vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jan 21, 2011 21:34:41 GMT 1
Yeah, "Denis", but it's more a take-off of it than a true copy.
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Post by vastar iner on Jan 22, 2011 20:12:05 GMT 1
Let's move on to a slightly different tack... LiberaceOne of the matters that the current government is looking to reform is libel. The right to protect your reputation. The proposals are, to my mind, unnecessary; they merely confirm what the law says. The problem with libel law is that the people with the most interest in reforming it are people who print lies – the mass media. So every time someone sues for libel the newspapers are all over it as an infringement of free speech. Which is not to say that some people do not abuse libel law; but it is not a big problem, there’s only a couple of hundred libel cases brought per year. You get literally tens of thousands of other cases brought in the London courts alone… One person who definitely abused libel proceedings was Wladziu Valentino Liberace, the Polish-Italian American pianist more famous for his flamboyance and his candelabra than for his pianism – critics were not very kind to his technical abilities, which were apparently very decent, but not up to concert standard. Did it bother him? When asked about one poisonous review, Liberace said that it upset him terribly; “I cried all the way to the bank.” Although he was not prolific in terms of hits – his visual impact of course diluted on vinyl, indeed he only had the two UK hit singles and never made the album charts, although he did have top five albums in the States in the fifties – he became fabulously wealthy thanks to popular television appearances and an extravagant Vegas stage show that pulled in over a million bucks per month by the 1970s. Liberace was a Star. He was also homosexual. Naturally in those less tolerant days it was kept secret. Only the Daily Mirror decided, in 1956, to hint at it. The writer Cassandra – a nom de plume for William Connor, who was not exactly part of the reactionary right, he famously castigated the death sentence passed on Ruth Ellis – described Liberace as “the summit of sex - the pinnacle of masculine, feminine and neuter. Everything that he, she or it can ever want,” and as a “deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, ice-covered heap of mother love.” Do you think that verdict implies that the subject is homosexual? Liberace did. So Liberace sued. Saying it was accusing him of a criminal act. Which of course homosexuality was at the time. Accusing someone of being a criminal is pretty obviously defamatory; it damages your reputation. Liberace’s QC asked Connor whether the Mirror was sensationalist. “No.” Except that the editor of the Mirror, Hugh Cudlipp, had just written a book where he proudly claimed the Mirror was sensationalist. The other big problem the Mirror had was that libel is decided by a jury. Liberace was immensely popular in the UK; he came across on stage, on screen and in court as a warm, engaging, charismatic presence. Against a newspaper, he was never going to lose. In fact the jury gave him £8,000. In today’s terms, that’s nearly £140,000. When Liberace died in 1987, the Mirror threatened to bring a claim against his estate for the sum paid. Plus interest. No idea whether the paper ever carried through with its threat… …contrast the Jason Donovan case against The Face magazine. The Face claimed Donovan was homosexual, so Donovan sued. Not, as has been misinterpreted, because there was anything wrong with that; Donovan claimed that the innuendo behind the accusation was that he was a liar. Because he was on the record as being straight. Had The Face accused Elton John of being hetero, John could have sued. (So could David Furnish.)
