Great read
John Kennedy sparred with the Swedes over Mamma Mia! and took on the Rolling Stones for Richard Ashcroft – he tells us why he’s still arguing with Bob Geldof after 40 years
Music lawyers are typically mandated to be much less exciting than the artists they represent, but John Kennedy could give most hotel-trashing stars a run for their money. When I speak to him, he’s recently finished up “the worst argument ever” with Bob Geldof, with whom he has worked closely with for four decades on Band Aid. “Our arguments get worse every month. But that’s because he’s so intense and still so passionate. He is unbelievably brilliant.”
Forty years since he was hired, Kennedy still does 25 hours of legal work a month for the Band Aid Charitable Trust, all voluntary. His newly published memoir, Just for One Hour: Moments I Pinched Myself in the Music Industry, takes its title from Geldof’s initial insistence that an hour of legal advice was all it would take. It snowballed from there, through Live Aid, multiple re-recordings of Do They Know It’s Christmas? (with a 40th anniversary version mooted for this year), the Band Aid Charitable Trust and Live 8.
Band Aid Trust has raised £150m since it was founded, but it has also been held up as an example of the worst arrogance of white saviours. I quote Kennedy the 2023 Guardian op-ed by Moky Makura, executive director of Africa No Filter, where she argued, “[Live Aid’s] portrayal of Africa triggered the birth of a patronising industry whose mission it was to ‘save Africa’.”
Kennedy describes himself as “the cautious word in [Geldof’s] ear” and insists Geldof is not always the obstinate goat of legend, and deserving of a bit more admiration from the public. “I would ask [Band Aid critics] to give us the benefit of the doubt for what happened at the time […] Mistakes must have been made. But I’d like people to be fairly specific about the mistakes. Are they saying we should have done nothing? Because I think there are millions of people who would disagree with that.”
Kennedy’s career as a music industry lawyer has a number of astonishing moments beyond his Band Aid efforts. “The most underused word in negotiation is ‘no’ – unless you’re John Kennedy,” says Cliff Fluet, a partner at legal firm Lewis Silkin. “John has no hesitation in using the word ‘no’ to great effect. And I’m saying that as an admirer. All of us who came in his wake knew him by reputation, but having negotiated against him as well, he is tough and tenacious.”
In 1989, Kennedy advised Mike Joyce on his legal dispute with Morrissey and Johnny Marr after being assigned just 10% of the royalties for the Smiths’ recordings. He pointed Joyce to the 1890 Partnership Act and Joyce eventually won the case at the Court of appeal in 1998. “If you’re in the band of brothers at the beginning, it should be equal,” he says of the iniquitous terms Joyce was expected to record under.
Read full article at
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/nov/05/john-kennedy-lawyer-abba-stone-roses-bob-geldof
