BrianD wrote:TAX
I am pretty sure
Brian
Not tax. The tax would be payable whether the royalties came to them under their real names or under pseudonyms and any subterfuge designed to aid in evading tax liability would be part of a criminal offence.
The reason, as I understand it, was contracts. The Shadows wanted to publish their own compositions (and perhaps those of others) through their own new publishing company, Shadows Music (handled on management basis by Belinda Music). The trouble was that one or more of the group were still contracted to have their compositions published by another company. Routing
FBI via Peter Gormley (who would have to pay tax on the royalties) meant that a Marvin/Welch/Harris tune could be published by the new company. The same thing was done in a slightly different way for
Gonzales and
Shotgun. The previous contract must have had a relatively short time to run, because
Back Home - the B-side of the next single after
FBI (
The Frightened City) - was credited to the whole group plus (Peter?) Goff.
The fact that
Midnight (the B-side of
FBI) was openly credited to Marvin/Welch would lead me to suspect that the member with the contract problem was Jet...
JN