Christine McVie's Music Publishing Deal

[WalkAThinLine.]

I found a 1986 article from One Two Testing magazine that interviews Simon Garfield on his book, Expensive Habits: The Dark Side of the Music Industry. The book documents some of the music publishing deals hoisted upon various musical artists, including the Beatles, Kinks, Who and Fleetwood Mac.

Here's some of it. I put the section related to Fleetwood Mac in bold

It's often said that rock 'n' roll is a dirty business, but it's very rare that people know just exactly how dirty it is. It's an industry where the potential rewards are huge, and wherever there's money there's always going to be somebody who is quite willing to take it from you. Wham!, Elton John and the Sex Pistols are the best known of many who have been in the courts during the last couple of years, all suing over contracts that syphoned off large cuts of their earnings to other people.

Expensive Habits, published this month by Faber and Faber, shows how vast a minefield the music business is for the young and unsuspecting (who are always the victims), and that the scams operate across the board, Management, publishing, recording, concert promotion — sharp operators are at work all the time. The book scrutinises many of the cases involving the more prominent names of the last 25 years — from the Beatles, Kinks, Who and Fleetwood Mac from the Sixties, right up to Wham! and Hazel O'Connor — all of whom had huge chunks bitten out of them by some of the biggest sharks in the water. People signed things because they didn't know any better, and didn't talk to anybody who did.

The book was commissioned by Matthew Evans, MD of Faber, after he read an article by Simon Garfield about the Wham! case in Time Out magazine (where Garfield still works in the music section) in June 1984. Expensive Habits is a major achievement. Researched and written in under a year, Garfield sorted through stacks of legal documents and contracts of alarming complexity and incomprehensible terminology and made sense of it all. What could have been a mind-numbing wad of legalese is a good, if at times depressing, read.

The book's subtitled 'The Dark Side Of The Music Industry', and the picture that is painted is a very black one indeed, but Garfield maintains that it wasn't a depressing book to work on.

'It was immensely interesting to write, first of all because when I started it I knew very little about the workings of the music biz. I knew a small bit about management and publishing, but I'd obviously had no opportunity to delve into it in any sort of depth at all. But it wasn't depressing to write, the more gory the details are, the more awful the deals that people sign, then the better they look in print. I was caught halfway between thinking 'poor sod' and 'wow this is great stuff, what suckers.' But I was conscious as well that things have improved, that most of the really awful deals happened either in the late Sixties or early Seventies. So you look back and think it was bad then and it's not as bad now.'

Some of the deals that were signed in the Sixties defy belief. The case involving Fleetwood Mac is a fine example of a music publishing deal that, well, takes the piss. During the early Seventies Christine McVie and Bob Welch emerged as the group's major songwriters and they signed a deal almost too awful to contemplate. By today's standards, some of the clauses are harsh (5 year deal, extendable to 10 but only at the publisher's option; a 50/50 royalty split) but roughly standard for the time. However, on top of the usual clauses, McVie was contracted to write at least one song a month, for which she would receive one shilling (5p), and after that the publisher was not bound in any way to do anything with the song, he could even reject it. He could even give the copyright to any third party without the writer's consent. So, for 5p he could do whatever he liked with a song and do nothing in return.

The fact of the matter is that deals like this were not uncommon at the time, and people signed them with no qualms whatsoever. Is it just naivety?

'Up to a point yes. I think had I been in that position, I would have done exactly the same thing. Had I been eighteen, had I been Elton John, had I thought I was desperate to get out of a job as a tea boy or post boy, it's just the same old thing, if one person is interested in you when no one else is, then you're not going to turn them down. I feel more sorry for the people who were totally cheated and never even made it to the courts. There must have been hundreds of those who just signed such an awful deal that their career was so ruined by a crooked publisher or record company that simply wouldn't push their work.

The obvious conclusion to make here is that you shouldn't do anything without consulting a lawyer. Garfield himself, with so many legal documents to sift through in his research, sought the guidance of some of the leading music business lawyers, as well as getting a lawyer to check his own contract for the writing of the book.


This is just half of the article. For the remainder of it, you can find it below.
http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/wr...k-n-roll/13485

[aleuzzi]

Yes, these terms are awful. A while back, someone posted the contract terns, outlined in the Davis lawsuit, on this sight. Another interesting fact: While Christine signed hers upon entry into the band, Welch did not sign his until late 1972. I’m assuming (perhaps incorrectly) this means his Future Games and Bare Trees songs are not subjected to the same terms as the songs he published after signing. Bob knew a bit about song publishing: it was this knowledge that compelled Mick, Bob, and John, to created Seedy Management.

Certain from 1974 onward, writers who contributed to Fleetwood Mac albums were treated very well.