Sylvian - the next stage

[Adrian]

about credits...
for instance Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree writes most of the material, so when he gets back to the studio with the other band members he has the new album in a rough demo form (some drum computer, some keyboards, some guitars and the lyrics). The band then goes with the music and makes it into a PT song. That song is then credited on the album as 'title' (Wilson).
Now, for instance on Slope by Steve Jansen; you can work out who did what credit-wise (which is something different from music-wise) by looking at the names between the brackets behind the song. So for instance 'Sleepwalker reprise' is SUNG by whatshername (am at work at the moment) but WRITTEN by Jansen (music) and Sylvian (lyrics).
Hope this helps. In any case it's a tough debate, right LaMonte Young?

[John Trevethan]

Here's my take on the subject of musical credit, I hope that I don't upset Blood Of A Poet.

I believe that credit, copyright and ownership issues have become more and more of a concern as music has expanded into an industry, and has come to be viewed (in our culture) as Big Business. When speaking about credit we're also talking about money. An artist wants to be compensated financially for their part in the creative process. In my opinion this mode of thinking gives rise to complications that run contrary to the creation of music itself. For example, (using an artist mentioned earlier in this thread) the breakup of The Police was in part due to the conflicts between the members regarding songwriting credit and ownership.

I live in Nashville, which some have called the songwriting capitol of the world. Here we have very strict and formal rules and regulations for the application and division of musical credit. For example, the creation of the title of a song yields a precise percentage of writing credit. The creation of the chorus melody yields a different, but very precise percentage, as does the writer of the chorus lyric, the verses, basic chords, etc. This is all done because many artists don't write their own material. Instead, a collaboration of "co-writers" compose the work. This causes so many bureaucratic complexities and problems between writers, artists and publishers that I don't have the space to go into it here. For me this is credit and ownership taken to a ridiculous degree.

To wrap this up I'll put forward a few of points without a lot of explanation:

- Music has existed for thousands of years without album credits, copyrights, record labels, MTV or Billboard magazine.

- Robert Fripp has said "When can you tell that a band is a band? - When all of the members share the money equally."

- King Crimson gave Bill Bruford a full writing credit for a piece called "Trio". On this piece three of the four members of King Crimson (Fripp, John Wetton & David Cross) played while Bruford sat behind his drum kit with arms folded. Fripp stated that Bruford received a full writing credit for "contributing silence".

- Frank Zappa pointed out in the early 90's that music went from a local, to a regional, then national and international affair. He felt that the music industry could not support this level indefinitely, and predicted that it would once again return to regional and even local applications. (PS: I don't take Zappa's predictions lightly, around the same time he also predicted that CDs would die out and music would be downloaded, along with album art, over cable. And he predicted that surround sound would become popular in the average citizen's home.)

- Fripp also believes that music is an entity, or force of nature that exists separately from the musician. I have experienced this phenomenon myself firsthand, and have also seen it turn up in almost every creative art such as filmmaking, painting and writing. Fripp has described it as the musician being the instrument, and music playing the musician. In this case who is the creator, who is the owner? Credit, ownership, copyrights, etc. are only constructs of our current culture.

[Lady Arcadia]

This is a very interesting thread.

I hadn't really thought too much about the whole copyright/ownership issues of music. My primary thought about the music is my enjoyment of it.

But reading through this thread, it made me think...

The majority of Japan's songs were listed as a Sylvian composition/copyright, so I am correct in saying that he was the most financially rewarded member of the band... maybe not at the time, (record sales, costs etc), but in the years that followed the break up?

Reading some of the liner notes of the Duran Duran albums, they list all 5 as owners/composers of their hits... now personally IMHO, I don't think that that would be a truthful representation of who did what.

The copyright/ownership issues probably contributed to more than just the break up of The Police, just about every band that I have ever followed has a major "discussions" over who did what. Some are still debated today... like what exactly did Andy Taylor do on the Notorious LP?

Anyway, that was just my 2c worth. To the listener, music shouldn't be about who owns what, or who did what. But rather where the music takes the listener.

[John Trevethan]

Anyway, that was just my 2c worth. To the listener, music shouldn't be about who owns what, or who did what. But rather where the music takes the listener.

Exactly!

