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Reproduced from The Observer 6 April, 1997
Kylie's 'lucky, lucky, lucky' trio fight over missing pop millions
by Martin Wroe
IN THE POP charts of the late Eighties, no one can have been so
lucky, lucky, lucky as Stock, Aitken and Waterman. But six years
after they last wrote hits for Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue,
two members of one of Britain's most successful modern
songwriting partnerships are taking the third to court in a
multi-million-pound battle.
Mike Stock and Matt Aitken are suing Pete Waterman, claiming they
are the true owners of two-thirds of Stock, Aitken and Waterman
hits such as Jason's 'Too Many Broken Hearts' and 'Sealed with
a Kiss' (originally a hit for Brian Hyland) or Kylie's 'Hand on
your Heart' and her cover version of Little Eva's 'The
Locomotion'.
They claim that Waterman, the business brain behind the
phenomenal success of SAW, has not paid them their due as owners
of the recordings and is not properly exploiting the surprisingly
lucrative Jason and Kylie back catalogue. The court action is
the latest salvo in an increasingly bitter battle between the SAW
trio, who produced more than 100 hits in the Eighties, making
each of them multi-millionaires.
Stock, who still writes with Aitken, has not spoken to Waterman
for three years - except through their lawyers. And the discord
extends to their Australian teen prodigies, Jason and Kylie -
none of the three has disguised his dismay at the pair's
commercially disastrous changes in direction: Jason launched a
stage career and Kylie adopted a raunchier image that has brought
her a cult following among gay men. 'It all started going wrong
after Jason and Kylie left,' said one record company insider.
Kylie and Jason are long past their pop sell-by dates in Britain,
but international sales, remixes and compilation albums are still
thought to generate nearly £3 million a year. Some
estimates value the pair's back catalogue of seven albums and 35
singles at £12m. Stock and Aitken are claiming two-thirds
of this from Waterman's companies.
The colossal sums at stake in global pop success were illustrated
last week with reports that 1997's pop phenomenon, the Spice
Girls, expect to earn £10m each by the end of the year.
The Stock and Aitken legal action, expected to come to court this
summer, is against Waterman; his companies, PAL Productions and
PWL Records, and Warner Music's Coalition Recordings
International, which took over PWL after the three split up. The
pair are asking the courts to investigate the money earned by
Waterman from sales of records they produced for Jason and Kylie.
Clintbns, their solicitors, is also calling for an account of
royalty statements.
The three members of SAW are reputed to have made more than
£90m from songs for Minogue, Donovan, Donna Summer,
Bananarama and Cliff Richard. They were named songwriters of the
year on three successive occasions.
Waterman has since developed his business interest in the
privatised railway sector, buying his own service and a share in
the Flying Scotsman, while Stock and Aitken have producing two
top-selling albums for Robson and Jerome.
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