Rows overs royalties: how bands go from hitsville to splitsville

Brian Boydon music

Last month, the courts overturned a verdict whereby the keyboard player from Procol Harum would share in the substantial royalties earned by the band's A Whiter Shade of Pale.

When the song was recorded in the 1968 it was credited to the band's front man Gary Brooker, who for decades received all the song's royalties payments.

The keyboard player, Matthew Fisher, only went to court in 2006. He argued that because he had written the distinctive keyboard riff in the song (which resembles work by Bach, but never mind) he was entitled to 50 per cent of the royalties. As a result, Fisher is now credited as the co-writer of A Whiter Shade of Pale, but receives nothing in royalties because he waited 38 years to take his case.

The case opened up many awkward questions about what goes into writing a song and who contributes just what. If your tambourine banging is absolutely vital to the rhythmic flow of the song, should you get a cut? If someone changes a key, or a few notes here or there, is that a valid, and legal, contribution? "Where there's a hit, there's a writ" runs the old Tin Pan Alley adage, and musicians manage to keep the lawyers happy simply by dint of the black art nature of songwriting.

To avoid all the nasty legal stuff down the line, many smart bands (U2, Coldplay and REM included) just go for a full band split, no matter who contributed what. As revealed by the Sunday TimesRich List, the four members of Coldplay are valued at €30 million each, despite the fact that Chris Martin shoulders most of the songwriting duties. You'd be hard pushed to recognise the other three guys, even if they stood in front of you with "I Am In Coldplay" tattooed on their foreheads. But legally and financially they are equal partners.

The "split it each way" approach goes back to the days of The Beatles. John and Paul realised early on how difficult it was to pinpoint who contributed what, and decided on the Lennon/McCartney songwriting credit for anything that either of them composed during the lifespan of the group.

Yesterdaywas written, in its entirety, by McCartney, but Yoko Ono still receives a payment whenever it's played on the radio. Hence, the rather clumsy attempt by Paul a few years ago to change the writing credit to McCartney/Lennon on those Beatles songs that were solely his. This wouldn't have changed how the money was split; it was just an attempt to signify who wrote the song.

The Smiths were only ever legally Morrissey and Marr - something that very much annoyed the bass player and drummer in the band. Their argument was that while they might not have written the melody line or the words, their musical input into the songs was essential to The Smiths' overall sound. Drummer Mike Joyce took a court case and was awarded £1 million and a future royalty cut on all Smiths recordings.

Seemingly inspired by this verdict, the non-songwriting members of Spandau Ballet took the band's sole songwriter, Gary Kemp, to court, arguing that they should be cut into the band's royalties. The trio said they had a "verbal agreement" (how many times have the courts heard this phrase?) over splitting the royalties, but the judge ruled that their action "failed in its entirety".

When the chief songwriter receives all the royalties, resentment breeds and festers. If you're all equally shouldering the touring, the promotional commitments and everything else that goes into being in a band, it can seem desperately unfair for the songwriter to deny the person who came up with the song's bass line or drum pattern some share in the income generated by the song.

All the evidence points to the fact that bands who don't share the royalties irregardless of who writes what tend to split up far quicker than equal-share bands. First time around, Gary Barlow was the only songwriter in Take That. This time, all four of the group share the songwriting duties (and the royalty rewards).

With more bands now being advised to adopt the all-band royalty split model (not least because they will probably have to do a reunion tour at some point), the old lead singer dressing room tantrum that ends with "You're nothing without me!" can now, at least, be met by the valid claim: "Actually, we're an equal financial percentage of you".