Not much because we were in lockdown. I wrote most of the hits, so I get royalties, but I’d be getting even less without Sandie Shaw! I was at Buckingham Palace — I can’t remember why, but it was around the time I got my OBE. Shaw came over to talk about copyright because at that time songs went into the public domain after 50 years, so you stopped earning money. Sandie was like: “Come on, we’ve got to extend the copyright!” It’s now 70 years, and it’s all credit to her. I’m lucky it happened in time for me, but with books it goes on to your offspring, and with music it doesn’t — I find that wrong.
Not really, songwriter royalties are indeed 70 years but it’s 70 years after death of the songwriter. It’s machine rights, the recording of that specific version, which is x years from creation. But those aren’t what the songwriter gets. So, a certain confusion there but then apparently he did lose his septum in the shower one day…..
I just love the way that innovation costing billions is protected for at most 20 years from the first patent (so rather less time from marketability) but the (acknowledged and legitimate) great grandchildren of someone who once gyrated to three chords in a recording studio for a few minutes get to profit indefinitely from said gyrations.
Was he really part of the Rossi icecream family? The Icecream Wars an’ all that? I was brought up eating that stuff. Best icecream ever made. Their knickerbockerglory was an artwork in itself. Seemed impossible that you’d ever get through one but you ended up sucking the dregs out of the bottom of the glass through a straw, all the same.