Scott Rodger (Maverick) leaks Morrissey information and email re: Bonfire / Miley via X (October 17, 2023)

There's been drama!

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Related item:

• Scott Rodger (Maverick/Quest): Bonfire of Teenagers scheduled for Feb. 23, delayed by featured artist - Dec 24, 2022

 

[DaveJCarr]

https://pitchfork.com/news/sky-ferr...cj0ChliOVx8HlZkrX1XGLqu61Er5tqoIwFSrCdzcrebXA

Relevant, perhaps, or at least, interesting

https://www.stereogum.com/2210477/s...w-music-holdup-this-is-beyond-f***ed-up/news/

 

[Anonymous]

https://pitchfork.com/news/sky-ferr...cj0ChliOVx8HlZkrX1XGLqu61Er5tqoIwFSrCdzcrebXA

Relevant, perhaps, or at least, interesting

https://www.stereogum.com/2210477/s...w-music-holdup-this-is-beyond-f***ed-up/news/

This stuff happens a lot. But whilst I have some sympathy for the artists, at the end of the day they decided to sign whatever contract was put in front of them and willingly gave up their freedom.

 

[DaveJCarr]

This stuff happens a lot. But whilst I have some sympathy for the artists, at the end of the day they decided to sign whatever contract was put in front of them and willingly gave up their freedom.

I agree,

To some extent. I think it's pretty awful even if technically permissible behavior to intentionally sit on an album that you don't intend to release without offering a buyback option or clear communication otherwise.

And in the case of Morrissey, he seems to have doubled down on the back and vocal issue – whether or not he knew of Columbia's prohibitions at the time those emails were sent, nd also has chosen to engage in a very particular appointed and personal attack on certain figures in capitol management as a PR pressure campaign, and I'm not sure any of that is conducive to them releasing the record or choosing to allow Morrissey to buy back the album at a price he would deem acceptable.

I don't think labels are blameless, but based purely on the information available at the moment in Moz's case at least, he shoulders a lot of blame for so zealously chasing after the commercial boom he suspected would result from public promotion of appeal to the Miley Cyrus fan base.

 

[Crisstti]

This stuff happens a lot. But whilst I have some sympathy for the artists, at the end of the day they decided to sign whatever contract was put in front of them and willingly gave up their freedom.

There's a huge power imbalance at play though. Negotiating power, and knowledge as well since labels will have big teams of lawyers seeing that the terms are as favourable to themselves as possible.

 

[Crisstti]

And of course Morrissey knows none of this?

I don't think he knows Donnie blocked Alain and Gus from Instagram, since according to Alain himself they are on good terms.

No. You did, insinuating that the whole drama is caused by Central posts that MIGHT HAVE BEEN poster by the tour manager - when clearly, openly, publicly Morrissey himself breached the contract by announcing MC on stage. It’s on video ffs.

Hold on a second, we don't know that Morrissey breached any part of his contract by doing that.

 

[DaveJCarr]

There's a huge power imbalance at play though. Negotiating power, and knowledge as well since labels will have big teams of lawyers seeing that the terms are as favourable to themselves as possible.

There surely are dangers of collusion as you describe here. But on the other hand, were dealing with Morrissey here, no stranger to the way that the industry works and no stranger to fallouts with other labels – in very recent history – for nebulous or undisclosed reasons. That doesn't completely negate the gravity of the potential power imbalance that you're talking about here, but someone with Morse's experience should have a little bit more deftness and skill in navigating the challenges of institutions whose perceived prestige and monetary and logistical support he clearly still values and wants.

Put everything about capitol and Bonfire of Teenagers aside and there are still at least two albums available for him to enter into contracts with any other interested party about. In the case of World Peace Is None of Your Business, there's been no real explanation as to why things soured on his and with that relationship. As far as contemporary releases go, there was a lot of marketing push for that one, preorder bonuses tailored to the kinds of things that the hard-core Morrissey fans would like – signed or duplicated lyric sheets, that oddball but somehow fitting spoken word music videos, single b-sides and a deluxe album that all of us seem to think as some real quality songwriting to it, some of his best arguably.

