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Wild Slivovitz
I'm a lawyer and I use to deal with entertainment law. The Stones were perfectly entitled to claim their copyright over the song. They just got what It's owed to them.

Well, technically the Stones had zero to do with it.

It's that string thing, those strings with that whatever, kind of pleasant happy little flouncy melody, that did it.

I still like the song (The Verve). It was a good idea. Klein went after The Verve yet no one ever went after Klein (or the Stones) from the Staples Singers. Not sure if that is irony or just shit luck but ABKCO owes the Staples a ton of money and the credits should not be just Jagger-Richard.

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WeLoveToPlayTheBlues

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Wild Slivovitz
I'm a lawyer and I use to deal with entertainment law. The Stones were perfectly entitled to claim their copyright over the song. They just got what It's owed to them.

Well, technically the Stones had zero to do with it.

It's that string thing, those strings with that whatever, kind of pleasant happy little flouncy melody, that did it.

I still like the song (The Verve). It was a good idea. Klein went after The Verve yet no one ever went after Klein (or the Stones) from the Staples Singers. Not sure if that is irony or just shit luck but ABKCO owes the Staples a ton of money and the credits should not be just Jagger-Richard.

Yes, there is more than a passing resemblance with the Staples song isn't there?

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WeLoveToPlayTheBlues

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Wild Slivovitz
I'm a lawyer and I use to deal with entertainment law. The Stones were perfectly entitled to claim their copyright over the song. They just got what It's owed to them.

Well, technically the Stones had zero to do with it.

It's that string thing, those strings with that whatever, kind of pleasant happy little flouncy melody, that did it.

I still like the song (The Verve). It was a good idea. Klein went after The Verve yet no one ever went after Klein (or the Stones) from the Staples Singers. Not sure if that is irony or just shit luck but ABKCO owes the Staples a ton of money and the credits should not be just Jagger-Richard.

The Last Time by the Staples was an old Negro Spiritual that was in the Public Domain. I am sure they would have sued the Stones if they thought they had any chance of winning, which they didn't.

The Verve actually used the actual orchestral recording by Andrew Loog Oldham. I think the Verve got shafted, but it was settled out of court, I believe.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2012-07-05 16:50 by mitchflorida1.

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His Majesty
The only thing that doesn't really have some connection to the stones or ALO's version is the lyrics.

The vocal melody on BS is taken from the string line from the ALO version, which is just a slightly re-worked, slowed down version of the stones Last Time melody. The guitar parts on both the ALO version and BS are slightly re-worked, slowed down versions of Brians riff.

One could argue the skipping string motif on BS is original, but it does have some connections to Brians riff. Regardless, it's a great motif.

The Verve were some what shafted though cos Klein moved the goal posts when he knew it was going to be something special/saw another chance to make more money... even with the obvious borrowing Bittersweet Symphony is most definitely special!

Essentially, what the Verve did is no different to what the stones and loads of other bands have done many times... they re-wrote something they liked and threw in some original ideas, but kept a whole lot of borrowed stuff too.

The whole mess is all about greed and business, greed and business which is killing creativity.

Here is an nice short revealing take on this from SPIN - on how pop music worked then - and on how pop music works now. I posted it some time back after Jagger's SNL performance. Jagger's rendition on SNL showed a lot of veneration for the original. I was quite pleased to see that. The article also alludes to the 'creativity" paradox that you mention.
[www.spin.com]

Dissecting Mick Jagger's All-Star 'SNL' Rockathon, 'Lazy Sunday 2'
May 21 2012, 10:32 AM ET
by Marc Hogan

It's only rock'n'roll, but it had a big moment this weekend on Saturday Night Live. Mick Jagger hosted and, as you've probably heard by now, he gave musical performances backed by Foo Fighters and Arcade Fire. At a time when guitar-based music is all but absent from the pop charts, it was a fascinating illustration of what rock'n'roll might mean today — especially considering the episode also included a suitably hilarious sequel to SNL's YouTube-spawning 2005 hip-hop sketch "Lazy Sunday."

The Rolling Stones' 1965 hit "The Last Time" has one of the more revealing genealogies in rock history. Although the London School of Economics dropout Jagger and Stones guitarist Keith Richards get the sole songwriting credits (in other words: money!), Richards has cited as an inspiration James Brown's 1965 "Maybe the Last Time," itself drawn from the Staples Singers' "This May Be the Last Time," which in turn is based on an age-old African American spiritual. But the Verve, who sampled merely an orchestral version of the Stones' already-derivative song for their 1997 single "Bitter Sweet Symphony," famously had to forfeit all publishing rights to their biggest hit. In one sense, "The Last Time" can be seen as just another example of well-to-do British settlers appropriating what used to be public domain, a tradition that runs from the Jamestown colony to the BP oil spill; in another sense, that's just how pop music works.

Jagger's performance of "The Last Time" on SNL was deeply reverent of the song's pre-rock roots, with a gorgeously harmonized gospel introduction giving way to Arcade Fire's rollicking, contagiously enthusiastic backing (with the Strokes' Nikolai Fraiture playing bass). Equally superb was Jagger's medley of the Stones' "19th Nervous Breakdown" and "It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It)" backed by the Foo Fighters, who — in, it must be said, a total rock-star move — helicoptered to SNL after their set at New Jersey's Bamboozle. An Arcade Fire-led medley comprising two of the Beatles-iest Stones tunes, "She's a Rainbow" and "Ruby Tuesday," accompanied a touching farewell to cast member Kristen Wiig, who is moving on after this season.

