Not ten years after escaping from the bureaucratic shackles that were The Beatles’ business dealings toward the end of their career, George Harrison found himself in another legal battle with a new record label. Harrison established Dark Horse Records under parent company A&M in 1974. Two years later, the relationship between Harrison and A&M would sour to the point of a lawsuit, where, unsurprisingly, both parties felt like they were in the right and the other was in the wrong.
A spokesperson for Harrison said he was “astonished and saddened” by A&M’s lawsuit, which they filed on September 28, 1976. But according to the record label, it was an inevitability. According to A&M co-founder Jerry Moss, by the time the label filed their suit against Harrison, “It got to the point where I couldn’t root for this project anymore.”
George Harrison was certainly staying busy in the 1970s. Between writing and recording his solo work, touring, and producing artists for Dark Horse Records, Harrison had no small shortage of duties and obligations. He delegated some of these label responsibilities to other colleagues while he was traveling. A&M believed the quality of the albums suffered because of it. “George started hitting the road. Then it was this guy making the record and this guy making decisions, and this guy running up a huge tab that we were paying for, and the records weren’t very good,” Jerry Moss said.
Moss said he could no longer support the work Dark Horse label was putting out, “even though George had charmed a great many people on our lot to do extra work for that label. We created the whole image for him.” Aware of this tension from A&M, Harrison had already started looking at distributing Dark Horse Records albums through Warner Bros, headed by Mo Ostin, with whom Harrison had developed a “close personal friendship.” A&M sued Harrison for $10 million in damages and Dark Horse’s dissolution over what they alleged was a breach of contract. Harrison’s attorney denied liability and counter-charged that the label owed Harrison over $6 million.
Harrison settled out of court by paying A&M Records $4 million. He released his first album through Warner Bros. in November 1976. But his stint as a record label owner didn’t last long.
George Harrison disliked The Beatles’ business dealings with record labels toward the end of their career. So, it’s unsurprising that Dark Horse Records began to wear on him, too. “I was so wiped out,” Harrison told Rolling Stone in 1979. “It resulted in me saying, ‘Sod it; I don’t want a record company.’ I don’t mind me being on the label because, all right, I can release an album. It makes some profit. And I don’t phone myself in the middle of the night to complain about different things. But artists are never satisfied.”
“They spend maybe $50,000 more than I’d spend making an album. Then, they won’t do any interviews or go on the road,” he continued. “Whatever you’d organize for them, they’d foul it up. It was just too much bulls***. They think a record company is like a bank that they can go and draw money out of whenever they want.” While he admitted that “some good” things had come out of his time with Dark Horse, he allowed his contract to expire with Warner Bros. Records in 1994.
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