>>>>>>FWIW I was working with Joe when 'Bathroom Window' was recorded and seem to remember that at one stage McCartney actually offered him first use but then changed his mind. IAC we'd certainly heard the song a while before the Beatles released it.
>>>>>
>>>>>I sort of remember that Joe's version was the first one out... but then I heard that one really early on, 'twas on the radio, but didn't get my hands on Sgt Pepper until '76, and only then I heard their version.
>>>>
>>>>Wasn't the Beatles version on Abbey Road ?
>>>
>>>I meant the "with a little help...", which was the first time I heard (about) Joe Cocker. But yes, the same thing happened with Bathroom window too, I didn't hear the Abbey Road until about '73 or so, and even that I borrowed. Jugoton (now Croatia Records) had the rights, but didn't think that Beatles albums would make enough money (damn socialist self-managed workers' profiteering outfit), so they kept churning singles and didn't really publish albums at all. There was a red double and a blue double album, the two retrospectives, pressed in 1975 or so, but the actual Beatles albums were, IIRC, never published in Yugoslavia. Interestingly, though, they turned to publishing individual Beatles - I think everything was published, from Imagine, All things must pass... to the last Wings and Do it on Monday (IIRC - Ringo's).
>>
>>Interesting. Was Jugoton state owned? Any other native labels?
>
>Nothing was state owned except the army, few gov't agencies etc, but practically nothing was privately owned either. There were the "society owned" enterprises, later renamed into "organizations of associated labor", which were stewarded and managed by employees ("employment" was replaced with "association of labor" later), where the board was replaced with a workers' council and the CEO was chosen by a committee, and the committee was chosen by the council and approved by workers' assembly... and vetted by The Party HQ (and yep there were clashes of interest here and there). Could do pretty much anything except sell it or put all the profit into the salary fund... and when the enterprise invested in a new plant, that one had all the rights to become independent whenever it wanted, they weren't owned.
>
>And since all these enterprises were on a market (which is how I learned to hate advertising as early as mid-sixties), in case of music publishing it was a battle between the folk (and the so-called "newlycomposed" folk, which would later grow into the turbo-folk cancer we still have)(and no I don't appreciate Šaban Bajramović) on one hand, the official soft-pop music (mostly influenced by Italian stuff which was paraded on San Remo festival) and those hairy guys with 220V music. Most of domestic bands were happy to get a few hours in the studio, until some time in early seventies when a few rock bands booked smash hits which sold better than anything else. Then the luck changed, and starting in '72 we started seeing great albums by Yugoslav bands, with a true renaissance in '81-85.
>
>Apart from Jugoton (good vinyl, sleeves so-so, good assortment of bands, spotty policy of publishing foreign - didn't get any Tull until Minstrel, or Bolan until Tanks), there was PGP-RTB (production of gramophone recordsboards - radio television Belgrade - bad, thick stiff vinyl, lots of good bands but then these had to wait their turn, didn't publish much domestic, foreign not much either), then Suzy in Zagreb (notable for very good vinyl and a CBS license - where we got our Saja & Gaja - Simon & Garfunkel ;), Diskos (bad vinyl, almost exclusively folk singles, but a few bands started there), Helidon in Ljubljana (the first domestic live double album, from Boom 72 rock festival, still sounds like new). Don't remember whether there was any other publisher of any importance, specially not in Sarajevo; most of the Bosnian bands went with either Jugoton or PGP, many of them actually flipping between, then the old publisher would churn a Best Of just before the new one
>would come out etc... the usual stuff. Those self-managing showbiz workers knew exactly the showbiz stuff anyone else knows ;).

Hmm.
So if the label had a song that earned a lot of money and they couldn't divvy it up as salary (or a dividend in any form) what happened to it ?