When Phil "The killer" Spector learned that John Lennon was in Los Angeles, California, contacted him to be made available, too many West Coast musicians wanted to play the Lennon's new album.
In those years (1973-1975) the nostalgia was a big business, was recently released film "American Graffiti" George Lucas and TV gave a "spin off" of the film, which was the series "Happy Days", all set in the early '60s, years of rising and pure rock and roll. Even John and his (then) assistant May Pang and couples who attended the set where filming "Happy Days."
in this environment was born the project "Rock 'n' Roll", which would be the new Lennon album Capitol / Apple Records .
Building the move, the music publisher Morris Levy, who was in his company's publishing rights to the songs of Chuck Berry, among others, was a bonanza. He recalled that Lennon had composed and sung with the Beatles theme on the album Abbey Road (Come Together), who had certain similarities to "You can catch me" in Berry, and even shared a sentence: ("Here come old flat-top"). Then he sued.
Levy sought What, besides money was a good deal of publicity with Lennon as support and finally reached a settlement with former Beatle and Lennon agreed to publish both in three songs from her music publisher, a them was precisely "You Can Catch Me."
sessions "Rock 'n' Roll" started well, but they were quickly twisting, Spector came one day to study recording where Lennon rehearsing and fired a shot into the ceiling hurting your hearing to John Lennon again, drunk whiskey poured into a console in the study of A & M Records, making it unusable, earning him the expulsion of the study.
A bad day Spector disappeared with the master tapes of the future album and every so often called him to Lennon on the phone threatening to destroy them, until finally with the mediation of Al Coury, then president of Capitol Records and payment of $ 90,000, were recovered.
The "Rock 'n' Roll" was postegado, while John Lennon was available, with new material to record a new album, which was "Walls and Bridges."
As time passed and John had to get new disc, included a shot of a fifth minute of the song "Ya ya" (the code that ran Levy ) with eleven year old Julian Lennon on drums beginning with a phrase that annoyed Levy: "Sit in the la la (the intro of Ya Ya) and environmental quitémonos this ..."
Morris Levy again threatened to sue Lennon and John, to prove that he was working with assets owned, gave the raw tape of what was to be the album "Rock 'n' Roll."
Levy had an idea, with the material that Lennon had given him, made a full LP that sold by mail with his own label Adam VIII, and she released in January 1975 with name of "Roots, John Lennon sings the great rock and roll hits, bypassing Capitol and Apple Records.
John to even agreed to film a TV commercial promoting his new album.
Capitol and Apple, of course, did not approve the arrangement between Lennon and Levy and demanded your disc threatening Lennon for breach of contract.
But the album "Roots ..." went well, and sold a lot of copies,
Levy finally sued EMI / Capitol and Apple for 42 million dollars, and in June 1976 all sides were in court in New York, but would soon backfire, though he was paid a tiny amount by the "honor" of Lennon "You Can Catch Me" on "Come Together" by The Beatles, Levy had to compensate EMI $ 109,000 for loss of income, as John Lennon, with $ 42,000 for damage to reputation, due to poor audio quality of the album "Roots ..." (some tracks were accelerated so that they fit more on vinyl) and the horrible album cover.
3,000 copies were published and even disk Lennon complained about the poor distribution of LP, as requested and mail it recently delivered a month later.
