Of all the fascinating and historic-first stuff that Michael Jackson's career was chockfull of, I hope you'll forgive me for having this particular favorite: his purchase of the ATV song catalog in 1985.ATV contained the entire Northern Songs catalog which itself contained about 97% of every Beatles song ever written ...plus gobs of other signature tunes from Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, &c.
Jackson competed against other bidders (including, famously, Paul McCartney) but came out on top with the enormous sum of $47,500,000. They say that Michael was personally involved in the deal from start to finish.
People laughed at the amount as overspending at the time ...but only ten years later, he sold a half-interest to Sony for $90 milski. Sweet.
It was a world-shaker and a game-changer, made a lot of news back in the pre-internet days and consequently many of the details weren't widely disseminated. So I started to look around at what a google search would do today.
I found this 1985 article from The Los Angeles Times that I would have loved to have read the day it was published. From everything else I glean, it reads like it's still the definitive account.
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