There was the orange exclusive hot topic vinyl. There was a lot is my point and it's not clear to me why he chose to walk away from the contract and have that comeback album stripped from shelves mere weeks after its release

 

[Crisstti]

There surely are dangers of collusion as you describe here. But on the other hand, were dealing with Morrissey here, no stranger to the way that the industry works and no stranger to fallouts with other labels – in very recent history – for nebulous or undisclosed reasons. That doesn't completely negate the gravity of the potential power imbalance that you're talking about here, but someone with Morse's experience should have a little bit more deftness and skill in navigating the challenges of institutions whose perceived prestige and monetary and logistical support he clearly still values and wants.

Yeah I don't think we disagree here.

Put everything about capitol and Bonfire of Teenagers aside and there are still at least two albums available for him to enter into contracts with any other interested party about. In the case of World Peace Is None of Your Business, there's been no real explanation as to why things soured on his and with that relationship. As far as contemporary releases go, there was a lot of marketing push for that one, preorder bonuses tailored to the kinds of things that the hard-core Morrissey fans would like – signed or duplicated lyric sheets, that oddball but somehow fitting spoken word music videos, single b-sides and a deluxe album that all of us seem to think as some real quality songwriting to it, some of his best arguably.

There was the orange exclusive hot topic vinyl. There was a lot is my point and it's not clear to me why he chose to walk away from the contract and have that comeback album stripped from shelves mere weeks after its release

The only thing I remember him saying about it seemed to indicate the label just got annoyed/upset at him for some reason. Not sure he "chose" to walk away from it. I could be misremembering though.

 

[Crisstti]

Naturally, you don't have any proof of any of this

FWD pointed out that things sometimes/often go from SER's social media directly to Central.
And Alain's friend @dneuer said that Donnie blocked Alain from Moz' official Instagram iirc.

 

[DaveJCarr]

The only thing I remember him saying about it seemed to indicate the label just got annoyed/upset at him for some reason. Not sure he "chose" to walk away from it. I could be misremembering though.

In the spirit of fairness and accuracy, it seems (according to Morrissey) that Steve Barrett was the one that terminated the contract – as per a statement True-to-You. https://www.billboard.com/pro/morrissey-harvest-timeline/#!

Morrissey is parting ways with record label

Harvest Records will not be licensing a second album by Morrissey.

www.digitalspy.com

However, some of the things as far as vociferous over the types and kinds of promotion promotion, pledged or at least singles that Morrissey asserts were pledged, seem to have a parallelism here to some of the stuff surrounding teenagers/Miley the announced and scrapped California sun singles and B-sides – "announced" in the sense that they were announced on central etc. before the label said a peep.

Is there possible underhandedness there? Yeah. Is it also possible that Morrissey got overeager and announced things before the final details were locked down and approved? yEAH

The World Peace Steve Barrett staff is particularly interesting to me. Because as I established before I thought there was a genuine and defensible pre-ordering and promotion strategy behind the release – albeit one that Morrissey seems to have disagreed with. But good faith (so it appears to me) promotion an album in a way that an artist might slightly disagree with or have some aesthetic objections to is not quite the same as not promoting it at all. You would think that a label would want to do things the way that an artist like them presented, but they're the ones that have the marketing staff the promotional staff and all of that, and they're the ones that are footing the bill for the promotions, so I can understand that to.

Is the possibility of allowing Miley Cyrus to appear uncredited on a main album single – and everyone would know it was her obviously just from the sounds of it) the same as intentionally sabotaging things because her label/management/maybe even her don't want to be named or featured explicitly on the single? I don't think so

I just mean that there are some spiritual commonalities that are a little bit hard to ignore in the rocky road of recent Morrissey releases and promotional philosophies. Morrissey wanted done one way, the record company has their own ideas, Morrissey might try to get out ahead of it in some ways to still control and influence the the promotional contacts in the narrative, and then things blow up to varying degrees of destruction.

