The reason why Song Remains The Same DVD was pulled

The publishing for You Really Got Me is controlled by Edward Kassner Publishing. Kassner was a partner with the owner of Pye Records when The Kinks recorded for them.

 

Would Ray have any directs rights pertaining to slander against The Kinks?

 

I'm certainly no legal expert but if Ray and The Kinks were slandered, I would say that that, yes, he would have rights to pursue legal action. Were they slandered in this case? I haven't seen the Zeppelin DVD.

 

Has anyone heard the instrumental song "Revenge" from the Kinks first album?

Have a listen to the A-Side of Page's 1965 solo single, "She Just Satisfies"

The original song is credited to a "Page", but that's Larry Page, the Kinks' manager who, according to Ray in "The Moneygoround", "adored my instrumentals" enough to steal the writing credit

No wonder Ray is a little bitter.....

 

like it really MATTERS in this day and age.....LOL


Maybe it will stop the kinks from selling 10 million albums in 2008........

 

If true, that is really petty...

 

Really stupid...why they would care at this late date is beyond me.

 

Aha, right you are.

It's looking less likely that Ray himself had anything to do with this, then. I suppose a smart lawyer could find him some hook to hang a legal challenge on -- publicity rights to his voice, libel suit threats, who knows -- or maybe he has some indirect pull with Sanctuary or Kassner. And if he did actually do it, then more power to him. But I'm inclined to think now it's just the corporation bean counters.

 

Let's not forget that this is not a case of Led Zeppelin doing YRGM and claiming it as theirs or using the Kinks recording of it as incidental or background music for a menu. They took a c1976 radio segment by Cameron Crowe and added it as an extra on the DVD, the same way as they took TV footage from a Florida TV station and used it, or the Old Grey Whistle Test 1975 interview with Robert Plant on their 2003 DVD.

I'm sure all of these were cleared with their original source. So technically, the case could be made that whatever entity -- be it Cameron Crowe or other -- that approved the use of Crowe's radio segment is at fault for authorizing its use without consulting the owner of the copyright. One could also make the case that whatever royalty mechanism applying to a public rebroadcast of the radio segment would also apply to its inclusion on a DVD. I imagine there's some sort of royalty standard in place for sale of a radio recording on a physical medium, so it seems to be that this should in fact cover whatever royalty payments that are due to Edward Kassner Publishing.

 

Not really. Working clearances is an actual job, done by people that have the responsibility and presumably, the knowledge. No one doing that job would...or at least should think that Crowe, Crowe's employers at the time or whoever owns the rights to that promotional tape would be in a position to clear the rights to the Kinks' audio.

 

Robert Plant's last solo album(Mighty Rearranger) was released on Sanctuary.

Just to make the situation more bizarre than it is already.

SA

 

Larry is, by the accounts of people who know him, a bit of a nut but I don't think he was stealing songs wholesale. Though, you're right that others, like Davies, have also said they felt their work directly "influenced" Larry. Of the folks I've talked to who worked with Larry none have ever accused him of stealing enough to make them bitter. Certainly Page didn't make big money off of his instrumentals that I know of.

I don't know a lot about Ray Davies but if I take your word that he is bitter there must be a pretty big list of reasons why. If Larry Page is one of them that wouldn't surprise me given that the Kinks were young when they worked with him and Ray ultimately wanted to do his own thing. But Page, that I've heard of, never horned in on writing credits on big money songs like a lot of 60 producers did.

** One caveat to this is that Larry was famous for releasing tracks his artists submitted as demos. This is practice seems like normal business for Page One and Penny Farthing.

 

Not really. Things get much more complicated legally when you link a song to an image. If the Sweetness Sisters release a track they wrote and the Scumbag Sisters want to do a cover of it, there's not much anyone can do to stop them. But if the Scumbag Sisters want to use that cover on the soundtrack for some amputee porn film, the Sweetness Sisters can refuse them the rights.

This is why, e.g., some groups such as the Rolling Stones took forever to show up on karaoke machines.

 

I doubt we'll know. It's possible (only possible) that Davies found out and made a call to what's left of the Sanctuary office. The way the internet gets info around these days who knows how it got back to the owners of the song.

 

I'd heard the accusations about "She Just Satisfies" tossed around before, but never heard the song itself. Wow. That's ... very similar.

