Not since John Cleese called Gerry Robinson “an upstart caterer” has there been such a frosty falling-out between Art and Mammon. That was in 1991, when Robinson, then head of the canteens operator Compass, was buying Granada TV. Today, it is the turn of another businessman, Guy Hands, the private equity boss behind EMI, to feel the ire of the artistes.

Robinson was accused of threatening the artistic purity of Granada, the creator of programmes such as the award-winning Brideshead Revisited. Now Hands is being accused of failing to understand the creative needs of the likes of Robbie Williams and Radiohead and of treating pop stars “like a plantation owner”.

There is a silly snobbery about both episodes. Cleese’s superior tone probably did more damage to the comedian than it did to the businessman, and the whingeing of a few superannuated rock stars and their agents may play out in the same way. The suggestion that Hands is working his stars like slaves is risible. Apart from Premier League footballers and a few rainmaking investment bankers, there are few human beings on the planet so constantly indulged, so highly paid, so cossetted and so relentlessly flattered as rock stars.

In PR terms, this is a battle that even the mistrusted private equity industry should win. The job losses are a severe blow to EMI’s staff, but Hands still appears as the sensible beancounter quite reasonably trying to get the prima donnas to wake up and smell the coffee. The economics of music have changed. The compact disc is suffering a lingering death. The vast revenues from CD sales, which underpinned the spectacular pay and ludicrous demands of rock stars and their entourages in the 1990s, are dwindling.

Economics alone will not settle this stand-off. The disgruntled musicians are quite capable of walking off even if they end up signed to labels with terms and conditions and with managers worse than those on offer from EMI.

Fortunately for Hands, even that will not matter too much. Ninety per cent of the business by value is in music publishing, which continues to produce reliable profits, and just one tenth from recorded music. EMI could shut down the recorded music side in its entirety and its backers would still make a return. The new investors injecting an additional £250 million in equity into the business at the weekend were getting in on precisely the same terms as were done by equity investors in May - long before the current row blew up and before the credit crunch hit.

That is quite a vote of confidence that Hands will ultimately prevail, regardless of whether Robbie Williams remains on strike.

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