison estates have to sign off it to use their actual voices and recorded performance and they rarely do that, a cover of the songs you don't have to have get the Beatles permission at all, so that means you can sidestep them if you want to use the song, that's when you just have to buy it from Michael Jackson/Sony. In the 80's, Yoko Ono approved "Revolution" to be used in a Nike commercial and the other Beatles went nuts and sued Nike saying Yoko alone was not enough to authorize using the actual recording of the song. That being said, "Happiness is a Warm Gun" was used in a Michael Moore movie, maybe the Columbine one, and they all must have signed off on that. Other than that, I can't think of a Beatles performance being used in a movie, although there have been many covers used.

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