Bringing The World Home To You

© 2024 WUNC North Carolina Public Radio
120 Friday Center Dr
Chapel Hill, NC 27517
919.445.9150 | 800.962.9862
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
The Story was produced at North Carolina Public Radio - WUNC and was heard on over 100 stations.Visit The Story web site to listen to this program and for more details, archives, show highlights and more podcasts. UPDATE 1.13.2020: The Story web site has been decommissioned and is in the process of being archived. It may return at a later date.

Did The Beatles Steal A Song My Father Wrote?

Illustration: 'Lady Madonna' single cover
Capitol Records

http://www.thestory.org/sites/default/files/public/audio/story/2013_10_09_did_the_beatles_steal_my_fathers_song.mp3

When Michael Humphrey was growing up, he would sometimes hear his father telling strangers a story about how the Beatles stole a song he wrote. People would almost always be confused and bewildered – and Michael would wish he weren’t there. “It didn’t matter to me whether it was true or not. It was just embarrassing that something so outrageous was being said,” he remembers. In this conversation, Humphrey tells host Dick Gordon how he eventually looked into his father’s claim that the Beatles stole the composition for “Lady Madonna.” Humphrey interviewed his father, and set out to find sheet music and anyone close to Paul McCartney who would speak to him.

Also in this show: Jim Sadwith had written the script for his high school play based on J.D. Salinger’s classic “The Catcher and the Rye,” when he decided to look for the reclusive author to get permission to do the play; and Mark Hagerty tells host Dick Gordon how New York City shaped his father and about their special meeting place under Grand Central Station’s clock tower.

Before coming to North Carolina Public Radio to host The Story, Dick Gordon was host of The Connection, a daily national call-in talk show produced in Boston, from 2001 to 2005. Gordon is well-known in the profession as an experienced, seasoned journalist with an extensive background in both international and domestic reporting. He was a war correspondent and back-up host for the CBC's This Morning, a national current affairs radio program. An award winning journalist, he has also served as a Parliamentary reporter, Moscow correspondent and South Asia correspondent for both radio and television.
More Stories