"Revenge" itself is one of the earliest Kinks songs -- it actually goes back to their days as the Ravens. Larry Page was there at the demo recording, and might even have played drums on it. It's very likely that he gave the inexperienced group some advice about the arrangement. Enough advice to warrant a writing credit? No one who wasn't in that room will ever know.

 

Would they not have obtained the clearance to use it when the show was first aired?

 

Which show? The original radio broadcast? Or was there some later television broadcast? In either case, no, there's additional clearances you'd need for a video release.

 

Since Ray and Dave don't own the masters for "You Really Got Me", it would seem that it probably had to be more of a problem with Castle to me.

If memory serves here (and if not someone WILL correct me),For the record, Ray and Dave haven't denied that Jimmy Page played on "You Really Got Me" , instead, both have always insisted that Jimmy played rhythm guitar. Dave and Ray have always stated very clearly that it was Dave playing the guitar solo and, form what I recall, all evidence aside from comments that Page might have made (again, this is from memory) points to Dave playing the solo. He was quite good at the time for a16 year old.

 

Perhaps they insisted that it be removed because of that whole issue with people assuming that Jimmy Page played the solo. Ray doesn't earn any songwriting royalities from "You Really Got Me". His publishers and management at the time sold off the rights wholesale.

If Ray and Dave were involved at all, I would think that they really wouldn't care except to be reimbursed for the use of the song.

 

No, Ray doesn't own the publishing to any of his early stuff.

Warner may have assumed they had the rights (or Rhino) because they own the rights to issue the recordings in the U.S.

 

In the recent cover story Page did in Guitar World, he DENIED playing on this song.

 

He's done that over the years (although I've never heard or read interviews where he has taken credit I've "heard" of them).

I sincerely doubt as I said that Ray or Dave had much to do with the pulling of this (theortically could they have--sure) and suspect the company that Sanctuary probably had more to do with it and they probably demanded money.

Ray hasn't made a dime for his pre-1966 songs in years as they were sold outright and, from what I recall, he ended up (a la John Fogerty)giving up royalities on those songs to get out of his publishing contract. I'd have to take a look again at my Kinks books to get the full story though.

 

The recording history of "You Really Got Me" is pretty murky. No one remembers exactly who the session guitarist was; the one thing that seems established is that it wasn't Jimmy Page.

There were three recording sessions for the song: a demo in mid-March, 1964; an early master recording in mid-June; and the final, released version in mid-July. Jimmy Page might have played on the unreleased June version. Here's Ray, from an interview for Zig Zag:

If Page was at the June session, that might explain remarks like this from producer Shel Talmy: "Jimmy Page did not play the solo on 'You Really Got Me,' he played rhythm guitar." As we've seen in previous posts, Page himself denies that he played on the song at all, as does Ray Davies.

There was a session guitarist on the released version doubling Ray on rhythm, though -- I've seen speculation that Ray's guitar might even be absent from the released track, though Ray says otherwise. From his 1981 Creem interview:

In his Guitar World interview, Ray remembers the third guitarist as "Al." Doug Hinman's chronology All Day and All of the Night assigns the credit to "likely Harry, possibly Bob or Vic, surname unknown."

Pete Quaife played bass as usual, but Mick Avory played tambourine, not drums. The drummer was Bobby Graham, and the pianist was Arthur Greenslade.

 

In Page's defense, he did a lot of sessions - more than one a day some days. He has stated that he was often there as a stand-by, just in case the band couldn't cut it. He might even replace guitar parts while the group was at lunch and unaware of what was happening (I'm not specifically suggesting that this is true of the Kinks in particular). This sort of thing still goes on by the way.

These weren't world famous acts at the time, just other groups and performers. The fame came later for some, and never for others and from the sounds of it, Page wasn't the most popular person in the room so I doubt that many of the performers even spoke to him. He probably wouldn't even have known the names of the songs he was playing on. I think most of his "memories" are based upon what he now hears on CDs. He tries to recognize his own playing (from 40+ years ago!) which isn't as easy as you might assume.

 

Does anyone else see the sweet irony in Page being out big bucks with the DVD recall for being called by Ray Davies for falsely implying credit for creating music that he didn't? I'll bet the members of Spirit (Stairway=Taurus), Jake Holmes (Dazed and Confused) and Moby Grape (Since I've Been Loving You=Never), plus all of those blues guys that had to sue them for royalties and credits, are grinning like crazy. Plus all of us other pissants.
Superhype indeed.