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Post by vastar iner on Jan 27, 2011 21:00:09 GMT 1
Not that everyone wins their defamation claims... Spear Of Destiny v Boy GeorgeOne of the oddest ones was the case brought by Kirk Brandon against George O’Dowd, or more popularly known as the bloke from Theatre Of Hate/Spear Of Destiny against Boy George. Odd because before the case I had no idea the two would have known each other. Musically, Culture Club’s sophisticated yuppie-pop was a world away from Brandon’s aggressively staccato spikiness, as expressed via S.O.D. and earlier incarnation T.O.H. (complete with legendary Peel introduction). Yet in 1995 George’s autobiography “Take It Like A Man” reported that the two had been an item; Brandon as the archetypal punk, George drinking beer through a straw to protect lipgloss. Added to that George recorded the song “Unfinished Business”, accusing someone of betrayal by marrying a Danish girl. Brandon, by then married to, er, a Danish girl, and with a daughter, sued; again on the basis that the allegation suggested that his marriage was a sham. Brandon could not sue for libel. In fact, he technically could not sue at all, because he was bankrupt. He needed the permission of the chap controlling his things on behalf of the people he owed money to – the trustee in bankruptcy – to bring legal proceedings. And libel is expensive, so the trustee denied permission. However, at that time, you could get the state to pay for claims in malicious falsehood. So Brandon sued for that. Malicious falsehood is very old-fashioned. It’s pretty similar to libel, only the standard of proof is higher. The only reason why people used to sue in it was because you could get legal aid for it. Plus, malicious falsehood does not necessarily involve doing someone down. E.g. X is selling his car. You hate X. You know the car is worth buttons. You speak to Y, who says he is going to pay a million quid for X's car. You want to stop this from happening. So you tell Y that X has already sold his car to a mysterious stranger. Y goes off and spends his million quid on a penguin zoo. X cannot find another buyer. You have cost X a million quid by telling lies; that's malicious falsehood. Even though you have not damaged X's reputation. But suing in malicious falsehood was a problem for Brandon. He had to prove George was being malicious. The song “Unfinished Business” was perhaps evidence of that; however, instead of to a jury, he had to prove it to a judge. A judge who found both George to be a truthful and impressive witness. BG had gone through in some detail the nature of their relationship – basically George pretending to be female because of Brandon’s sexual identity confusion, and it being somewhat Lewinsky in nature – and had come up with witnesses who had seen the two together as a couple. It became a case of “he said, he said” as to what went on in bed between them, but George had more corroborative evidence. So won. Brandon tried to appeal, but the Court of Appeal ordered that he pay £5,000 to cover the costs if he lost. Which doesn’t always happen; the court doesn’t like squashing claims because people cannot afford them. But Boy George and his publishers were already £60k out of pocket in having to defend themselves knowing Brandon couldn’t pay their costs. More to the point, the Court of Appeal pretty much said Brandon was going to lose. The point of appealing is to look at the law, not what the judge thought about the witnesses. And Brandon did not have the law on his side. His defeat was final; his wife ended up leaving him and he became addicted to antidepressants. Not put off by his court experience, Brandon successfully sued the manufacturer for not mentioning the side-effects, and he continues to perform with S.O.D. occasionally. But overall a pretty desperate tale.
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Post by Earl Purple on Jan 30, 2011 22:41:38 GMT 1
Interesting that your first one up was Huey Lewis because he wasn't beyond doing a bit of plagiarism himself. DYBIL was a total rip off of "Sweet Talking Woman" by ELO. Having said that I don't know your source that Huey co-wrote it. It seems to be credited as written by Lange alone.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Feb 2, 2011 23:18:11 GMT 1
Source for Huey Lewis writing it was an interview on MTV talking about the whole Ghostbusters thing. Let's go a bit more retro... Why?A vexed situation – when two songs sound the same but you don’t know if one has copied the other. Does copying have to be conscious? Sub-conscious (as with the George Harrison case)? Or could you infer it from the similarities? But isn’t that also due to there being only so many ways in which notes can be arranged harmoniously? OK, there may be many billions of them, but (a) Robbie Williams hasn’t found one yet and (b) it’s still possible that there could be independent ideas. Happens all the time. There are two Budweiser beers, totally different, after all. We can go back to 1959 for an example of this. Anthony Newley, whose daughter Tara was part of the E-Zee Possee (who were signed to Boy George's More Protein label - see, everything is connected...), had a big number one hit with “Why”. Written by Peter de Angelis and Bob Marcucci. With such a success, it’s not surprising that a number of people got to hear of it. Even the music industry paid attention. In particular the publishing outfit Francis Day & Hunter. Someone there had a long memory, because they recognized the tune. “In A Little Spanish Town”. From over thirty years before. So they sued Debmar, the publishers of “Why”, to get an injunction to stop them selling it. So the Court looked at a couple of things. Someone dug out a Bing Crosby recording of “In A Little Spanish Town” and compared it to the Newley song. Plus an orchestral recording of “Why” by the Victor Sylvester Orchestra. Peter De Angelis, who had written the tune, gave evidence; he was born after the earlier song had been recorded, and had been part of various pop orchestras, but he denied ever having studied or played “In A Little Spanish Town”. He certainly could not remember having heard it. Judge Wilberforce did his own Juke Box Jury on the songs. He was dismissive of “In A Little Spanish Town”; “I think I can dispose at once of the verses because it is not really disputed by the witnesses that they are unmemorable and unimportant. There are songs, of course, whose verses are a memorable and significant part of the composition, but this is not one…” So he concentrated on the chorus. Can you imagine the NME coming up with this sort of critique? I think we can ALL agree with that. The upshot? Everyone agreed the songs were similar. There was even a correspondence of notes, but as Wilberforce put it “the omission in 'Why' of the tonic note in the third place is not insignificant”. Well, duh. But what Wilberforce found was almost irrelevant as regards the music. He said that Mr de Angelis was believable – he had never heard the earlier song. So he couldn’t have copied it. What’s more, there was no evidence that Mr de Angelis had it lodged in his subconscious – it was not the sort of standard that had been played every day in recent years – so there was no inadvertent copying. Just that songwriters had been thinking alike. 33 years apart.
