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| From | "Miguel Motta" <a2j@bellsouth.net> |
| Subject | Re: The making of... "It Was 40 Years Ago Today"? |
| Date | Sat, 28 Aug 2004 22:48:33 -0400 |
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Well... thanks Jaimie for taking the time to go into a tremendous amount of
details as to how this project ("It Was 40 Years Ago Today") saw the light
of day... I clearly imagined the hoops of fire you and others had to jump
through in order to pull this off as I used to do radio productions "back in
the day" and those, as simple as they might have turned out, were moments of
wonderful chaos... So thanks again for a GREAT read... I'm sure many others
have enjoyed it too...
Cheers,
Miguel
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jaimie Vernon" <bullseyecanada@hotmail.com>
To: <audities@smoe.org>
Cc: <president@bullseyecanada.com>; <klaatu@a1.nl>
Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2004 6:10 PM
Subject: Re: The making of... "It Was 40 Years Ago Today"?
> At Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2004 15:22:34 Miguel wrote:
>
> >First things first... the Beatles' tribute "It Was 40 Years Ago Today" is
> >fantastic... I just can't add any more to that statement... If you don't
> >have it... GET IT!!!
> >
> >(I'm ok now...) ... How about someone out there (Jaimie?) give us the
> >behind-the-scenes as to how >long did this project take to put together
as
> >I can only begin to imagine the mammoth task of >contacting the bands...
> >meetings, phone calls, recording sessions, mixing... etc, etc... Should
> >make for >a good read...
>
> Well, we've made it a mandate at the label to release tributes as often as
> we can to celebrate our favourite artists of the '60s and '70s. The first
> was Klaatu in 1998. Then the Bay City Rollers in 1999. Then the Sweet in
> 2002.
>
> It was in the midst of assembling the Sweet tribute in 2001 that we had to
> decide what to do next. We had just obtained the entire Goddo back
catalogue
> that year and one of the band's albums "King Of Broken Hearts" featured
The
> Beatles "You Can't Do That". Band leader Greg Godovitz has always been a
> huge Beatlephile (he has what is considered the largest private Beatles
> collection in Canada). He had also recorded "Dear Prudence" while with the
> Carpet Frogs and was moonlighting, during 2001, outside Goddo with Bob
> Segarini in a new band called The Anger Brothers whose repertoire was pure
> British Invasion.
>
> While mastering the re-issue for "King Of Broken Hearts" I pointed out how
> out-of-place "You Can't Do That" was in the middle of this stable of hard
> rock tracks (Goddo is a power trio in the true rock and roll sense of the
> word)....so we left it off the re-issue with the understanding that it
would
> be used for a future Beatles tribute project.
>
> Later that year I mentioned the potential for the project to my
distributor
> at the time (KOCH) and they suggested we attach the project to McCartney's
> Music Trust because KOCH promotions man, Eric Alper, was heavily involved
> with them already.
>
> By early 2002 I was already working with Randy Bachman doing the Guess Who
> and Brave Belt Anthologies and asked if he'd like to be involved in a
> tribute of this nature.....and sure enough he was quite enthusiastic about
> doing something like "This Boy" or "I Saw Her Standing There".
>
> Randy mentioned the project in an interview to Toronto Sun/Jam Music
editor
> John Sakamoto (who also happened to be my editor on the Canadian Music
> Encyclopedia) unbeknownst to me. Next thing you know there's a cover story
> in the Sun screaming "Randy Bachman To Appear On Beatles Tribute".
Sakamoto,
> who was actually interviewing Randy about the Guess Who reunion tour,
pushed
> the tribute as the lead story as a favour to me.....attaching Bullseye's
> email address and phone number in the body of the article.
>
> Within hours I was beseiged with requests to appear on this thing!! As a
> matter of damage control I had to scramble to make it look like we were
well
> into the planning stages -- the title I'd thrown at Randy was tentative
(it
> eventually stuck!). We scrambled to make phone calls, get distribution
> scheduling happening and establish a criteria for the release. All of this
> was posted on Audities within hours of the initial newspaper article.
>
> This mailing list became the breeding ground for submissions....with a BIG
> tip of the hat to Gary Pig Gold who sent me a list of some of the biggest
> names in the Power Pop community to appear....including guys like Roger
> McGuinn, Kim Fowley, Bill Lloyd, Andrew Gold, Al Kooper and others. Most
of
> the list agreed to be part of this because Bachman's name was attached to
> the project.
>
> Alas, by the time we got enough material together, Randy was in the middle
> of a North American tour with the Guess Who and had no time to record a
> track. He bowed out of the compilation, but did offer up another Guess Who
> member, Donnie MacDougall, who was already finished recording a solo album
> containing "I Feel Fine".
>
> Gears changed and we lost a few large names (like McGuinn and Fowley) so
we
> put out the word for another round of submissions to try and up the cache
> factor. We had lots of great acts and great songs, but the name
recognition
> was pretty low. Meanwhile, the time lag gave some of Bullseye's roster a
> chance to record submissions, which became a whole other bone of
contention
> because I was torn between self-interest and the interest of the project
for
> its own sake.
>
> Then we lost our distribution (and the McCartney Music Trust access) and
> were in legal limbo with our former distributor and started looking for
> another distributor -- street date for the disc was missed at retail. We
> eventually hooked up in the Fall of 2003 with FUSION III in Canada and
> Burnside in the US (thanks to Mr. Ralph Alfonso!)....but we'd lost 7
crucial
> months where we almost went out of business.
