Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Let me preface this post, by saying that if this story ever comes
out, it would blow the music world up and shake it to its core..This
would put the Milli Vanilli scandal and Ashlee Simpson SNL situation so
far down the ladder it would be crazy..
Towards the end of last
year I had a woman come into my office and she began to explain what she
had done and had been doing for several years and it was one of the
very few times that I just could not believe what I was hearing..I know
the music industry inside and out, and I had never heard of something so
extensive and pervasive as this..
This woman (S) came into my
office because the payments she had been receiving had stopped and she
wanted to either get the money that was owed to her, or expose what she
had been doing to the light of day..
S is a
sessions/studio/backup singer and is very good..Prior to her involvement
in what I am going to describe, she made a very good living singing on
commercials and being a backup singer for groups and other
solo acts, etc..Like I said she is very good, but she does not really
have that "look" which would make her a star, so record companies did
not put her out front, but just used her talents..
In late 2000, a
man came to her one day and said he needed someone to record some demos
because he had written a lot of songs, but wanted a demo to shop the
songs to singers and record labels..This is not unusual at all and she
had done this type of work before and it paid pretty well so she agreed.
What was unusual about her recording of the demos was how much work was
put into the actual recordings..It was extensive..Generally there is
not much time put into the recordings because you never really know if
the song will even sell, and the money spent on recording could be put
to better uses..These demos she was recording were actually being
treated as if they were going to be released on a CD or to radio..They
even did some mixing which was REALLY unusual..
After a few weeks
she had recorded about over a dozen songs and she went on her way and
was really oblivious to anything else pertaining to it, UNTIL several
months later she was in her car and heard her voice coming from the
radio, only it was another singer being given credit..(We will call this
other singer MV for Milli Vanilli) She could not believe what she was
hearing and did not know whether to be excited to hear herself on the
radio, confused about the credit given to another singer or just pissed
off for the same reasons..
What she did do, was to call the man
who had originally come to her and had her record the songs..The man
agreed to meet her and gave her a substantial sum of money and promised
to keep giving her money every month as long as she kept her mouth shut.
MV was taking off..(MV has/had several Top 40 songs and CD's. They
could have gone to #1 or languished in the 30's..I really cannot go into
much more detail or else it would be too easy to discover) MV was
everywhere..on television, radio, awards shows,
commercials..EVERYWHERE..meanwhile, S continued to get money every month
and kept her little secret to herself..The guy who picked S was VERY
lucky..Most singers would have caused a fuss, but S has always been in
the background and was resigned to the fact she always would be, and was
very happy just taking the $$, and did not want that to stop..
About
9 months go by and S is called by the guy because MV is going on tour
and they want S to record some extra mixes and such for the tour..She
agrees and does not really do much, but money is money..
Fast forward another year or so and S stops receiving money and after a few months of
missed payments, calls the guy who explains that they need S to do
another CD and then the payments can continue, but there is no more
money unless she does more recordings..
S agrees and records
another CD worth of songs which is released several months later and
does even better than the first CD. This same process is repeated (I am
not going to tell you the number of CD's because again you may be able
to deduce and so I will just say the process repeated itself several
times)
Well everything goes well for the most part for all these
years and then no more payments, and no more calls and she cannot even
locate our mystery man..S has not received a payment in six months when
she came into my office and related this story..She did not even know
the guy's name, but when she described him, I knew who he was and was
even more floored than I had been previously..This was just something I
had really not heard before..
I had heard of really altering
voices in the recording studios and bringing in hired hands for one song
or a large portion of a song, but never CD after CD and even doing
extra work so a live performance would not sound staged..I told her I
needed some time to check into her story and then we could proceed..It
took two calls before I got the guy on the phone and he was pissed,
scared, angry, threatening,
remorseful..everything..It turns out the reason he had stopped making
payments was he had been playing some shell games with the money between
the record company, MV's earnings and MV's investments and just did not
have any additional money..In addition, MV was not sure she wanted to
continue on with what had been happening and so our mystery guy might be
completely out of the picture..
I actually think the record
company to this day has no idea what went on as the Guy was very good at
what he does/did and knew how to make sure the record company was
always happy..He stayed under budget, toured, made MV available, and
made the record company money..
So a meeting was arranged in my
office and S and MV finally met face to face..they had never done so,
even though it was S who made MV a star..MV was rude to say the least
when she saw what S looked like and it really upset me although S being
her normal classy self could have cared less..
What we agreed to
do that day was to provide S with one lump sum rather than a monthly
income which was easier for Guy to pull off and S also agreed to never
disclose her role in this drama and MV was on her own for future
recordings and tours..
This involved literally millions of CD's and hundreds of concerts all over the world..The one
thing I did get out of this beside my fee of course is a Gold Record
autographed by S and by MV..I know it is the only one in the world..
No comments:
Post a Comment