Wrangling with Abba, risking jail for the Stone Roses … the lawyer behind pop’s big spats
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.
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