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Post by vastar iner on Feb 7, 2011 20:50:42 GMT 1
Harold Wilson v The MoveSometimes defamation is a little bit more amusing. In 1967 The Move’s manager Tony Secunda decided on a risqué promotional tactic for their single “Flowers In The Rain” (which, as any fule kno, was the first record ever played on Radio 1). He had a postcard drawn up featuring the then Prime Minister Harold Wilson in bed with his private secretary Marcia Williams (later Lady Falkender, famous for drawing up the so-called Lavender List when Wilson resigned in 1976). The distribution list has grown in legend to include the Prime Minister himself; in fact it seems to have been noticed by the Paymaster General when a disgruntled recipient reported it to him and he brought it to Wilson's attention. It took Wilson less than a fortnight to issue a claim for the clear implication that he was cheating on his wife. It was an open and shut case; there was no evidence he was having an affair (although there were rumours, as Wilson himself acknowledged in Court), and a defence of “mere vulgar abuse” (which means you can call someone a lying pig without literally meaning they were a mendacious member of the porcine family) would not work. The Move basically gave in and paid over all royalties from the single to a charity nominated by Wilson. Quite a lot of royalties, the song made number 2…on the other hand, it did make all the front pages, so perhaps without it... One knock-on effect was EMI's decision not to include Roy Wood's "Vote For Me" as a b-side, fearing it would re-open the whole matter. Another one was to persuade The Move to, er, move their management, from Secunda to Don Arden, who had already promoted a number of bands such as Amen Corner and The Small Faces, and of course the father of Sharon Osbourne. Incidentally, the barrister who represented Wilson was Quintin Hogg, later Lord Hailsham; a member of the then shadow cabinet, and nearly Prime Minister before Wilson…
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Post by vastar iner on Feb 12, 2011 12:52:12 GMT 1
K2 FamilySomething that can often be in issue is who is responsible for a song. The writers of the theme “The Big Country” sued MC Tunes and 808 State for the sampling of the choon in “The Only Rhyme That Bites”. The original credit was split 50/50 between Tunes and the State duo; as Tunes was only responsible for the lyrics, the writers ended up being credited with 40% of the writing royalties, leaving 808 State’s share at a mere 10. It’s a big problem in the world of dance, where sampling has to be cleared (and if it is not your record can be injuncted – such an injunction from Marc Cohn’s label Atlantic perhaps stopping Shut Up And Dance from scoring a number one hit, as well as, incidentally, costing Atlantic royalties, and one wonders what the shareholders would have thought about the directors deliberately making a decision that cost the company money), and if there is a dispute over who has sampled what from whom and who provided what element to which track, the whole thing may end up in court. One song where this happened was “Bouncing Flow”. This was a minor hit for K2 Family, a one-off name taken by producer Nick Reed, aka Don E Bravo, for the release of the single. Reed was basically a studio engineer who worked in studios leased by his brother, JG Braithwaite, and who was trying to make his own way separately; a chap called Anthony Bamgboye had answered an ad in “Loot” for a general studio gopher, and he brought along some of his own compositions to see whether they would work. He worked as a trainee engineer during university holidays and in 2000 he and Reed worked on a rough cut of the track that would become “Bouncing Flow”. A couple of friends of Reed wrote some lyrics and laid down a vocal track, and Bamgboye and Reed mixed the two together. Reed took the completed track away, and the next Bamgboye knew of it was seven months later, when Relentless Records agreed to release the single and Reed told him they were “not rolling” any more. As the song became a hit, Bamgboye sued for his share of the royalties. The court had to work out exactly what Bamgboye had contributed. They decided he had provided the bassline, some of the melody and some of the percussion; that was enough to get him some of the songwriter royalties. Bamgboye had claimed he was responsible for half of the tune, the court awarded him a third. He also obtained some performer royalties, as the bassline and some of the synth on the finished product and was something he’d fed into the computer.
