4 Jul
2003
4 Jul
'03
9:25 a.m.
On Fri, 2003-07-04 at 04:03, Daniel James wrote:
I'm not defending the record industry but Bo Diddley signed those
contracts. So did Chuck Berry.
Will Bach be upset that Chuck Berry lifted complete sounds from his
work at times? Every musician uses pieces of everything he's heard from
the time he was born.
Music as a whole is part of a cultural commons but my creativity in
writing a particular song is not. Granite is pretty much common
property too but I don't own any of Michaelangelo's sculptures. J. R.
R. Tolkien owned the rights to his works even though they were based on
the words and stories of others. It was the way he put the words
together that mattered.
Eric Clapton
pays royalties to the
writer on everything he covers
Sure, where it's a straight cover version. Assuming the original
songwriter signed an excellent record deal, or somehow retained their
copyright, they could have done very well. Unfortunately I don't
think that was the case with most of the blues and R n' B artists. As
Bo Diddley said, the word contract has the letters C O N in it.
The Stones
didn't cover much music, theirs was
mostly original.
I think Chuck Berry might start to cough a bit at this point. Mr
Diddley too, if he's still alive. But more than just cover versions,
these 'British invasion' bands lifted guitar licks, vocal styles and
even complete sounds from those artists. The Stones' 'Not Fade Away'
is a Bo Diddley song in all but the name on the label.
If you're
trying to say that writing a blues tune is stealing just
because it's 12 bar you're in pretty deep.
I wouldn't call it stealing. But music is part of a cultural commons,
so to put a fence around it and call it exclusive 'property' is out
of order.
I think the Bonzo Dog Band put it best in the song "Can Blue Men sing
the Whites?", a Clapton musical parody about a well-heeled musician
who changes out of his mohair suit to put on some dirty jeans and
sing songs about the Depression, "when people were really...
depressed. Alright! Whoooo!"
This argument always bugs me. I live in Mississippi and I've met many
of the still living Delta blues players. Trust me, they're not very
depressed (or repressed) either. In my opinion, anyone who has been
addicted to heroin and whose son has done a one-way nose dive out of a
fourth story window has a right to play the blues. Yeah, he's not black
and he didn't live through the depression - lucky him.
Jan