By singing with two of the most respected purveyors of independent-thinking rock, Foo Fighters and Arcade Fire, Jagger was in effect passing the torch. And he could hardly have picked two worthier heirs: Both groups are able to cross over and excel in the world of Grammy ceremonies and stadium shows, but both also maintain a cautious distance from that world that reflects rock's early image of rebelliousness. As awkward as it can be to see a style that was once about youth and rebellion receive the sort of reverent, tradition-based tribute you might've once expected for jazz or classical (where are the Marsalis brothers?), everybody involved made it work, including Jagger himself. It was rock'n'roll, and it was deeply likable — perhaps, in the post-Adele, post-Gotye moment, there's room for music like this again in the pop charts?

What put the whole nostalgic celebration in an even more thought-provoking context was its juxtaposition with "Lazy Sunday 2," in which Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell reprised their hit rap sketch that essentially paved the way for online videos to "go viral" in the first place. Hip-hop, itself once an insurgent underdog, is now also a hallowed tradition, so much so that the original "Lazy Sunday" clip is now nearing five years old, and when the new clip alludes to a Jay-Z song, it's alluding to a guy who recently performed at Carnegie Hall. "Lazy Sunday 2" can't possibly pack the viral punch of the original — the novelty is gone, as is that pre-YouTube moment — but it's still a funny, colorfully quotidian examination of live in New York City (make it to the restaurant by 3 p.m. or you can't order off the brunch menu).

Despite a very 2012 production featuring gun sounds and dubstep breaks, the comedians' Beastie Boys-style call and response also couldn't help but call to mind the late Adam "MCA" Yauch. It's worth discussing the convoluted origins of the Stones' "The Last Time" — and its less-convoluted property rights, in that it wasn't exactly the Staples Singers or the descendants of the original folk song's composers who sued the Verve over "Bittersweet Symphony" — when remembering that the Beastie Boys were hit with a sampling lawsuit just a day before Yauch's death. If rock has increasingly lost out to other styles of music in recent decades, maybe part of the problem is a narrow understanding of creativity — the ultimate gift (after all, "inspired" means "god-breathed" — as property to be kept locked in a vault until someone pays the right fee, as the Verve had to do for "Bitter Sweet Symphony," or as Mad Men did recently for the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows."

We'll probably never see Mick Jagger, Foo Fighters, and Arcade Fire all together on the same stage again — but we'll never hear another Paul's Boutique, either. And the constant threat of sampling lawsuits is a part of that. With rap already decades old itself, there's a risk that the sort of creative theft that once allowed the Stones to make a song like "The Last Time" will be considered illegal when the next creatively rebellious style arrives. It's only the future, but we really want to like it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012-07-05 19:07 by wanderingspirit66.

A shown in the clip above, Mick in his documentary BEING MICK walks into Elton John's Venetian-themed bash and walks past a chamber orchestra who are smilingly playing a tune that prompts Mick to nod and smile at them. They're obviously playing a tune of Mick's that I couldn't recognize. More than once I watched that scene and tried to figure: what is this obvious homage-to-Mick tune? I couldn't recognize it at all! Which annoyed me!

And only this week did I hear this Oldham-orchestra-version of THE LAST TIME for the first time, and the mystery was solved. It's that rendition the chamber orchestra is playing for Mick at Elton's.

I won't repine about the royalties. Ronnie and Bill being shortchanged in this regard annoys me more.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012-08-09 22:29 by Title5Take1.

My question isn't about what they are legally entitled to, but what is right. There is a difference. The concept is called largesse, I suppose, and there is very litttle of that in the law.

It's not just the string line they used for BS though!

If you sing the first line of The last time "I told you once and I told you twice", then sing "it's a bitter sweet symphony" it's exactly the same notes and tune. They didn't just use what was agreed which was a sample.

No one seems to mention this in any of the youtube videos about this song slagging the stones.

Shame they got ripped off but if they had read stoned2 by ALO they would have known Klein was never going to let them away with that.

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robertfraser
It's not just the string line they used for BS though!

If you sing the first line of The last time "I told you once and I told you twice", then sing "it's a bitter sweet symphony" it's exactly the same notes and tune. They didn't just use what was agreed which was a sample.

No one seems to mention this in any of the youtube videos about this song slagging the stones.

Shame they got ripped off but if they had read stoned2 by ALO they would have known Klein was never going to let them away with that.

As Keef might say, "price of an education".

Too bad about all this 'cause Bittersweet is a fantastic record, great atmosphere.
BTW, on ALO's original version, I wonder if Jimmy Page is in there somewhere.
Wouldn't surprise me. I know John Paul Jones played on some.

The Verve more or less sampled the ALO version of the song. They should be credited for making it into a rock song but very naive not to just put Jones/Jagger/Richards first. The riff is the song and the riff was not ripped off, although no doubt inspired by that blues lick on that other Staples song.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012-08-10 13:32 by Redhotcarpet.

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Rockman

First off: I've been a Verve admirer since '93, Mr. Ashcroft is a very talented and charismatic fella. But whoever wrote that the Oldham "sample" is deeply embedded in the song and barely audible is stone deaf!! It's the entire basis of Bittersweet Symphony and couldn't be more blatant.

The Stones didn't sue the Verve or get any money. ABKCO owns the rights, did the suing and got the money.

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MILKYWAY
The Stones didn't sue the Verve or get any money. ABKCO owns the rights, did the suing and got the money.

And Jagger/Richards get their share from ABKCO.

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Rockman

So what is the sweet part of bittersweet?


Come What May

ABKCO also nailed Carter USM for daring to use the words "Goodbye Ruby Tuesday".





"As we say in England, it can get a bit trainspottery"

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alimente

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MILKYWAY
The Stones didn't sue the Verve or get any money. ABKCO owns the rights, did the suing and got the money.

And Jagger/Richards get their share from ABKCO.

Do they? I thought they sold the rights to all their pre-1971 recordings to get out of their tax issues.