Publication: The Dallas Morning News [US]
Date: October 27, 1996
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Title: "Parting Shots"
Written By: David Okamoto

Add Michelle Shocked to list of artists decrying record company 'slavery'

In 1987, the 34-year-old Dallas native signed to Mercury Records, the label that made stars out of Rod Stewart, Def Leppard and John Mellencamp. Despite critical acclaim and a hit with the touching Anchorage, Ms. Shocked says her relationship with the label --which was severed out of court in April after a feud kept her out of the studio for four years -- was acrimonious at best.

The two parties bickered over everything from album-cover art to the stylistic direction of her jazzy Captain Swing and her soul-stirring, intensely personal Kind Hearted Woman. That album, partly inspired by the 1994 dath of her grandmother in Dallas, was rejected by Mercury and has just been released by Ms. Shocked’s new label, Private Music.

"They [record companies] know how vulnerable creativity is and that the slightest attack can make artists feel like an abused child and they’ll retreat," she says by phone from a California tour stop. "I refuse to look at them as my parents. I just look at them as equals in a power struggle.

"This was a battle over creative destiny, and there’s no hard-and-fast law that says just because you’re pursuing your creative destiny that you need to be treated abusively," she says. "I need to be able to decide the direction and the appropriateness of the project I choose to do. Otherwise, let the vice president of business affairs make the record."

For years, disgruntled artists have chosen to ride out their stormy marriages with their labels. But lately, pop stars such as Ms. Shocked, George Michael and the former Prince are attempting to wriggle out of binding contracts that they claim put a stranglehold on their creativity. Their button-pushing battle cry: slavery.

Anyone who reads Rolling Stone or follows the careening career of British rocker Graham Parker --who flaunts his seven former labels like Purple Hearts-- knows that for some artists, signing with a major label means major headaches. Bands frequently complain that producers and songs are forced on them or that financial tour support is cut off. And then there’s that annyong guy from marketing who keeps referring to your music as "product."

The advantages of major-label resources --advance money, worldwide distribute;tion, promotional clout-- are obvious. But tensions often flare over the balance between commercial potential and artistic integrity.

"There’s been too much second guessing about what radio stations want and not enough attention paid to listeners who are curious to hear songs with strong thoughts and unusual music," longtime industry critic Elvis Costello recently told The Dallas Morning News. "If the height of philosophical debate in music today is, ;What if God was one of us?’ we’re in really big trouble. No disrespect to that song [You Bowed Down], but there has to be a forum for songs that aren’t so simple they sound like toothpaste commercials."

For years, Mr. Costello has channeled his frustration with major-label politics through feisty interviews and TV appearances. But others have chosen a more confrontational approach:

• In 1992, George Michael unsuccessfully filed suit against Sony Music, calling his situation "professional slavery." The former Wham! Leader accused Sony of lackluster promotion for Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1, because the label disagreed with his plan to shed his lucrative teenybopper image. His eight-album contract was unfair under British union law, Mr. Michael said, because it bound him to the company for up to 15 years and gave him no control over his career. Mr. Michael finally was "freed" last year when Sony allowed Virgin and DreamWorks SKG to buy out his contract.

• In October 1994, on month after signing a $100 million contract with Warner Bros., the former Prince issued a statement lambasting the company for "institutionalized slavery" because it refused to release Gold Experience on the heels of his commercially disappointing Come. The label felt he was trying to rush-release records just to end his contract; the prolific Prince felt he should be allowed to release projects as soon as he finished them and started performing with "slave" stenciled on his fact.

  "My music wants to do what it wants to do, and I just want to get out of its way," Prince told Forbes. "I want the biggest shelf in the record store."

  Prince’s contract with Warner expired with the July release of Chaos and Disorder. He’ll commemorate his freedom with the Nov. 19 release of a three-disc set called Emancipation on his own EMI-distributed label, NPG.

• In 1995, Ms. Shocked filed suit against Mercury, citing a California labor law that sets a seven-year term limit on personal services contracts. She also cited the 13th Amendment: the abolition of slavery.

  "Slavery is though of as being forced to work," Ms. Shocked says. "But in my line of work, being denied access and the right to work is an equal form of slavery. The California labor law is much more problematic because every major label has a roster filled with artists who have been signed to them for seven years. And putting the whole issue where it would be challenged in court."

  Ms. Shocked claims that industry pressure forced Mercury to wave a white flag. "It was sort of like the pharaoh to Moses at the 11th hour --take your CD and go," she says. A spokeswoman for Mercury Records says that the label has issued a blanket "no comment" regarding Ms. Shocked.

  Ms. Shocked says she avoided the common young-artist pitfall of taking too much advance money and relying on the label to provide financial tour support. As a result, she had no debts to the company which meant --unlike Mr. Michael-- her contract couln’t be sold to another label.

  "What [record companies] do now is throw a whole bunch of money at you, which lawyers and managers and business managers suck off, and you’re stuck with this long-standing contract and you don’t know how to stay alive after a certain point," she says. "Because I had been very savvy in taking very little advance money and now that I was totally recouped, they were in the horrible position record companies hate -- which is they have to pay royalties."

  As part of the settlement, Ms. Shocked now owns the master tapes to her previous Mercury albums, meaning she for another company can rerelease them. Mercury gets to put out a best-of anthology Nov. 5 but Ms. Shocked chose the title: Mercury Poise, 1988-1995, a play on Mercury Poisoning, Graham Parker’s infamous song about the label.