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Post by vastar iner on Feb 19, 2011 22:30:40 GMT 1
Urban Cookie CollectiveOne where a different result was reached was on “The Key: The Secret”. For some slightly different reasons. There was no dispute how the rights in that song ought to be split; 50% music, 50% lyrics. Simples. And the lyrics themselves were divided 50/50 between the rap elements and that earworm chorus. And it was agreed that Aniff Akinola was responsible for composing some of the rap, so his overall royalty should be 10%. All signed up in a formal contract, all very amicable. The problem was, 10% of what? Akinola claimed that the contract meant he got 10% of all the versions of the song. Phonogram Music, the publishers, said he should only get 10% of the sales of the rap version. Which would cause a problem for Hayes. Because the big hit version did not feature rap… You may think it bizarre that someone could get credit for writing a hit single when nothing you wrote appeared on it. But the law doesn't do its normal trick if people agree to something different; and it is possible that Akinola should have been entitled to his share. So the court had to look at the contract. What did the agreement between Akinola and the rest of the Urban Cookie Collective mean? And it could be argued that the rap in some way contributed to the cadence of the tune, which in turn became a hit without the rap. Maybe the rap helped make the song. At least there’s an argument there. Not a good one though. The court described it as exceedingly tenuous. Nevertheless the court went through the songwriting process; Rohan Heath being inspired by Songs In The Key Of Life for the chorus and psychedelic mushrooms in the Peak District for the verses. The original 1990 version was not to the judge’s taste: In 1991 Heath met Peter Hayes, and the two formed Urban Cookie, and after a year they dug out the 1990 demo to work on. Hayes rapped over the top, the singer Diane Charlemagne performed the chorus, the demo was sent off to various labels, and one company – Unheard Records, for whom Akinola worked – thought it had legs. Only if they changed the rap. So Akinola wrote a new rap and had MC Martay lay it over the latest version of the demo. Unheard decided to release the single in 1993; for a b-side they remixed it into a house version with the rap taken off. As luck would have it, DJs preferred the b-side, Pulse 8 Records picked it up for a major release, and it became a big hit. Thus prompting the lawsuit. How much had the rap contributed to its success? Answer: not at all. Even if the rap contributed in some way to the song’s syncopation, that wasn’t enough to get a songwriter royalty. The agreement between everyone did not envisage Akinola receiving royalties for a song that people did not buy. Despite having generated interest that resulted in the song becoming a success, Akinola failed to receive credit for the single. Anyhoo, am I the only one that thought the follow-up "Feels Like Heaven" (not the sumptuous Fiction Factory one) was the better song?
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Post by raliverpool on Feb 20, 2011 12:18:50 GMT 1
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Post by Earl Purple on Feb 20, 2011 21:37:19 GMT 1
You may think it bizarre that someone could get credit for writing a hit single when nothing you wrote appeared on it. It is quite normal though. When Soho took the riff off "How Soon Is Now" for Hippchick, Morrissey also received royalties, even though he didn't write or play on the riff, only Johnny Marr did. Once he was credited as a songwriter, he was entitled to his share of the royalties. This seems to be the general rule with samples. Similarly too when the Shadows had an instrumental hit with "Don't Cry For Me Argentina", no doubt Tim Rice also got songwriting credit.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Feb 22, 2011 23:43:51 GMT 1
Just to clarify why Moz could get royalties for Marr's riff, it's because you can have a formal agreement to share royalties in a different way to what you'd expect. With the Smiths, Morrissey and Marr agreed to split all writing credits 50/50, so anyone using any bit of a Smiths song would find themselves paying both. Similarly most Sex Pistols songs are credited to Cook/Jones/Rotten/Matlock, although practically all of "Never Mind..." was written by just the latter two. Incidentally, I cannot be the only person who on half-hearing "Rolling In The Deep" for the first time thought it was "Gimme Shelter". No idea if a lawsuit will follow, but this has...
