In 1972, Grammophon-Philips Group was reorganized as The
PolyGram Group. Following PolyGram's acquisition of
Mercury in the
United States, the corporate name was changed from Mercury Record Productions, Inc., to Phonogram, Inc. In the U.S. Phonogram artists were generally released on
Mercury Records, but the label is independent from its U.K. counterpart. By 1982, Mercury and all other PolyGram owned labels including, RSO, Polydor, Total Experience and Casablanca carried the following wording "Manufactured And Marketed by PolyGram Records" with the PolyGram Records logo. In the
United Kingdom, Phonogram was the holding company for
Philips Records, which was established in 1953 and also launched the Fontana label in 1958. As well as producing their own recordings many of which became U.K. hits, Philips/Fontana licensed the rights from
Columbia Records (U.S.) to release and distribute their product from 1953 until the end of 1964. After that time, Columbia U.S. set up their own marketing and production unit in the UK in
Theobalds Road, London, having acquired
Oriole Records and its record-pressing plant that had prospered in manufacturing discs for U.K. budget labels including
Embassy, sold through
Woolworths. U.S. Columbia was unable to use the "Columbia" trademark outside the United States and
Canada as it had already been
trademarked overseas by
EMI. Therefore, U.S. Columbia product was released in most territories on the
CBS record label. In 1977,
Frank Zappa negotiated a distribution agreement with Phonogram for his
Zappa Records label. Due to legal pressure from Zappa's previous distributor
Warner Bros. Records, Zappa and Phonogram were forced to shelve a planned four-LP box set called
Läther (pronounced "Leather".) Phonogram did distribute three Zappa albums in the US and Canada, but the agreement ended in 1980. According to Zappa, this was because a Phonogram executive objected to the lyrics of a Zappa single titled "
I Don't Wanna Get Drafted". Phonogram president Robert Sherwood disputed Zappa's version of the story, insisting that they did not want to release a single without the support of a full-length album. Releases in Europe were issued by
Vertigo and Philips and carried the "Marketed by Phonogram" wording with the Phonogram logo. Phonogram also licensed recordings from small U.S. record labels for European release. Among these were
Avco,
Sire,
Janus,
Westbound,
All Platinum, and
Chess. ==De-establishment==