Today’s New York Times looks at the phenomenon of older bands like Twisted Sister and Wang Chung heading back in the studio to re-record their biggest hits–and get a bigger piece of the music-licensing rewards in the process:
Under the typical record contract, money paid to license a song is split between the record label that owns the recording and the artist who performed it. But if a band remakes the song after it has ended its contract, it can retain ownership of the new version and license it itself without having to share the rewards with the record label. (Music executives typically insist on contract provisions that prohibit artists from re-recording their work for up to five years after their deal expires.)
Recently, a number of aging pop and rock stars has returned to the studio to recreate their signature tunes and pitch them to Madison Avenue and Hollywood. Attentive fans may notice remakes by bands including Twisted Sister, Foreigner and Simply Red in commercials, movie trailers and television programs.
But for some singers, recapturing the flair of their younger selves is no easy trick. “It’s 22 years on,” said Jack Hues of Wang Chung. “My voice is really quite different. You have to almost get into character, which is an interesting experience.” His partner, Mr. Feldman, wondered, “Should we just mimic and do a literal replica, or should we go for that spirited performance that reflects how we are now?”
In the case of Twisted Sister, a loose plan to recut some songs from the band’s 1984 breakthrough album “Stay Hungry” and package them with a DVD turned into a more serious affair. The band re-recorded the entire album, said the co-founder and guitarist Jay Jay French.
Since 2004 several advertisers, including 7Up and Wendy’s, have licensed the new versions, he said. In one instance, a television program paid $10,000 to use 10 seconds of a musical bridge from one of the newly recorded versions. Licenses for full Twisted Sister songs can be in the “six-figure” range, he said.
Albums that are full of re-recorded hits by the VH1 Classic set have been the domain of labels like Cleopatra and its subsidiaries for a while, with even artists like Tiffany getting in on the act. But while the idea of bands becoming cover bands of themselves seems like it may be lucrative, there are just as many incidences in which these experiments stiff–if you’ve heard any of these new/old”albums, you know that the sonic quality varies widely, thanks to differences in studio technology, budget, and “artistic visions” that the musicians have. Sometimes you get creakier, raspier versions of old-school anthems, and other times you get absolute abominations like Faster Pussycat’s foray into “electronica,” which was definitely not recorded for licensing purposes as it’s pretty much unlistenable.
at least the article didn’t say this is a new phenomenon. it’s been done for years. as you pointed out, cleopatra likes to release re-recorded songs (i recall hearing a LA Guns best of, with re-recorded songs, in the late ’90s). i have a pretty lame badfinger “Greatest Hits” cd with songs re-recorded by Joey Molland like “No Matter What” and “Come and Get It.” pretty horrible stuff. the songs were re-recorded in ’94, album came out a few years later.
L.A. Guns: pioneers!
Greatest Hits and Black Beauties came out in 1999, and Cocked and Re-Loaded was released a year later. I bought the latter, and yeah, you could tell that they were on a much stricter budget.
Read this this morning and shuddered remembering this one time about 10 years ago I bought a Kool & the Gang greatest-hits CD (at a suspiciously good price) and discovered it was the Gang rerecording all their hits. I sold the disc immediately – couldn’t get rid of it fast enough.
What I discovered from this experience is that – “improvements” in recording technology aside – it’s near-impossible to recreate the atmosphere of an original recording, to say nothing of the way voices age after multiple decades. Imagine recreating the atmosphere of a Beatles recording – no amount of clean-room studio improvements can remake the sound of those recordings.
Leeds did a nice job with the story, but he missed the hit that kicked off this trend nearly two decades ago: the Righteous Brothers’ 1990 rerecording of “Unchained Melody,” which competed with their original recording on the charts after the song exploded thanks to the movie Ghost.
And don’t forget Benny Mardones’ windswept-to-the-point-of-unlistenable “Into The Night ’89.”
I had the bad experience of buying a Delfonics greatest hits (the price was not good, unfortunately…), only to find out it wasn’t the “La La Means I Love You – The Definitive Collection” but “La La Means WE Love You”, which had their classics revisited 30 years later. Well, I hope at least that they have profited from my mistake…
Do artists rerecording their own songs run the risk of being sued for copyright infringement if the results are too similar to the originals? You know, kinda like John Fogerty was sued for plagiarizing his own songs.