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Post by vastar iner on Feb 23, 2011 23:11:14 GMT 1
Loreena McKennittPrivacy is a big thing lately. It’s a bit controversial. Indeed until the Human Rights Act there was no such thing as a right to privacy in English law; there was a right to confidence, so that trade secrets could not be stolen, but not privacy itself. As it is, the right to privacy has developed piecemeal over the last ten years. The problem is the same as many problems with the Human Rights Act. Everyone’s right conflicts with everyone else’s. X has the right to a quiet house; Y has the right to use a lawnmower. Robbie Williams’ right to exist overrides my right to see him dismembered to atomic level; Max Mosley’s interesting off piste activities are private, the public has no right to know how he disports himself in his spare time, as it has no impact on his work; on the other hand John Terry’s are somewhat different, the public pay to see him, and his team-mates, and so have a right to know if there’s anything that might affect how he or they play. So there's a balancing act. The same way the right to have a private life has to be balanced with the general public’s right to know. The classic conflict comes when people sell tell-all stories to newspapers. How are those rights balanced? The right for someone to tell the truth (or at least their version of it) about someone, against the right of that someone to keep their lives out of the water cooler? Should newspapers be banned from printing true stories? Or is there a right to keep private things out of sight? One case where these were balanced out involves the folk singer Loreena McKennitt, who has never troubled the British charts, but has had three top ten albums in her native Canada, one of which, “The Book Of Secrets”, made the Billboard top 20. In 2005, a former friend, Niema Ash, published a book called “Travels With Loreena McKennitt”. Ash had acted as a quasi-agent on McKennitt’s UK tours, looking after the merchandising rights on a European tour supporting “The Book Of Secrets”. This was not something that McKennitt wanted; indeed Ash conceded in the book that McKennitt looked after her private life “with the iron safeguard of a chastity belt”, especially a tragic incident in 1998 when her fiancé and members of his family drowned in a boating accident. McKennitt sought an injunction to prevent the book from being sold – she was successful. Stories about her health, especially after the 1998 accident, her sex life and private litigation against Ash’s partner over McKennitt’s payment of £30k to help Ash and her partner to buy a London house were all properly private; none of them was known to the public at large and did not concern her career. Ms Ash’s right to report these matters was overridden by Ms McKennitt’s rights to have them kept private. The problem with privacy cases is that of course the world at large then learned about these things, although nothing that wasn't really on public record; the more intimate details were in the book. Which was banned. The court awarded McKennitt a token sum of £5,000 in damages on top. (Albeit some token.)
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Post by vastar iner on Mar 2, 2011 21:13:13 GMT 1
SaxonBands often get in trouble with their names. Often it involves using someone else’s intellectual property. Which is quite widely defined. Anything that involves some creativity gives you intellectual property rights. So not just songs, or lyrics, but things like logos and even band names. The way you protect yourself with a made-up name and/or logo is to trademark it. Obviously this can lead to all sorts of difficulties; there are only so many words in the English language, so if you trademark a name, you can only do so for whichever thing you use the name for. Look at Apple. They trademarked their name for computers, so nobody else could call their computer Apple; whereas the Beatles’ Apple name was trademarked for music. The problems between the two came when Apple Computers moved into music. It doesn’t stop you incidentally from trademarking Apple for car manufacture or other stuff, although if there could be genuine confusion with the other Apples then you might have difficulties. The problem you often have is who owns your name. A group is usually a partnership; and when one member is replaced by another, technically there is a brand new partnership performing under the same name. The person leaving does not take the name with them. But what happens if you’re Sugababes and you’ve completely replaced the band? What happens if the current incarnation splits, and in 10 years’ time you get the Siobhan/Keisha/Mutya trio AND the Heidi/Amelle/Jade trios reuniting? Who gets the name then? It’s not an uncommon problem; normally the way around it is to have e.g. Keisha’s Sugababes and Heidi’s Sugababes named as such. Sometimes it’s not so easy. In 1995 a couple of former members of Saxon (the inspiration, remember, for Spinal Tap) got back together under the name Oliver/Dawson Saxon. However they applied to register the name Saxon, on its own, as a trademark, which nobody had ever bothered to do in their heyday. Byf Byford – still performing under the name Saxon at the time, and, spoiler alert, to this day – opposed the application. It went to court, and Byford won; he could prove that the ex-Saxonistas had no right to the name, Graham Oliver having left 10 years before, and what's more, the Court decided that the move to register the trademark was malicious - that the only reason why they applied to register the name was to stop Byford from continuing with Saxon. Note that even though it was 1 member against 2 former ones the 1 beat the 2; the two who left they didn’t take the right to the name with them when they did so. Essentially, by leaving, they permitted the remaining members to use the name Saxon. There is only one genuine Saxon. Which you may consider one too many.
