I'm doing two topics this blog. Taylor Swift is not appearing on my next album.
I have been a songwriter for 45 years. I can still remember bits and pieces of my early jazz pieces, but when I was fifteen years of age I actually wrote a song about a girl who had broken up with me. So I did it first a dozen years before Taylor Swift was born. It isn't half bad. It's even on one of my albums. I could have done a better job on the vocals but I was going through what I like to call my "Garage Pop" phase. You can hear it here:
It's only the first third of the track. The other parts came much later, and that's a story for another time.
When I was 17 years of age I started writing songs with a friend of mine who was much better at lyrics, much more popular with the girls, and could sing better than me. We recorded a couple of sloppy demos in my living room and entered a songwriting contest that we did not win.
Within a year one of the judges of that contest released a single that sounded one hell of a lot like our little half-assed demo. We tried to assert ownership of the material. We lost. We were hilariously out-gunned.
But the song was a top-5 hit. We've never seen a dime. I'm not even allowed to tell you who the artist was. There is an NDR and the penalties are somewhere between severe and "are you fucking kidding me".
From that moment on I've copywritten everything I've done. I joined ASCAP in 1982 to protect my royalties, then switched to BMI in 1992 where I have been ever since. I do make some money at this. Not a ton and certainly not at Taylor Swift's level, but enough to where I have to report it on my taxes.
You may have noticed over the last few years that Ms. Swift has been releasing a "Taylor's Version" of all her early work. She's re-recorded everything, added new material and recovered material that didn't make the cut the first time around, and just about uniformly her versions are light-years better than the originals. I wasn't a "Swifty" in the early part of her career - it all sounded forced to me - but I certainly am one now. She has matured majestically as an artist and in taking ownership over her material she has taken control of her life in a way that very few of us in this business ever do.
It's made her a Billionaire. I'm a Thousandaire. I can be a little bit envious of her success, but I sure as hell don't begrudge her it. She's worked her ass off for it.
In re-recording everything and steering her fans away from the original recordings, she has taken possession of the streaming royalties, the performance royalties, and just about every kind of royalty imaginable. But what she's also taken possession of is the Publishing rights to her new arrangements of her songs and that's the ballgame. When you hear about various artists selling their catalog what this is referring to is the publishing rights. Other than touring it's the most lucrative part of the business these days. Streaming has sucked a lot of the life out of it but it's still there. Radio still pays astonishingly well and Television?
Several years ago one of my songs got played for 38 seconds over the end credits of a German TV show. I got $100.00 for that. I didn't even know it had happened until I got the check.
Owning your own material is a huge win for an artist. The band Kansas signed away their publishing and barely covered their own housing during the first years of their career, and they had Gold records. John Fogerty was so paralyzed by having the publishing rights of his material stolen by the head of his record label that we couldn't write a thing for years. He refused to even play the songs for almost 2 decades because he didn't want other people to be making money off his material.
Thing is, it turns out that Taylor Swift the adult as opposed to the version of Taylor Swift we were first given is considerably more talented than we all realized. She is a much bigger star now that she's in control of her own music. No one, and I mean no one, has ever held all ten slots at the top of the pop charts. Not even The Beatles. Not the Bee Gees at the top of their game.
She got 35,000 people to register to vote with a single Instagram post. It is impressive. But you admit to yourself that if more people voting is bad for you maybe, just maybe, the problem is you.
Sorry to break it to you, but it turns out she's just that good. So you can take your conspiracies, your advice, and your Goddamned Motherfucking MISOGYNY and shove it up your ass.
New Album - Blog #5
Although I really should focus on just the new album, I have the type of mind that can go in many different directions at roughly the same time, so while I'm working on the new album I'm also involved in a couple of side projects (one of which will really confuse many of my friends - more on that in another post) and dusting off some very old material for yet another project - the topic of which is tangentally related to the post up there about Ms. Swift.
I put out my first album in 1990. It was an alt-dance alt-rock album that focused on acoustic instruments, especially my 12-String Guitar. Here's a sample:
Being signed to a label was no picnic. They wanted me to make that album again - the same but different. It turned out that what the A&R people had pitched was a competitor to Michael Penn - more alt-acoustic rock you can dance to when even Michael Penn didn't want to be the next Michael Penn anymore.
I turned in an album of rocking alternative music and the label promptly shelved it. This was in 1992. It remains shelved to this day. I was able to salvage 5 songs of the 12 recorded because I had started recording them before I singed my record deal, and those songs wound up on my actually released second album.
The record label eventually folded and I decided to go indie. I released my "second" album through an indie label which went nowhere. Everything since then I've done from my own home. The original label I was signed to went out of business in the early 2000's and my master tapes went into a sort of limbo. Technically they were owned by a company that no longer existed and no one kept track of where the masters wound up. The only person who might have known has since died and I considered them lost. I moved on. I've released a lot of music since then.
I will admit that the period between when they shelved my album and when I got my career back on track I went through a period of a sort of paralysis. It's a strange feeling to have someone else own your creative work. It's a hollowed-out feeling knowing that the only reason they own your work is so that no one will ever hear it. Unless you've been through it yourself I have no way to describe it to you. I felt real sympathy towards John Fogarty after that.
Fast forward many many years.
Somewhere in the mid 2010's (I tried to look it up but couldn't find it) there was a warehouse fire in Studio City California. In that warehouse were many items from the film and music industry, stored there for various reasons. It turns out that the masters were in that building, and they (along with many other things) survived the fire. Problem was, they couldn't be kept there anymore and the company that owned the tapes had been dissolved and quite frankly the space had been forgotten by just about everyone.
The tapes had to go somewhere, and so they found me through BMI and sent me the tapes. I received them in June of 2022:
What you see here are 4 reels of 2 inch tape, along with the tracking logs the recording engineer used to keep track of what is played where. They are in my possession now.
I can release that album now. The question is, should I?
Listening to my music from the 1990's I always think to myself about the things I would do differently if I recorded those songs today. The same applies here. Would I put so much Chorus on the bass part for the track "Saint Christopher"? Would I keep the Bagpipe-inspired guitar solo in "Never"? Do I really want to commit to a cover of "Ain't No Sunshine"?
Am I using this as an excuse to not be working on the album that's right in front of me already?
I have too much in front of me, and I recognize that. I'll address this album once the album I've been promising for these past few years is done. Not even going to think about it. I'm going to spend the weekend working out a schedule.
Next post next week!
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