I don't think any artist even at the level of Taylor Swift or Springsteen is able to do whatever they want without some promotional obligations that are conceived and required by the folks financing album releases and stuff like that

I wonder if Morrissey was ever satisfied with any promotional efforts across his many labels going back to the 2000'S four fee all feel that they were fundamentally flawed and somewhat intentionally ruinou. Because they didn't stay true to his letter perfect priorities and promotional vision/

 

[SuedeMoz]

I wonder if Morrissey was ever satisfied with any promotional efforts across his many labels going back to the 2000'S four fee all feel that they were fundamentally flawed and somewhat intentionally ruinou. Because they didn't stay true to his letter perfect priorities and promotional vision/

A lot of good points - hasn't Morrissey complained about promotion (or lack thereof) going back to The Smiths?

I can't recall the specifics but didn't someone suggest that Morrissey was also upset with Harvest for not being able to get him the musical guest spot on Saturday Night Live?

 

[DaveJCarr]

A lot of good points - hasn't Morrissey complained about promotion (or lack thereof) going back to The Smiths?

I can't recall the specifics but didn't someone suggest that Morrissey was also upset with Harvest for not being able to get him the musical guest spot on Saturday Night Live?

I don't remember that. Sometimes, as in the case of The Smiths/Rough Trade - he's right. I have a harder time believing Harvest/BMG/Capitol were all negligent and nefarious. I think harvest's promotional campaign for world peace was pretty good if not at least understandable. Low In High School got some singles at Deluxe Edition, some TV appearances radio promotion and at Deluxe Edition.

California son has some singles (with really great sleeve art from Morrissey, the preorder stuff a colored value that – did not interest me one bit but was still there, Casio or whatever record player, and the behind-the-scenes YouTube documentary. Dog nobody's got the red vinyl variant.

An artist – and to be fair not just Morrissey – will probably always play armchair marketer and promoter and maybe somewhat justifiably think that labels could always have done a better job pushing and promoting the album, but I think it's fair to at least be somewhat skeptical of constant aspersions in light of what is arguably compelling contrary evidence

 

[Anonymous]

There's a huge power imbalance at play though. Negotiating power, and knowledge as well since labels will have big teams of lawyers seeing that the terms are as favourable to themselves as possible.

This is true, however these artists sign away their rights as they are trying to harness that big label power. Sometimes it works for them, sometimes it doesn't. But it's ultimately their choice to sign when they could have just released material themselves and kept all their creative control.

 

[Musician]

I don't think he knows Donnie blocked Alain and Gus from Instagram, since according to Alain himself they are on good terms.


Hold on a second, we don't know that Morrissey breached any part of his contract by doing that.

We do know. See the first tweet. Morrissey announcing publicly - both via his website and during a gig - MC’s involvement when he was asked not to do.

 

[ZOOM FROM GLOOM]

No. You did, insinuating that the whole drama is caused by Central posts that MIGHT HAVE BEEN poster by the tour manager - when clearly, openly, publicly Morrissey himself breached the contract by announcing MC on stage. It’s on video ffs.

Hold on a second, we don't know that Morrissey breached any part of his contract by doing that.

We do know. See the first tweet. Morrissey announcing publicly - both via his website and during a gig - MC’s involvement when he was asked not to do.

Do we know? Crisstti is asking you about a contract breach. Because you said he breached his contract because of his announcement.

But I don’t see anything about that in the first tweet …. maybe there’s another tweet you’re thinking of ?

 

[DaveJCarr]

Do we know? Crisstti is asking you about a contract breach. Because you said he breached his contract because his announcement.

I didn’t see anything about that in the first tweet ….