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Post by Earl Purple on Mar 3, 2011 1:07:46 GMT 1
Bucks Fizz had a similar issue
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Post by suedehead on Mar 3, 2011 1:47:30 GMT 1
There are plenty of examples of disputes over band names. Suede had to call themselves The London Suede in the US because of some obscure folk singer who called herself Suede.
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Post by vastar iner on Mar 6, 2011 23:51:03 GMT 1
There are plenty of examples of disputes over band names. Suede had to call themselves The London Suede in the US because of some obscure folk singer who called herself Suede. Yes, and there's the English Beat, Charlatans UK and Yaz[oo] - and over here Detroit Spinners and New York's Sweet Sensation. It's almost as if that's an idea for the next one of these threads... ;D Here's another one that's not dissimilar though to the Saxon situation: The RubettesIt may surprise you to learn that The Rubettes were still going in 1999, when they finally split; vocalist Alan Williams and keyboardist Bill Hurd both formed their own Rubettes bands, which were to be called “The Rubettes Featuring…”. Although Williams’ band could still be The Rubettes for a couple of years. They signed an agreement. Simples. Not so simples. Problem is that promoters didn’t bother with the “featuring” bit. They ended up back in court complaining that each other was claiming to be the real Rubettes. Which is really serious. Even Paul da Vinci was involved for having claimed to be The Rubettes’ lead singer. Which he was on the recording of “Sugar Baby Love”. But he was never the face of The Rubettes. Other than The Rubettes Featuring Bill Hurd. Which he was. Although neither band is The Original Rubettes. You can’t call them that, they agreed that neither was the original.
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Post by vastar iner on Mar 9, 2011 23:32:29 GMT 1
Barclay James HarvestSometimes you have a valid claim. Someone’s used your work, recorded it, had a hit with it even. So you sue them for royalties. But you might still lose. One of the things that’s in the law is something called limitation. You have a limited time in which to sue, otherwise you are taken to have agreed to give up your rights. (Doesn’t apply to crimes, so people can be arrested for murders scores of years ago.) It can apply to music as well. If someone steals your tune, you can sue them, but if you wait too long you might only get the last few years of royalties; a classic example of that is Matthew Fisher waiting 38 years to sue for his rightful share in composing and performing the organ line on “A Whiter Shade Of Pale”. The court decided that Fisher would not be able to get royalties from before 2005 (although he will get 40% songwriter royalties from then onwards). A more intriguing case involved the folk-rock group Barclay James Harvest. The court paints an appealing picture of jobbing musicians, staying together in a near-squat on Saddleworth Moor, working the clubs for the odd quid, and receiving a modicum of sponsorship from a benefactor. This enabled them to record a couple of albums in 1969 and 1970, with the assistance of a chap called Robert Godfrey, who acted as the band’s orchestral arranger and conductor, and had even lived with BJH for a while. BJH were pretty much underground for quite a while, but by the mid-seventies were beginning to bother the album charts, and in 1977 the album “Gone To Earth” became a worldwide million-seller, staying in the German charts in particular for nearly four years. A live recording of a Berlin concert in front of a quarter of a million people in the Reichstag, released in 1982, gave them a top twenty album in the UK and made Robert Godfrey pause. As there was new interest in BJH, and a proposal to release their earlier work on CD, he claimed that he had had an artistic input in their first couple of albums, and so was entitled to royalties. So he sued. One, for dosh. Two, for an injunction - an order that BJH stop performing "his" songs. He had to show that he had made a real and substantial contribution to BJH's songs. He had acted as the orchestral arranger for their first two albums. Was that enough? Yes, just about. You don’t need to contribute much; a piano line here, a suggestion to the violins there. He had also written linking passages on the song “Mocking Bird”, so he did have an interest in the various songs, of varying proportions. But he had waited too long. The court thought it was a bit unfair that he had waited nearly two decades, whilst BJH built up their reputation, to cash in. He had led BJH to believe that his orchestral arrangement was just a sort of service and not an attempt to glom on the royalties. It would be unfair to make BJH have to pay a chunk of money in these circumstances – even less fair to allow Godfrey to use his “interest” in the songs to stop them from being performed. The band split into two in 1998; both performed under the BJH name, “featuring” John Lees or Les Holroyd, depending on which half you preferred. Mel Pritchard, who went with Holroyd, died of a heart attack in 2004; Stuart Wolstenhulme, who had originally left in 1979 to farm sheep in Wales, re-joined with Lees’ half, but sadly committed suicide a couple of months ago.