>
> But we pressed onward...Terry Draper was retained as co-producer
(according
> to Rolling Stone magazine in 1977, he WAS a Beatle at one time....what
with
> his being in Klaatu and all)...and the aforementioned Greg Godovitz who is
> "beatleboy" in his free time.
>
> In total, we received 341 submissions for the tribute.
>
> But how would we release this thing? A single disc? A double disc? Split
the
> content up by US and Canadian territories and bands on different titled
> compilations in different countries? Gary Pig and I even toyed with the
idea
> of releasing 13 separate tributes -- each in homage to a different Beatles
> studio album....but my business partner nearly had a coronary over that
> idea!!
>
> It was eventually decided to be a three CD set as it's something I've
never
> seen in a tribute context -- a boxed set of tribute tunes (other than
> Rhino's "Louie Louie"....but this was different). It still took nearly 3
> months for us to establish the final running order of the CDs once we
> narrowed the set down to a more manageable 85 tracks.
>
> Then it took us another 6 months to clear the rights to the songs.
SONY/ATV
> (i.e. Michael Jackson's song administers for the Beatles catalogue) would
> not cut us a deal on sheer volume of tunes....we were being made to pay
full
> royalties on every track.
>
> 75 tunes @ $0.08 per track/per CD on TOP of the master use rights to each
of
> the artists on the discs would have ended up costing Bullseye $1.50 above
> what our sales would have been....in other words, we would have lost $1.50
> on every disc we sold. So.....we dropped the triple disc idea for retail.
It
> became a double disc out of necessity and we had to then go back to the
> drawing board and establish what was essential and what wasn't.
>
> We missed another street date release.
>
> Due to this, songs by Terry Draper and my own sister-in-law ended up being
> bumped for what I consider more solid and accessible material. And a lot
of
> people who we had promised spots on the CD project we ended up having to
> bump as well. Apologies to Scott McCarl, Allan Merrill (he who wote "I
Love
> Rock And Roll"), Wendie Colter and Ed James specifically. There *is* a
third
> CD that is being given away FREE by Not Lame on all pre-orders containing
23
> tracks left off the final project. Only Ed James appears on that because
> rights issues would have complicated the release of some of the above
> artists tracks where immediate financial compensation would have been
> necessary (i.e. licensing). As it is, the sampler is a lost leader for the
> 2CD set, so it just wasn't financially feasible to include some of the
> bigger names for free :-(
>
> The project was complicated further when our mastering man Michael White,
> who does a track with Mr. Andrew Gold, was incapacitated in June with a
> serious back injury. He had the 1st CD mastered before the injury, but the
> second one wasn't. The CD release party -- which he was headlining with
his
> session band -- and the disc release itself had to be postponed. In early
> August Michael's injuries were healed to the point where he could return
to
> the mastering studio and finish disc two. I believe there are one or two
> suspect volume issues on the second disc, and that's because Michael was
> only ever able to EQ the tracks before his back betrayed him again. I was
> forced to step in at the last minute and volume adjust the final tracks at
> home using some updated gear in the Sound Forge family of softwares. And
in
> doing so, the 2CDs took one more turn...
>
> We'd already sent out sales sheets, promo and an ad in Amplifier magazine
> with the final running order, but when I went to resequence the second
disc
> of material Dave Rave's "Here Comes The Sun" seemed like the obvious
choice
> to start the CD just like side B of "Abbey Road" (we'd always had The
> Trimatics' kitsche "Sie Liebt Dich" in that spot for sheer effect). This,
> then, inspired me to dig out a previously rejected cover of "I Want You
> (She's So Heavy)" by a Toronto act called The Dexters (session guys
> featuring Bernie LaBarge, Peter Cardinelli of The Boomers, et al). We'd
> dumped the song back in the early stages because it was a LIVE,
full-length
> instrumental of the Beatles song. With permission from the band we grabbed
> the last minute of the song and I did a quintessential homage to the
> original by fading the coda in and chopping the final notes of the track
> just like at the end of Side A of Abbey Road. With that done, I spooled it
> onto the end of the first CD to replicate the Abbey Road sequence. With
> "Here Comes The Sun" taking its rightful place on disc 2 I also recovered
> another rejected version of Donkey's "Because". The singing had been
suspect
> in that recording so we truncated it into a breezy and short instrumental
> snippet....placing it right after "Here Comes The Sun" where it appears on
> the original Abbey Road. "Mean Mr. Mustard" by RECEIVER was always in the
> sequencing and we just moved it up a few places giving us an Abbey Road
> trifecta before moving into the meat of the second CD itself.
>
> Craig Cross wrote the extensive liner notes which are excerpted from his
> book/website:
> http://www.beatles-discography.com
>
> The artwork, a re-imagining of The White Album, was created by Frank
> Levin...keyboard player in Eight Seconds (and co-writer of Alanis
> Morissette's first two PRE-"Jagged Little Pill" disco records). Frank had
> submitted a number of graphics to me...including a recreation of "Meet The
> Beatles" using guitars instead of faces. But in the end we went with the
> sheer non-litigious White Album. The Beatles logo and images are
> copyrighten, so this was our way around getting our asses sued.
>
> BTW - That's me singing on "Fixing A Hole" by HELIUM KIDS....with my
> brother-in-law on drums and bass....Brian Gagnon on guitar. It's our own
> homage to XTC! :-)
>
> More of this story and the song listing for the bonus 3rd CD will appear
on
> the Bullseye site Monday.
>
> Jaimie Vernon,
> President, Bullseye Records
> http://www.bullseyecanada.com
> Author, Canadian Pop Music Encyclopedia
> http://www.canoe.ca/JamMusicPopEncycloPages
>
>
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