  Even more unusual is her two-album deal with Private, which allows her to pitch stylistically divers projects -- such as her long-proposed gospel album or a funk record with her five-piece band, the Casualties of Wah-- to different record companies if Private chooses not to release it. Her contract with Private also stipulates performance criteria for the label in terms of promotion and marketing.

  "It’s not so one-sided as many contracts," she says. "They have certain standards to meet on the basis that we feel like it’s mutually working."

  She says this was a better option than following the lead of Ani DiFranco and others who have opted for the independent rout of selling records through the mail and at shows.

  "It’s very fashionable, very sexy right now to be indie," she says. "But I believe that if you have the opportunity to work inside the system for change, that you’re somewhat of a fraud if you just want to hand on to the credibility and, incidentally, the much higher royalty rate…

  "But the difference is that major labels influence the direction of culture….You hear about Madonna making billions of dollars and she started her own label and made trillions of dollars. But more important, it was all based on the fact that she got into the culture with her boy-to sex-as-a-weapon ideology and she had a lot of influence on young people’s minds. I don’t particularly agree with her artistic vision, but I do respect the fact that she had the opportunity to work inside of the system and she made it work for her."

  OUT-OF-TUNE FEUDS

  Michelle Shocked, George Michael and the Artist Who Originally Signed His Contract as Prince made headlines by crying "Slavery," but they aren’t the o nly acts who have taken a stand against their record companies. Here are 10 other memorable music feuds:

• Tom Petty vs. MCA Records (1981) -- Eager to capitalize on the platinum success of Damn the Torpedos, MCA plans to launch its price increase from $8.98 to $9.98 with Petty and the Heartbreakers’ Hard Promises (above). The fan-conscious rocker threatens to withhold the master tapes until MCA backs down.

• Elvis Costello vs. Warner Bros. (1996) -- Mr. Costello tells interviewers that he’s frustrated by Warner’s indifference toward his All This Useless Beauty album and choice of the peppy You Bowed Down as a single. He performs the tune on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno but changes the chorus to "I should have never walked back over the bridge that I burned," which many observers -- including Warner staffers-- interpret as a reference to his regret about signing with another major label after experiencing similar disagreements with Columbia.

• Graham Parker vs. Mercury Records (1978) -- Furious with his label’s lack of promotional support, the hotheaded British new-waver moves to Arista and surreptitiously releases a savage single called Mercury Poisoning. "Their geriatric staff thinks we’re freaks," he snarls against an avalanche of guitars. "They couldn’t sell kebabs to the Greeks."

• Sara Hickman vs. Elektra (1993) -- Elecktra drops the Dallas singer-songwriter and refuses to release her third album, which also legally prevents her from re-recording the songs for another label. Ms. Hickman, with financial support from friends and fans, raises enough money to buy back her master tapes from Elektra and issues a revamped version of Necessary Angels on Discovery Records.

• Bruce Springsteen vs. Laurel Canyon Productions (1975) -- A naïve Springsteen signs a contract giving one company the right to manage hem, publish his songs and record his albums for Columbia, a fiasco that blows up after the runaway success of 1975’s Born to Run. The legal dispute keeps the Boss out of the studio for more than two years, fueling the rage and despair he channels into 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town.

• John Fogerty vs. Fantasy (1975) -- As the young songwriter behind Creedence Clearwater Revival, Mr. Fogerty signs away his publishing rights to his record company, meaning he sees little of the royalties generated by his own classics. His 1985 solo album, Centerfield, boasts two songs (Mr. Greed and Zanz Kant Danz later changed to Vanz Can’t Dance) apparently targeted at Fantasy’s Saul Zaentz. Rubbing salt in a festering wound, Mr. Zaentz unsuccessfully sues Mr. Fogerty for plagiarism, claiming 1985’s Old Man Down the Road steals its melody from CCR’s 1970 hit, Run Through the Jungle, which Mr. Fogerty wrote but for which Fantasy owns the copyright.

• Neil Young vs. Geffen (1987) -- After he presents the company with failed experiments in synth-rock (Trans), rockabilly (Everybody’s Rockin’) and traditional country (Old Ways), Geffen files a $3 million lawsuit against the mercurial Mr. Young, accusing him of intentionally making uncommercial albums. The suit is settled out of court, and Mr. Young returns to Reprise.

• Ice-T vs. Warner Bros. (1993) -- After pulling the controversial Cop Killer off the self-titled album by Ice-T’s heavy metal band, Body Count, Warner Bros. Drops the rapper after a dispute over the cartoon art for his Home Invasion, which depicts a white youth listening to rap music on headphones and imagining acts of violence. Ice-T releases the album on Priority Records.

• John Cougar vs. Polygram (1980) -- As a crude joke, the former and future John Mellencamp caps Nothin’ Matters and What If It Did? With the appropriately titled Cheap Shot, which chides his record company for pricing albums "too damn high" and jumping on bandwagons ("I bet you’ve heard this song before/…Take your cocaine and hit the door"). Feathers are ruffled, but all is forgiven next year when Jack and Diane makes him a star and Polygram a lot of money.

• Don Henley vs. Geffen (1993) -- Geffen sues the former Eagle for breach of Contract after he fails to deliver a follow-up to 1989’s End of the Innocence. He counter sues, accusing Geffen of conspiracy. The suits are settled out of court, with Geffen receiving the rights to release the Eagles’ reunion album, Hell Freezes Over, to fulfill Mr. Henley’s contract. The part-time Dallasite now records for Warner Bros.