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Post by suedehead on Mar 10, 2011 1:26:20 GMT 1
Robert John Godfrey did go on to enjoy limited success with the wonderful The Enid.
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Post by vastar iner on Mar 12, 2011 21:42:06 GMT 1
Yes, one of those impossible-to-categorize obscure bands like Henry Cow that have an influence beyond their fame. Rock FolliesRemember that Simpsons episode when Troy McClure agrees to marry Selma? The bit where he goes on a stag night with Homer and tells him “that’s a good idea, Homer, but they’ve already made films about World War 2”? Or the one when Comic Book Guy tells Homer not to steal his idea of futuristic battle robots (mental note: steal his idea)? Well, can you steal an idea? Yes and no. X Factor is obviously Pop Idol with wrinklies, and Simon Fuller sued Simon Cowell for this. The ideas were so similar doubtless Fuller would have won the case had they not settled. Another stolen idea was that of Rock Follies. I’d be interested to see it repeated, given that it had music from Andy Mackay of Roxy Music. An ambitious TV series about a struggling girl band – not group – which launched a number one spin-off album and a top ten single (Rula Lenska of the group was married to fellow top ten television-based hitmaker Dennis Waterman; Julie Covington had a number one hit with another song from a musical, and Sue Jones-Davies was Judith in Life Of Brian), it lasted a couple of series, although given it finished with The Little Ladies (oddly the name was not used for the “real life” hits) headlining at Madison Square Gardens perhaps it had run its course. Thing is, Thames Television did not come up with the idea. Three actresses formed a group in 1973 called Rock Bottom (the most famous of them, Diane Langton, is best-known for playing June, an old flame of Del’s, in Only Fools And Horses, she’s currently in Billy Elliott. Not literally). They and their manager came up with the idea of a television series tracking the lives of three different personalities who shared the same goal; they went so far as to approach a scriptwriter and producer for assistance. In 1974 Thames agreed to fund a pilot script; in mid-1975 they agreed to go ahead with the series. Only problem was Diane Langton was lined up to appear in a play. Instead of trying to find a way around the problem, like asking to see if she could get time off or scheduling shooting around her commitments, Thames decided to re-cast the parts. To cover itself, though, Thames offered a way out. It wrote a letter to Rock Bottom’s manager demanding he contact them, the next morning, or the deal was off. Note what that says. A letter. The manager wouldn’t even RECEIVE it the next morning… So, the deal was off. And to the surprise of Rock Bottom, the next thing they knew was there was a series called Rock Follies. Quite the coincidence... Rock Bottom and manager therefore sued Thames, the series' scriptwriter and the producer. The technical term is breach of confidence. Now, for an idea to be stolen, it must be pretty much a fully-formed concept, not like “make a film about World War 2”. The beauty of the Rock Bottom case was that they HAD come up with the whole concept, and had even produced a pilot script. All the elements were there. The characters, the story arc, everything. Thames had basically taken it wholesale. What’s more, before revealing the big idea, Rock Bottom got Thames to agree that it would go forward only if they used the Rock Bottom girls. Unless it was the girls themselves who decided not to take part. This gave Thames the loophole which they jumped through to steal the idea. What Thames said was that Langton had decided not to take part. Because she had agreed to do a play. Bit of a stretch? Given the way Thames hadn’t even bothered to try to contact her stage producer, the judge was not impressed. He awarded Rock Bottom (and manager) some serious damages. Unfortunately, it was not really enough to compensate the Rock Bottom girls properly; perhaps Diane Langton would have had a number one hit and married a star of The Sweeney...
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Post by suedehead on Mar 12, 2011 21:50:39 GMT 1
I've always thought of Rock Bottom as a hit for Lynsey de Paul.
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