Aug 06
23
Bob Dylan Speaks The Truth
I spent about 25 years of my life in the music business, and it was a great time!
During the mid 70's I worked in Sydney for Alberts, the oldest music publishing company in Australia, and one of the catalogues we represented was Bob Dylan's.
I remember when one of his albums was due to be released in the US – I think it may have been “Blood On The Tracks – I called up ARC (which stood for Australian Record Company) which was the corporate forerunner to CBS here, and then Sony….
I asked whether the Dylan album would be out simultaneously with the US. I was told that it would be out when there was demand for it. When there was demand? What sort of shit was that, I thought to myself. There was always going to be anticipation and demand for an album by Dylan. This wasn't some newbie marketing invention. This was one of the greats.
Anyway I sent a telex (this was pre-email) to Naomi Saltzman who ran the publishing company for Dylan to tell her this news. Alberts had paid a huge amount in advance royalties for the rights to the catalogue so a slow or no release would leave us exposed to imports of the album hitting our bottom line.
About a month later I was in New York for meetings and Naomi asked me to go to a meeting at the black rock – CBS HQ. I met with Bunny Friedus who was the head of international at CBS and several of the CBS lawyers and was asked to tell them what had transpired in all my discussions in Australia with regard to the record's release.
Because Bob had apparently heard about the non-release in Australia and was pissed.
To cut to the chase, this led to Dylan's contract with CBS being re-negotiated. His agreement thereafter had a guaranteed simultaneous global release provision in it. This was the first time that such a provision appeared in an artist agreement with a record company.
It also led to the MD of ARC trying to get me fired from my job! Fortunately that didn't happen.
Which leads me to a story I saw in today's MSNBC about Bob Dylan…..
atrocious, they have sound all over them,” he added. “There’s no
definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like … static.”
Dylan said he does his best to fight technology, but it’s a losing battle.
That was what Dylan said and he is right.
Today's digital technology allows so much manipulation of sound that music loses its soul. Now you just record one chorus of backing vocals and copy and paste it into the track wherever you need it, you set the tempo and it just clicks away exactly at the right speed…. how do you capture the essence of the human condition in that environment? A lot of the music today is manufactured rather than being played.
Bring back analogue!