We’ve all heard the story of a songwriter who had the perfect idea, wrote the perfect song, pitched the song to the perfect artist, only to hear an extremely similar song by that artist on the radio. That’s one thing we’ll discuss soon, but right now I want to talk about music sampling.
“Sampling” is using a snippet of a song in your own original work. (See this Wikipedia definition.) How many SnoopDogg songs contain samples of George Clinton and P-Funk? Really, how many Rap songs are there that have samples of popular songs? Puff Daddy (P.Diddy), Jay Z., Snoop, and many others have made a fortune by taking popular songs and grafting them into even more popular Rap songs. That’s in the Rap world. But sampling is not limited to Rap.
Do you remember the song from 1997 named “BitterSweet Symphony”? Put out by the popular band The Verve, the song was a worldwide smash. But then something happened:
From the book “Freedom of Expression: Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity” by Kembrew McLeod:
The Verve, a popular British band that scored a major worldwide hit in 1997 with “Bittersweet Symphony.” The Verve negotiated a license to use a five-note sample from an orchestral version of one of the Rolling Stones’ lesser hits, “The Last Time,” and received clearance from Decca Records. After “Bittersweet Symphony” became a hit single, the group was sued by former Stones manager Allen Klein (who owns the copyrights to the band’s pre-1970 songs because of aggressive business practices). He claimed the Verve broke the agreement when they supposedly used a larger portion than was covered in the license, something the group vehemently disputed.
The Verve layered nearly fifty tracks of instrumentation, including novel string arrangements, to create a distinctly new song. In fact, the song’s signature swirling orchestral melody was recorded and arranged by The Verve; the sample from the instrumental record is largely buried under other tracks in the chorus. The band eventually settled out of court and handed over 100 percent of their songwriting royalties because it seemed cheaper than fighting for a legal ruling that might not end in their favor. As if things couldn’t have gotten worse, they were then sued by another old Rolling Stones manager, Andrew Loog Oldham. Klein went after the Verve for infringing on the songwriting copyright, which he owned, but Oldham possessed the copyright on the sampled sound recording. They totally lost everything.
Not only couldn’t The Verve earn money from their biggest hit, they were stripped of control of their song. For instance, after the group refused Nike’s request to use “Bittersweet Symphony” in an ad, the shoe manufacturer aired the song after it purchased a license from Allen Klein. “The last thing in the world I wanted was for one of my songs to be used in a commercial,” the despondent lead vocalist Richard Ashcroft said. “I’m still sick about it.” In one final kick in the groin, “Bittersweet Symphony” was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Song category, which honors songwriters. Because the unfavorable settlement transferred the Verve’s copyright and songwriting credit to Klein and the Rolling Stones, the Grammy nomination went to “Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.” Ashcroft quipped that it was “the best song Jagger and Richards have written in twenty years.” He then suffered from a nervous breakdown and the group broke up.
Remember this story for several reasons. As a songwriter it’s best that YOU be in control of your copyrights as much as possible by holding on to your publishing, and at the very least, making sure that publishing you sign away goes to a Publisher and not a manager or agent or friend.
Beyond that, if you choose to use samples of others works in your songs, be sure, absolutely sure you have the proper clearances from all the other parties involved.
You don’t want your big hit to bring you nothing but a headache, do you?
(On a related note … check out the ingenious way the band Cracker said “screw you” to Virgin Records when the record label tried to pull a fast one.)
- Hat Tip: Sun.com
- The Verve on Amazon.com
- Books about covering your ass in the music business
14 Comments until now.
Ugh. That makes me sick just reading it. Makes me wanna track down that Klein guy and kick him in the nads too.
How would a band even go about clearing samples with stuff like that?
This is nonsense, if you listen to the song Bittersweet Symphony and the original song it was taken from, all that The Verve essentially did creatively was put words over the melody. Whoever wrote this article about it being just five notes under fifty layers of music can never have even listened to the original it was stolen from. I used to think the same as the original story writer that the stones had been heavy handed. But on hearing the original I realised there was not much creative output, the only real creative output was finding the original melody and putting words to it. It is a very similar case to the Beatles “taxman” and The Jam’s “start”,
so please get your facts straight before talking about the injustice against the verve
The business of music is sick. Klein and Oldham are just evil.
Hey Jill,
The first thing an artist has to do is contact an attorney who handles such matters. Even now it’s kindof a specialized area, but these attorneys can really help with all the legal aspects of obtaining a clearance and in the negotiation of how much of the music will be sampled and what the percentages (writers/publishers) are. Then it’s finding out about all the parties involved, all the publishers and all the writers and who own what share of what.
One of the interesting parts about what happened with the Verve is the fact that there were a lot of people involved, from the Stones, to their former manager, to the orchestral guy who did a version of the Stones song and got a writer share on the part he did (oversimplificatoin there)… I don’t know if all of that makes sense, but in other words, there were a lot of hurdles to using this piece of music.
Reality is millions of songwriters use the whole A/A/G/D/ sequence to base a song around. It’s neither original or clever. Maybe the Verve could’ve used some creativity and forgot about the dumb sample anyway.
I suppose if you don’t really have anything worth buying, then polishing off someone else’s turds and throwing some words over the top will do it - it’s been working for rap for years.
[…] Check out how The Verve got screwed over by an ex-Rolling Stones manager. Tagged as: cracker, david lowery, songwriting, virgin records […]
I just want to remind people that it wasn’t the Rolling Stones who did this to them - it was the $#$@@#$ record company people who had already cheated the Stones out of the song the first place.
At the time the Stones stated that they supported The Verve but the judge ruled that since they didn’t own the music they wrote, they couldn’t grant The Verve the right to sample it.
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unreal, ive listen to both songs arrangements thats a tough one when you think about it, george harrison my sweet lord which was note for note was difinitely easy to compare, in school i studied arrangement and my instructor showed me how those old westerns could use the original melodic melody and change it to fit the mood of the scene just by adding a few minor chords , you know now there is a singer songwriter whose words and music arrangements remind me of carol king and michelle branch and a few others- her name is sara bareilles shes very good, too bad maria holly should of sued the stones and the beatles - jrod M
This ruling will destroy the future of music. In fact the whole of Western civilisation is being destroyed by a new class of legal predators in both criminal and civil law.
How an ex-Rolling Stones band manager completely screwed over 90’s band The Verve…
Remember this story for several reasons. As a songwriter it’s best that YOU be in control of your copyrights as much as possible by holding on to your publishing, and at the very least, making sure that publishing you sign away goes to a Publisher an…
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