My Thwarted Plans #15: Why I Never Had A Song On A Very Famous Album, Liverpool, 1981 The band I was in was on a hiatus. With time on our hands, two of us made what was meant to be a set of demos. But then the manager decided to release the tapes as an album. My colleague, without my knowledge, went off to London to get himself - and only himself - a publishing deal for the songs. So, the tapes were knocking about a major publishing house when a very famous singer dropped in looking for material. The last one, almost all cover versions, had been huge. She had another about to be released that would be even bigger, and top at least one major Album Of The Year poll. She heard a track off our tape, and immediately demanded it for the album after that, that she was about to record. Naturally we were just a little excited. Then I discovered that, again without my knowledge, a highly creative set of credits had been written for the album. Not the least of the problems was that my name was wrong. We had the composing credit for an instrumental neither of us played a note on, and on which the instrumentalists improvised their own parts. A musician supposedly called Tape Loop was credited. Someone who played percussion on one song was named as its co-composer, whereas I had no credit for several songs Id made massive contributions to - including the song the star wanted to record. I discovered this when we were in the studio, having decided to do another version of that song ourselves before the star got her hands on it. There were my colleague and I, and a young engineer who is now a producer with many legendary albums on his CV. I was playing most of the instruments, making up the parts and arranging everything, and doing some of the vocals, and while I was full tilt doing all this someone brought in the proofs of the album artwork and waved them under my nose between takes. I vaguely noticed the errors and the surprising composer credits, but I didnt realise this was my only chance to say anything. I thought I was just being shown the cover photo - thats right, I wasnt in it - and just grunted and went back to playing guitar. (It was in keeping with all this that later, on the single sleeve, the now-famous engineer’s name was spelt not merely incorrectly, but in a way that made him seem to be a girl.) The star’s interest galvanised the publishing company, and my colleague got his deal and his advance. But our album and single both got horrific reviews and vanished without trace. And time went by, and the stars next album came out, and it managed to be another huge hit despite there being no sign of our song. Even if there had been, I would have got no money and only a very bittersweet kind of secretly-reflected glory, as my courteous request for a composer credit was never granted. A year or so later, when we had made another album that didnt even get released and were in despair, my colleague spent some time in Paris. He was taken to a club, and realised that sitting near him at his friends table in the VIP area was the star who never recorded our song. He introduced himself, and she was effusively apologetic. She said the record company had not allowed her to choose the songs for the album this time, she was heartbroken, really wished she could have done his song, and so on. (As a matter of fact almost all the songs on that album were new ones, that she co-wrote herself and no doubt made a fortune out of.) She gave him a large bag of cocaine to say sorry. I never got any of it. beggarscantbevegans.tumblr/
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 00:00:30 +0000
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