This is the oldest trick in the book-you can find endless rerecordings at least as far back as Little Richard and iTunes is littered with scads of retreads that are still fooling people today (you should hear the tinny, midi-ized rerecording of “The Worst That Culd Happen” that a friend bought as a download).
Has anyone ever rerecorded a hit and improved it? “Don’t Stand So Close To Me ’86″ and Prince’s “1999″ remake were pretty dire but got airplay…
@Hyman Decent: In general, once a composition has been licensed, recorded and released commercially, anyone else can record a cover version by paying “mechanical royalties” to the publisher based on the number of records or CDs pressed.
The Fogerty case was a special situation where Fantasy Records owned the composition/publishing copyrights in the CCR catalogue AND there was lots of bad blood between the parties (including Fogerty’s song “Zanz Kant Danz,” about Fantasy chief Saul Zaentz).
The copyright infringement claim was based on the composition for “Run Through The Jungle” (allegedly infringed by “Old Man Down The Road”). The sound recording claim might have been more interesting … but without an explicit sample, it would be awfully hard to say that Fogerty ’85 is infringing Fogerty ’70 by playing the same guitar style, same amp and pedal mix, same vocal tics.
I love how LA GUNS always get dragged into conversations that involve old members / new members / old recordings / new recordings. This begs the question: what would happen if LA Guns tried to re-record a song now? Which touring version of LA Guns would do it? Which songs could the various members of each incarnation have access to? Who would sue the living piss out of each other? Information overload!
@Jupiter8: Has anyone ever rerecorded a hit and improved it?
I guess if you consider Pet Shop Boys’ 1986 smash recording of “West End Girls” - a remake of their previous 1984 recording, which was a hit in certain countries but a flop in the U.S. and England - then that’s one example.
But mostly, I agree with you, the answer is no. It’s like asking if any “Special Edition Director’s Cut” of a movie (e.g., Star Wars) improves on the original.
@Jupiter8: this could be an example, too. (although i actually like this version a little bit better, because the synth is all plonky.)
I guess I liked Devo’s rerecordings of “Jocko Homo” and “Mongoloid” with Brian Eno better but they weren’t exactly “hits”. I think the Go Go’s rerecorded “We Got The Beat” for their IRS lp too (which was the version that was a US hit…God, I am starting to sound like something out of a Nick Hornby book–sorry).
@maura: Wow, thanks – I’d never seen that. Very interesting.
I think you and I are both cheating, however – both the PSB and a-ha rerecordings are instant do-overs of songs that should’ve been hits and just needed better production. I think Jupiter8 is asking whether any act has ever come back to a proven hit a decade or more after the fact and actually improved it.
And…I still can’t think of one. In classical music, Glenn Gould famously went back late in his life to Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” – the pieces that were Gould’s breakthrough as a young man in the ’50s – and rerecorded them, slower and possibly better. But in pop? Gimme another day or three, I might be able to think of something…
@DeadlyTango: Thanks for that answer. I remember reading, many years ago, that Miller Brewing Co. approached Carlos Santana and asked him for permission to use his version of “Black Magic Woman” in a commercial, and he turned them down. They then had some band record a version of the song that was quite similar to Santana’s, and Santana sued. I never found out the outcome of that case.
Ad companies infamously have musicologists on call who can help advertising agencies create bastardized versions of an artist’s song/style so that they’re just different enough to avoid a lawsuit. This has happened to several artists I’ve worked with/know, and there’s very little you can do about it in most cases.
Other recent re-recordings – The US version of that Go! Team album (for sample issues), and Gang Of Four/Return The Gift…both of which tanked I think.
That first NERD record got rerecorded for the US market too…
…..Way, way late, but for the record, I have to say that I like the vanHalen “You Really Got Me” over the Kinks. A lot of that has to do with the “brown sound,” and various amazing guitar acrobatics, admittedly. Still, that nasty, out of the right speaker rhythm guitar part compared to the tiny speaker effect of the 1960s, no comparison. Amp techs are STILL trying to recapture that sound…
First off, just in case you haven’t read enough of my nonsense this week, you can click on the graphic below to read Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the Best Sports Movies — as always, I did small writeups for the top 20: I was also involved in “The Best Albums You’ve Never,…
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