I love it when band members make the decision to credit everyone equally. To do this you need a group of people who can keep their egos in check, which of course is difficult when dealing with creative efforts. Members bringing in songs to the group need to accept that their works are being surrendered to the larger goal: the band. It's all about the group, and ultimately music which is greater than the sum of its parts, rather than the individual.

Sting is undoubtedly an excellent composer, but would his compositions have been noticed without Andy Summers' distinctive guitar work, or Stewart Copeland's injection of Reggae into the sound? Or more importantly, without the fire and attitude of The Police, which was its own entity - greater than any individual member at the time.

The same thing is paralleled in Japan, as artsy and interesting as David's career has been he needed Japan to launch his creativity into the world. The interaction of all the members resulted in something special that brought them to the attention of the world and gave Sylvian's creativity a framework to exist within.

[untitled]

This thread reminded me of a quote from Mick in the infamous ZigZag interview of 1982:

Mick "I think if the band did split, Dave would be the one who would suffer most because I think he’s incapable of carrying on by himself. The three of us worked much harder than Dave ever has and without us he would find it very difficult. He is an excellent producer and if he could find a band that didn’t know which direction to go in, the songs were a bit flabby here and there, then he could take over and produce them and it would be great. That’s what it’s been like with Japan, it’s the three of us working but Dave steering and I think without us he would go on thinking he’s a good songwriter and musicwriter which he’s not, he’s a good lyric writer. I think he’d find it very difficult unless he had us people around him."


In some ways, Mick was right. He has very rarely worked entirely on his own. But he was wrong in his assumption that this would be a weakness. I believe it has been a great strength.

[baht habit]

Golly Gee, Mr Karn was really talking out of his @ss at that point in time. Though I wholeheartedly agree it is true that the material from the Japan period wouldn't be strong proof of the possibilities to Sylvian's compositional abilities, Karn was much too quick to dismiss Sylvian's spark of talent that sometimes shone through at various points during that era. Karn should have realized that Sylvian was only writing what he felt was to the strength of his bandmates.
Of course, we now have hindsight. Karn could not have envisioned Sylvian's sophisticated blossoming through the mid eighties...How could he possibly envision Sylvian in late 86 sitting down in a room with an acoustic guitar and a piano and blank pieces of paper and emerging with the basis for the material which comprised the Secrets Of The Beehive album? It was much more reasonable to envision Karn putting forth the same weedly weedly noodling sounds on his bass album after album ...yet Karn had the gall to aver that Sylvian was not a good songwriter.

[Melaszka]

I also vaguely remember Karn giving a most extraordinary TV interview around the same time (I think it was to Sally James on TISWAS) where he made many of the same claims. It was very obvious there, even to my undiscerning 13-year-old self, from his voice tone, body language etc that he was extremely embittered and had a huge personal axe to grind, that he was hardly making an objective technical observation.

[Melaszka]

I have always found the song written by xxxx to be a bit of a joke.

Take Japan, basically Sylvian is credited as writing the songs, yet what would those songs be without Mick's bass and Steve's drums?

How much of Sting's 'Dream Of The Blue Turtle's' was actually written by him?
He clearly wasn't telling Omar Hakim what to do on Drums, Branford Marsalis what to play on sax or Kenny Kirkland what piano solo to play.

The 'song writer' puts together a basic frame and the musicians fill it in to make the song complete.

I know this discussion is very old, but I hope no-one minds me bumping this thread, as I couldn't stop thinking about this in the shower this morning.

I do understand (as I think bahthabit pointed out in the earleir discussion) that in traditional songwriting the person who writes the main melody (and the lyrics) is deemed the "songwriter", and that you don't get a credit for merely providing a harmony or arrangement.

But it seems to me that that definition is pretty meaningless in the context of modern post-digital music, where different sounds are often layered, so it's almost impossible to discern what is the "main melody" and what is merely a counterpointing "harmony", and musicians often use samples from pre-existing records and build an entirely new song around them (as I suppose Sylvian did in "Midnight Sun").

And, to an extent, hasn't the question of when an "arrangement" becomes a second melody in its own right always been a subjective one?

