Southall - Pop Goes to Court: Rock N Pops Greatest Court Battles

Copyright 2008 Omnibus Press
This edition 2009 Omnibus Press
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ISBN: 978-0-85712-036-6

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For Alyssa, a wonderful new life

D ark and dingy clubs, swanky theatres, big city stadiums and festivals promoting love and peace; these are the sorts of places where you expect to catch sight of the biggest names in rock and pop music. But over the years and the past half-century in particular a different and perhaps more mundane and austere location has been the venue for a series of headline- and attention-grabbing performances.

In hallowed halls of justice around the world, legal tussles involving star names, plus their families, friends, partners, critics, mentors and fans, have allowed the media and the public a rare insight into matters that, but for a lawsuit, would have remained locked in the file marked private and confidential.

Arguments over contracts, wills, newspaper articles, agreements (written and unwritten), trademarks and technology, plus tragic suicides, have all had to go to court to be resolved, and watching the rich and the famous settle their differences in open court is what, for many fans and pundits, makes the business of rock and pop truly entertaining.

The public airing of details about finances, friendships, partnerships and sexual preferences can be a very necessary part of winning legal satisfaction.

After all, we should never forget that it was in an English high court where the career of the worlds most popular and successful group finally came to a shuddering halt.

The legal break-up of The Beatles is just one in a series of high profile court cases in which the lives and times of a host of the worlds most successful and most popular musicians have been exposed and examined under scrutiny from both the media and the public.

Even before pop music began to take hold in the Fifties, the big-time actors and singers who had their names up in lights were all contracted to major film studios and record labels. And almost without exception, each one of them had an agent and/or a manager and, somewhere in the background, there would also have been a lawyer. At the first sign of a dispute over money, billing, co-stars or contracts, the legal eagles would have been called into action.

Sometimes these differences were settled out of court, with most of the juicy details being kept secret and with nobody ever taking the blame. But when it was impossible to settle privately either in or out of court then the full weight of the law was brought to bear in what was usually a high-profile, well-publicised and, more often than not, hurtful legal encounter.

And in the modern era of pop and rock music it has been no different. For years, judges have sat in judgement as the stars and often those nearest and dearest to them have fought over things said and done or, in some cases, not done.

While a good many of these legal differences of opinion are centred around contract disputes and issues involving royalty payments and composing credits, the subject of wills, suicides, trademarks, libels and memorabilia also figure in cases involving popular publications, a disgruntled politician, world-renowned companies and an impressive collection of some of the biggest names in the entertainment business.

The Beatles, The Smiths, Ozzy Osbourne, Elton John, George Michael, The Spice Girls and U2 are among those who have been forced into the courts of law to either state their cases or clear their names. At the same time, businesses operating on behalf of legends such as Elvis Presley and Jimi Hendrix have been publicly scrutinised in the name of justice.

The pages of Pop Goes To Court trace and chronicle some of the most famous, notorious, important and amusing court cases involving the great and the good of rock and pop ever to be set before judges and juries.

It was Charles Dickens who wrote the law is an ass. Whether those words, as uttered by Mr Bumble in Oliver Twist, are true or not, it seems that turning to the legal system is still a popular or, maybe in some cases, last port of call for artists, managers, companies, fans and families when all other more reasonable (and cheaper) options have been exhausted.

Even as the finishing touches were being put to this collection of music-related legal spats, there came news of two more fascinating and entertaining disputes that were only at the embryonic stage but could yet turn into full-scale court cases.

Morrissey star of a high-profile 1996 high court appearance involving The Smiths issued two writs against New Musical Express and its editor, Conor McNicholas, alleging defamation over quotes attributed to the singer in a November 2007 issue of the music magazine.

Reporting news of the legal proceedings in its November 30 issue, The Times began its story with the less than complimentary sentence, Bigmouth has struck again and, heaven knows hes miserable now.

After suggesting that the ex-Smiths front man took a nave and inflammatory stance on immigration and employed language that dangerously echoes the British National Partys manifesto, NME stood accused of misquoting Morrissey and taking his words out of context.

A week or two earlier there was news of a dispute in America over a made-up word that appeared as the title of both a best-selling album and a top-rated US television show.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers issued Californication in 1999 and hit the charts with both the album and the title-track single. In 2007, a TV series of the same name, starring X-Files actor David Duchovny, was aired in both the US and the UK and the four-piece rock band began proceedings against the shows makers, Showtime, for damages. They also took out an injunction to stop the TV network from using the word.

While the bands singer, Anthony Kiedis, went on record to claim that Californication is the signature CD, video and song of the bands career, there were stories of the word a combination of California and fornication appearing as far back as 1972, when it was defined as haphazard, mindless development that has already gobbled up most of Southern California.

Who will win? Well have to wait and see, but it may not necessarily be he who dares to go to court. The fact that there are always prosecuting and defending counsels arguing over their interpretation of the same facts means that taking legal action is, and always will be, a lottery.