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I think Crissit is right – we don't have direct evidence of a formal contract breach – and how could we, it's not as if anyone released the contracts or memorandums of understanding – and I highly doubt we will.However, ticked off Scott by his perceptions of Moz's behavior would probably be a bridge too far, releasing the contract would be a bridge too far, even for him

However, based on my reading of the tweet in question you went ahead and did what you were asked not to do means at the very least Morrissey was aware of either a label or management request. Even if it were simply a management request that Moz didn't put any particular importance it seems that he was at least aware of it before announcing/posting

It does seem a bit stupid – if that's the sticking point – that having her uncredited (maybe" but still obviously present makes some is any tangibly different than M announcing it on stage, but as the others pointed out previously that's the kind of wink-wink nod -nod ridiculousness that has been standard operating procedure in the record industry for more than Moz's lifetime/career, and surely during it

 

[ZOOM FROM GLOOM]

I think Crissit is right – we don't have direct evidence of a formal contract breach – and how could we, it's not as if anyone released the contracts or memorandums of understanding – and I highly doubt we will.However, ticked off Scott by his perceptions of Moz's behavior would probably be a bridge too far, releasing the contract would be a bridge too far, even for him

However, based on my reading of the tweet in question you went ahead and did what you were asked not to do means at the very least Morrissey was aware of either a label or management request. Even if it were simply a management request that Moz didn't put any particular importance it seems that he was at least aware of it before announcing/posting

It does seem a bit stupid – if that's the sticking point – that having her uncredited (maybe" but still obviously present makes some is any tangibly different than M announcing it on stage, but as the others pointed out previously that's the kind of wink-wink nod -nod ridiculousness that has been standard operating procedure in the record industry for more than Moz's lifetime/career, and surely during it

Yeah, we don’t know of a breach of contract or any contract details. I thought maybe I missed something in this mess.

Especially when Musician wrongly said that Morrissey breached his contract. And Crisstti was right to question him on that claim.

 

[SuedeMoz]

I'm not at all convinced anyone would have heard those distorted background vocals and known it was Miley. Granted the fact that he posted a picture of her during the recording of BOT might have made us suspect it.

Reading the tweet it sounds like Miley's label and management would have been OK with her appearing uncredited on BOT. Of course that was not good enough for Morrissey as he wanted the perceived 700% benefit of having her as a featured artist on BOT.

It seems a bit pedantic to argue whether Morrissey committed "formal contract breach." In the end, does it matter? He can't use Veronica with Miley on it. Capitol will not release BOT. Even if Morrissey buys it back he still can't use the version of Veronica he wanted.

You've got to wonder... had he played things a bit better he might have got almost everything he wanted.

 

[Howler Monkey]

I'm not at all convinced anyone would have heard those distorted background vocals and known it was Miley. Granted the fact that he posted a picture of her during the recording of BOT might have made us suspect it.

Reading the tweet it sounds like Miley's label and management would have been OK with her appearing uncredited on BOT. Of course that was not good enough for Morrissey as he wanted the perceived 700% benefit of having her as a featured artist on BOT.

It seems a bit pedantic to argue whether Morrissey committed "formal contract breach." In the end, does it matter? He can't use Veronica with Miley on it. Capitol will not release BOT. Even if Morrissey buys it back he still can't use the version of Veronica he wanted.

You've got to wonder... had he played things a bit better he might have got almost everything he wanted.

Theoretically once Miley's current record contract ends, she could be credited on Veronica?

 

[Howler Monkey]

One would think so.

But I was surprised that Columbia had a say, considering ( and I could be wrong about this) didn’t she do those Veronica vocals before she signed a contract with Columbia?

She did indeed do the vocals when she was unsigned but I assume as Veronica would've been a new release while she's signed to Columbia, when it was recorded was irrelevant.

 

[ZOOM FROM GLOOM]

She did indeed do the vocals when she was unsigned but I assume as Veronica would've been a new release while she's signed to Columbia, when it was recorded was irrelevant.

Ah, yes. That makes sense.