For example, the legal cause celebre of "A Whiter Shade of Pale" - strictly speaking, the organ at the beginning is just an "arrangement". The rest of the song was written first and could stand as a song in its own right. But most people would say (and the courts agreed) that the track wouldn't be the song as we know it without the organ, so the keyboardist is entitled to a credit.

Example 2: I've always thought it was a little perverse that Yanka Rupkina didn't get a writing credit on Kate Bush's "Rocket's Tail" and "Song of Solomon", when it seems to me that what she's providing on those tracks goes way beyond a backing harmony and becomes a second main melody in its own right. (Not, I hasten to add, that I'm accusing Kate of exploitation - I know she gave the Trio a generous sleeve tribute and did masses to promote them in the West).

But I'm not a musician, so I'm probably embarrassing myself by talking utter poo from out of my bottom.

[kitaj]

not in the least, Melaszka - your comments are VERY musicianly, and, as such, utterly stimulating as well.

as to Kate & the Trio, I'd say the same goes also for 'Deeper Understanding' (especially the closing harmonies around Kate's 'I hate to leave you' line) and 'Why Should I Love You?' (the harmonies underneath & around the Christ lyric, which lend it the right 'sacred' aura).

I'm not in the music industry, but I would say there are fairly strict rules and regulations about songwriting credits - rules begotten in the dawn of said industry, and which are obviously more and more out of step in the age of digital composition, as you rightly pointed out. so: yes, a song is melody + harmony + lyrics - but what about atmosphere? in that light, e.g. Sylvian gets the songwriting credit for nearly the whole of Tin Drum, but he is the first to admit the naked songwriting portion is by no means the most important one on that album, taking the backseat to synth sounds and lines, and Steve + Mick's groove (and what about all Mick's bass melody lines?).

[Chet]

this could go on forever...
there are no strict regulations what so ever.
each songwriter, each song, each producer etc. has a different way of separating the parts.
In the example of Kate Bush, I think she has the right to do what she wants. She is the wirter, and as an arranger and producer she decides to bring the trio bulgarka in, and she even guides them and tells them what she wants them to do. they get paid, and that's it. they could possibly have negociated to get some arrangement parts but possibly didn't.
It was the creative choice of Kate, and I don't see why the trio should get anything else than paid, once.

[Melaszka]

not in the least, Melaszka - your comments are VERY musicianly, and, as such, utterly stimulating as well.

Bless you. Thank you very much.

as to Kate & the Trio, I'd say the same goes also for 'Deeper Understanding' (especially the closing harmonies around Kate's 'I hate to leave you' line) and 'Why Should I Love You?' (the harmonies underneath & around the Christ lyric, which lend it the right 'sacred' aura).

I have to admit a bias here, as I absolutely love the Trio and I think they add immensely to all the tracks they are on, but I can sort of understand them not getting a writing credit on songs where they are very much in the background or only appear at the end. It's ones where they seem to explode into the foreground that it most puzzles me.

so: yes, a song is melody + harmony + lyrics - but what about atmosphere? in that light, e.g. Sylvian gets the songwriting credit for nearly the whole of Tin Drum, but he is the first to admit the naked songwriting portion is by no means the most important one on that album, taking the backseat to synth sounds and lines, and Steve + Mick's groove (and what about all Mick's bass melody lines?).

True. Having said that, in the case of Japan, I don't think the other boys have ever claimed that they didn't get enough credit for their writing contributions - their main beef seems to have been that Sylvian wouldn't let them contribute much to the writing, not that they wrote stuff and then he unfairly credited it to himself. I sometimes think, though, that writing carries too much prestige and financial advantage, anyway - we can probably all think of plenty of examples of great musicians transforming a rubbish song written by somebody else (not that I think David's writing is rubbish, of course - this was a total non-sequitur!)

Posted by Chet
this could go on forever...
there are no strict regulations what so ever.
each songwriter, each song, each producer etc. has a different way of separating the parts.
In the example of Kate Bush, I think she has the right to do what she wants. She is the wirter, and as an arranger and producer she decides to bring the trio bulgarka in, and she even guides them and tells them what she wants them to do. they get paid, and that's it.
It was the creative choice of Kate, and I don't see why the trio should get anything else than paid, once.

