Apple vs Apple

May 9, 2006EditorialApple Versus Apple It was a good year to be a Beatles fan in 1965, the year of "Help!" and "Rubber Soul." It was also the year the group's publishing company, Northern Songs, went public. That early step in the commodification of the Beatles culminated in, among other things, the recent $200 million refinancing of Michael Jackson, the current co-owner of the Northern Songs catalog. Yesterday, another curious episode in the band's business history came to an apparent close in Britain, where a judge ruled against Apple Corps, the Beatles' management company, in its 2003 suit against Apple Computer. The suit's origin was in Apple Computer's creation of iTunes, which Apple Corps interpreted as a violation of a 1991 agreement that would, in its opinion, have prevented the other Apple from distributing music. (The agreement would also have prevented Apple Corps from making computers.) Apple Corps, which was founded in 1968 to gather the Beatles' business interests under one roof, seems to have been born for trouble. Its logo, designed by Gene Mahon, is as clean and crisp as it ever was, but to many observers the company appears to have done a better of spawning lawsuits over the years than of fostering the Beatles' interests. The judge's decision in this case comes even as the two Apples are working toward something most music lovers have been longing for: the release of the Beatles' catalog for downloading over the Internet. That may now have to wait for two things: an appeal of the judge's decision and the ongoing remastering of the Beatles' records.To us, remastering the songs is more important than making them downloadable. It's hard to imagine a canon of songs more central to the musical imagination of our lifetime, or one more badly served by recording technology since the introduction of compact discs. It would be wonderful to be able to download the Beatles. It would be even better to hear them as they were meant to be heard.[/b]OK?It would be even better to hear them as they were meant to be heard.[/b]Are they talking about records?