Beatles angered by use of song <BR>in US commercial

LONDON - An advertisement for US insurance giant Allstate using the Beatles song When I'm 64 is said to have angered The Beatles, who are against the band's songs being used for commercials.

Julian Lennon, son of John, has recorded the track for the ad and permission was given by pop icon Michael Jackson, who owns the publishing rights to 250 Beatles songs.



This is the third time a Beatles song has been used in an ad, much to the distress of surviving Beatles Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.



In 1987, Jackson allowed Revolution to be used by Nike to advertise trainers in a deal worth about £166,000, and Jackson also allowed All You Need is Love to be used by National Panasonic.



McCartney was so upset by these deals that he said he would meet with Jackson to try and appeal to him to stop. McCartney accused Jackson of turning Beatles songs into jingles.



McCartney lost control of the rights to the songs in 1985 when Jackson paid £50m for them, beating a joint bid from McCartney and John Lennon's widow Yoko Ono.



However, the fact that Julian Lennon has recorded the song for the ad is likely to rub salt in an already open wound.



When I'm 64 was originally written by McCartney for a musical when he was 16. It was resurrected for the album Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which was released in 1967.



Julian Lennon said: "It's funny how all my life I have been asked to record John Lennon songs and impersonate my father, now out of the blue, I get a request to sing a Beatles song. When I'm 64, originally recorded by Paul, is a song that I never imagined myself performing, but because the idea was so quirky and the fact that I saw a great deal of humour in doing it, I thought 'why not'."



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