After reading the incredible Alan Leeds interview I wondered about the legal status of releases such as Crystal Ball or the NPGMC Ahdio shows...do they partly belong to WB ? Did Prince risk a lawsuit by releasing them ? Remember Mr.Leeds said that anything recorded during the WB years can´t be released without their permission.
So how did Prince manage to release songs from that period even though he was still at war with WB ?

And how could he legally put So Dark , a remix of Dark off the WB owned Come album, onto the Crystall Ball set ?

I know the word "bootleg" on that NPG release wasn´t meant seriously, but then again, is this maybe really some sort of semi-official release ?

Does anybody have info about this ?

KoolEaze said:

Alan's official answer was:

On the other hand, anything that was recorded during the years he was under contract to Warner Brothers couldn't technically be released without Warners approval or involvement.

I don't understand though. I can see how this would apply to anything that
was released when he was under contract to warners, like all the albums of
Prince and satellite artists he wrote for, including all the singles bside
and 12" remixes etc etc.

However, what I don't understand is how Warners could lay any kind of claim
on the unreleased material. That material was not recorded for Warners as
such, but could be considered "private" recordings, done seperate from the
"work for hire" he submitted to Warners for official release.

I mean, if Prince were to release "Roadhouse Garden" tomorrow, it seems an
odd thing to me if Warner would have anything to say about that at all.


On a separate note, I'm also kind of curious why he got to include some of
those songs on the 1998 Crystal Ball set, like

Tell me How U wanna B done?
Good Love
So Dark
P Control (remix)

and i'm sure others that i am now forgetting. this was all released on an
official Warner Brothers release before wasn't it?

if it would have led to even more disputes with Warners, i can't even tell
you how amazed i am over their inclusion on this set since they have zero
extra value here and only decrease the appeal of the set for being dull nd
absolutely nonsensical choises for a set like this that could have had an
amazing picking from any number of projects or sessions.



Same thing goes for the Ahdioshows and the reflectionroom/glam slam rooms
over at the npgmc.

One of his soundmen once told me after a concert that he only did short
pieces of all the songs in concert because if he played the whole song,
he'd have to pay Warners publishing rights.

That sounds even more insane. But given muddled legal matters, I did at
times think that maybe it could be true, what with all those damn short
medleys he played before his publishing contract expired in 1999.



..
[Edited 12/27/05 7:18am]

See, that´s what I´m talking about. Good to know that I´m not the only person wondering about these things .
It must be a pain in the ass for Prince that he can´t even release live recordings of his songs without paying WB...but then again , the ONA live set contained a lot of WB stuff...or maybe he paid for that...I´m confused.

He also released Splash through the club. I doubt he would have done so if Warner had to give him permission to do so.

KoolEaze said:

well, i don't know if he has to pay for it, all i said was that one
of his soundmen, back in 1998 told me so. but he said a whole lot of
things and i don't think he was the most trustworthy source of info.
although, i have wondered about what he said a lot over the years.

it would be nice to know a bit more about what is going on with his
catalogue and who owns what and which rights etc etc.

one would think that after all the pushing and shoving and him being
able to get out of the contract, he would be more talkative about it
and at least make it more apparant what he owns and what warners does.

if anything, it would make people more ready to accept his side of
the story (if indeed warners of as many rights as is claimed, and
even own a lot of the live stuff *eventho Prince chose to record
that stuff didn't he? he wasn't forced to record it and did it on
his own account*).

The intricacies of the legalese involving Prince's recorded material under Warner Bros can prove to be an insurmountable obstacle for laypeople to make an informed judgement on the subject.

If Alan Leeds comment is taken at face value then Prince would indeed be courting trouble by releasing stuff like "Splash" on his website.

.
[Edited 12/27/05 8:17am]

Hi,

From what Prince said back in the late 90s, he could release whatever he wanted from his past catalogue if the songs were "updated". That's the reason why he decided to re-record his whole catalogue published by wb (even though it still remains in the vault!!)
He even said that he could just add or edit a sound of a song and release it without being in trouble with wb.
Songs such as Good love, tell me how..., and P control were remixed and published in 1997, after Prince was "emancipated".

On an other point of view, the name prince , owned at the time by wb, doesn't appear on crystal ball...But I am not sure it has an impact on the legacy.

Was it clear enough????

calldapplwondery83 said:

I'm going out on a limb here, as I don't really know anything of the legalities involved, but maybe he was allowed to do that because whatever contract he signed had no clause in it at that time for such a thing as 'online distribution'.

Just my

KoolEaze said:

http://www.prince.org/msg...30?jump=28

Neversin.

Hi Neversin, thanks for providing that link to an older thread about this subject. Quite interesting and complicated.
I wish they could strike a new deal somehow...would be too bad if the vault material just deteriorated without getting a proper release.

Then again, I doubt it´s deteriotating because he uses samples from his vault material from time to time.
Your older posts on that thread just made me realize how serious this situation is.
The legacy of a musical icon of the 20th century is endangered here because of that war between him and WB.

KoolEaze said:

According to Tom Tucker (who was Paisley's studio director / mixer for sometime), that sadly may not be the case:

"I'd say half the things I mixed for him never made it to a record. And half of his vault, right now, none of us have ever heard. Nobody but him. It's really a shame.

We tried to talk him into archiving everything when he was still with Warners. We were going to buy a convection oven and bake all the analog tapes, and archive them to digital. But at the last minute he pulled the plug. He said he didn't want anybody to hear all that music. Those old analog tapes are just gumming up down in his vault. And then what's going to happen if it's not in his will? What if it's in his will to destroy that stuff? That would be like half the Beatles' tunes being lost.

He would work on songs sporadically. That was his method. He'd tell one of the engineers to go down to the vault and get a certain song, and it could be from 10 years ago. And he'd maybe keep one element of it, and just re-write other parts. He constantly had this creative style of just merging ideas together."

We can but pray he's had a change of heart since the early nineties.

As I understand it, Warners don't OWN Prince's songs as such, they own the right to publish the original versions of those songs. Prince still gets royalties as the writer, unless his contracts say otherwise, and can perform those songs live. I don't think it is true that he has to pay Warners simply for performing the songs, anymore than Paul McCartney has to pay MJ for performing certain Beatles' songs. That is his right as the writer.

Alan Leed's comments were preceded by saying that he wasn't a lawyer, which leaves the possibilty that his theory about Warner's owning all Prince's recordings during their time is incorrect.

If Prince took out a track from the vaults from the Warner years and only used the bass line in a new song, would Warner's partly own the track? I doubt it.

If Prince had to ask Warner's permission to put tracks on Crystal Ball, I would have expected their name to appear somewhere on the CD booklet, but it does not.

Why would they even give permission for Prince to use the tracks if they weren't going to get anything out of it?

Prince had only just got out of his contract with Warners; he didn't HAVE to create Crystal Ball at all, so I don't believe he would willingly have gone back begging to Warners so soon. We have never heard about Warner's trying to sue Prince over the tracks or anything - I still believe, despite Mr. Leeds comments, that Prince does own most all of his vault material.

Clearly it WAS possible for Prince to create Crystal Ball, whether he had to ask permission or not, so there's no reason he couldn't go through the process again if he wanted.