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JD 
Forum Senior Member
Joined: February 07 2009
Location: Canada
Status: Offline
Points: 18371
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 Topic: Record Label Interference
Posted: April 19 2015 at 08:20 |
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If I may quote richardh here for a moment from the Lucky Man poll response
"Apparently they (ELP) wanted to release separate solo albums but Ahmet Ertegun
dissuaded them. He also had a bit of a say in Love Beach I gather as
well."
As I was listening to parts of Love Beach this morning I was thinking about this very subject. I had heard Ahmet 'convinced' them they needed more radio friendly songs for this album. Now not knowing the specifics of the contract that ELP or any other band were or are under with their label, how much influence, and by extension responsibility, does a label or the executives have on failed projects like Love Beach? I've heard stories of bands that in order to get out of or fulfil the contract they record 45 minutes of screams or noise in hopes that the record just doesn't get released and they can move on. On the other side of the coin are releases like Queen's A Night at the Opera which apparently had the execs climbing the walls and pulling out their hair as Freddy went way overboard on studio time. Of course it is now regarded as one, if not their best, albums.
So what other examples of this 'interference' can you site and can we really blame the artists who ended up in this position?
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moshkito
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 04 2007
Location: Grok City
Status: Offline
Points: 16148
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Posted: April 19 2015 at 12:04 |
Hi, I can not exactly tell you solid examples, but Robert Wyatt has a lot to say in this area in his book. However, I am not sure that rock music is any better off on these things, when the film industry is far more known for interfering with the process, than I am aware of in music. There are an impossible to count number of interferences with Akira Kurosawa, David Lean, Nicholas Roeg, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini (who always got his vengeance on the screen!!!!), Luis Bunuel ... pretty much all the "masters". To think that many of these, specially unknown, bands were not interfered with is crazy, though you can see where the individual inner strength lies with the original artists as opposed to the rest, that were (sometimes) already conforming anyway! You can even take this as far back as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, who are still listed in the top ten of the world's worst business decisions EVER.
Edited by moshkito - April 19 2015 at 12:04
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Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout
Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
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Points: 37575
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Posted: April 20 2015 at 02:42 |
 I can't imagine that Carl Palmer (or Greg Lake come to that) would have been too enthusiastic about releasing solo albums back in 1977/78 as they had each done a "solo" side on Works I the year before, so probably didn't need too much persuasion.
Also, neither Works I or II sold as well as their previous albums (Works II was their first non Top-10 album) yet they managed to secure a Top-10 single with Fanfare, so again, they probably didn't need that much persuasion to make more radio-friendly songs.
Neither of these facts would have resulted in Love Beach being a pile of poo.
What it is is a Contractual Obligation Album (see Mike Oldfield's Heaven's Open), and bands have two choices here - they can buy themselves out of their contract with the label, or they can go into the studio and make an album. Note: the label isn't at fault here - if ELP signed a three album deal with Atlantic then they have contractually committed to deliver three albums ... and let's be realistic here - Messrs Emerson Lake and Palmer were big boys at the top of their game following Brain Salad Surgery and they had run their own record label with some success, so they knew what they were signing and it would be highly unlikely that they got screwed-over by Atlantic.
Contractual Obligation does not in itself result in bad albums. There are some famously bad albums that were purposely bad (Prince vs Warner Bros being a fine example) but most are far from bad (you could say that only an idiot would go into the studio planning to make a bad album, and ELP were not idiots). However, the lack of motivation to make a good or great album is another matter, they didn't want to be in the studio and Lake and Palmer didn't want to be in Nassau - that is never a recipe for making good music.
Edited by Dean - April 20 2015 at 02:43
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What?
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chopper
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
Joined: July 13 2005
Location: Essex, UK
Status: Offline
Points: 19942
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Posted: April 20 2015 at 07:15 |
I guess a label is entitled to interfere to an extent, after all it's a business and they're in it to make money. The problem occurs when they try to exercise too much artistic control.
Wasn't Metal Machine Music a "get out of contract" album?
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout
Joined: May 13 2007
Location: Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 37575
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Posted: April 20 2015 at 08:05 |
 chopper wrote:
I guess a label is entitled to interfere to an extent, after all it's a business and they're in it to make money. The problem occurs when they try to exercise too much artistic control. |
In all these cases we only really hear the artists side of the story so I have to wonder how much real "artistic control" was ever exercised by a label and how much of it was a bit of stroppy petulance by the artist.
It is as you say, a business and it's is one where the label takes all the commercial risk (they financially invest in recording, manufacturing, distributing and promoting the product, the artist doesn't) and the artist and label share the artistic risk (though the main damage would be to the artists career in the long run)
chopper wrote:
Wasn't Metal Machine Music a "get out of contract" album? |
Yes it was, but given that Lulu was a no pressure/no obligation collaboration from Reed, it could be that Metal Machine Music was an album he wanted to make and chose Contractual Obligation as a fail-safe opportunity to make it.
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What?
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SteveG
Forum Senior Member
Joined: April 11 2014
Location: Kyiv In Spirit
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Points: 20497
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Posted: April 20 2015 at 15:55 |
This is a tough question as to weather the artist or the "record company" is to blame for some album blunders. Renaissance was either pushed into a New Wave sound in the early eighties by IRS Record's head honcho Miles Copeland or it was the band's decision to make a New Wave/Prog hybrid album like Camera Camera and a Pop/New Wave album like Time Line on their own, in order to try to adapt with the times, depending on who's telling the story. My feeling is that both of the above is probably the correct answer as the early eighties was a treacherous time to be a Prog artist.
This is probably true of many strange band marriages and musical styles found on many, many records from that very commercial recording era.
Edited by SteveG - April 21 2015 at 17:28
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Upbeat Tango Monday
Forum Senior Member
Joined: April 10 2015
Location: Buenos Aires
Status: Offline
Points: 1189
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Posted: April 21 2015 at 20:15 |
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I'm with Dean on this one
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Two random guys agreed to shake hands. Just Because. They felt like it, you know. It was an agreement of sorts...a random agreement.
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moshkito
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 04 2007
Location: Grok City
Status: Offline
Points: 16148
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Posted: April 26 2015 at 10:58 |
Hi, I'm not a professional musician or a totally published author, so replying to this is a bit on the "I don't know" thing for me. I, do not care for "interference" since it is my vision, and this how I "translated" it. But, once it has grown up and left home, I can not exactly control it, and tell it what to do, so if someone else wants to interpret it differently ... he/she is entitled to their own life (a child of yours for example), and I might have an opinion, but it will not be an interfering one. I do think, and sometimes believe, that the toughest ones are always the ones that do not have a solid back on their work ... and this opens it up to more ideas and interferences, in some ways. I just finished reading Luis Bunuel's autobiography, and there is something in there that I found ... neat! He has all his scenarios written and all that you can find those in books ... and here is the killer ... what he does with it, is almost something else as if you were sitting on the other side of the table. Still the same scenario! I find that the bands that do this, are usually consistently strong ... whereas the others will change their format and style in the next album, and sometimes to appease another audience. This might happen on account of the equipment changing and this and that, but in essence, one's work has "one source", and if you are faithful to it, no interference will ever bother you ... you still come out on top!
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Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
www.pedrosena.com
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Record Label Interference