Well, yes, it's true that she gave them guidance and, not having been in the studio at the time, I'm not in a position to judge to what extent that guidance constituted "writing" their part of the song (although, unless Kate's multiple talents also extend to writing Bulgarian-language lyrics, I imagine Yanka must have written some of it). I'm also aware that if you follow my logic to the extreme, the blackbird and Kate's washing machine would also get a writing credit on Aerial (!), so there has to be a sensible line drawn between "inspiration" or "assistance" and "writing". I reiterate, I'm not accusing Kate of being underhand - the Trio have not, as far as I'm aware, ever complained, and they did very well out of the two projects they did with Kate.

I do think we start to wade into really dangerous waters, though, when, as a general principle, the person with overall creative control is automatically assumed to be the sole writer, and other musicians' contributions dismissed as "arrangements" because the artist "chose to bring them in". Ingrid's experience with "Justify My Love" shows how easy it is to get screwed over if you are (a) relatively unknown and (b) only contribute part of a song. I don't think this is the case at all with Kate's example (she didn't give Prince a writing credit on The Red Shoes, either, and he's a massive, massive star), but I do wonder if in the industry as a whole, whether you get a credit or not comes down as much to power and status as it does to the extent of your creative input.

Oops, I'm going on again. One day I'll learn to write a short post, honest.

[godisinthesilences]

well yes initially ingrid was "screwed" out of credit and any monetary compensation, but her lawsuit fixed that in the end. She stood up for herself in that instance. If other artists are non-plussed about it then that is cool too. I mean she could have just let it go but she realized her contribution was essential the importance to the success of that song.
course i could be wrong... i don't know anything about the music business and how it operates. I do know the art world and how that works with artists, collaborations and "appropriating".

[Slope]

It was much more reasonable to envision Karn putting forth the same weedly weedly noodling sounds on his bass album after album ...

I don't often post, but felt the urge to comment on the irony of someone who, after offering a very verbose critique of other people's "disregard for the art of composition", could come out with a post which displays such an uneducated (or possibly wilfully negative) opinion of Karn's output. Interesting.

[baht habit]

Thanks so very much Slope for posting my comment out of context.
Here is the full paragraph of that particular post:

----Of course, we now have hindsight. Karn could not have envisioned Sylvian's sophisticated blossoming through the mid eighties...How could he possibly envision Sylvian in late 86 sitting down in a room with an acoustic guitar and a piano and blank pieces of paper and emerging with the basis for the material which comprised the Secrets Of The Beehive album? It was much more reasonable to envision Karn putting forth the same weedly weedly noodling sounds on his bass album after album ...yet Karn had the gall to aver that Sylvian was not a good songwriter.----

I was making the point that Karn was unwise to predict that Sylvian would not be capable of carrying on and successfully moving on without the others when his previous output gave no indication that he would be capable of moving on either. No one could have envisioned what achievements any of them would have made from what they had done before - and no one would have predicted how strong Sylvian would grow as a song writer.
What had Karn done up to that point beside put forth a first rate imitation in tone of Jaco Pastorius, Percy Jones and Jeff Berlin in an over-emotive futuristic New Romantic glamour band influenced mainly by Roxy Music? (so I guess I should be labelled "uneducated" for knowing exactly who and what he was copying stylistically). Yet he felt so inclined to dismiss his former bandmate when his accomplishments were relatively few as well.
Obviously, as you can tell, I don't hold Japan as high in regards as most posters do. So please see where I am coming from. If you should choose to continue to consider me "uneducated", then so be it. I just wanted to be sure my comments were kept in context with a better understanding.

[Slope]

I believe I quoted you wholly in context (aside from repeating your own paragraphs once again). I do not dispute that Karn had issues with Sylvian, and may have been shortsighted in his comments at the time.

Your opinion of Karn/Japan is clearly not high, which is of course your own perogative. However, to dismiss Karn's own output/contribution as "weedly weedly noodling sounds on his bass album after album" shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the artist and his own quite unique technique. Your assertation that he did nothing more than a "first rate imitation in tone of Jaco Pastorius, Percy Jones and Jeff Berlin" confirms this (despite rightly naming them as influences). However, if as you claim, you feel that Japan were just "an over-emotive futuristic New Romantic glamour band influenced mainly by Roxy Music" you may not have looked too far under the bonnet of Karn's playing, in all fairness.