| 26th December 2006 01:00 PM |
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| monkey_man |
Wolfgang's Vault site opens a Pandora's box of copyright issues over rock performances
- Ryan Kim, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/26/BUGUIN44ML1.DTL
It was Bill Graham's talent as a rock promoter that helped catapult legendary bands like Led Zeppelin, the Grateful Dead, the Doors and Santana into the rock firmament.
Now it's his little-known penchant as a packrat that is uniting the remaining members of those classic bands.
Fifteen years after Graham's death in a helicopter accident, his memorabilia archive is the subject of a lawsuit against its new owner, William E. Sagan, a Minnesota businessman, who purchased the Bill Graham Presents archive in 2003 for $6 million. Sagan has since angered the rock gods who are incensed by the way Graham's old collection -- a gigantic trove of psychedelic posters, photographs, handbills, T-shirts and tickets -- is being sold without their permission on Wolfgang's Vault, an Internet site named after Graham's birth name, Wolfgang Grajonca.
The final straw occurred last month when Sagan began streaming full concert clips of live performances from old shows at the Fillmore and other venues on his Web site, at www.wolfgangsvault.com.
The musicians joined in a federal lawsuit last week in San Francisco that charges Sagan with trademark and copyright infringement, bootlegging and unfair competition.
"We have never given permission for our images and material to be used in this way," said Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead. "What Sagan is doing is stealing. He is stealing what is most important to us -- our work, our images and our music -- and is profiting from the good will of our fans."
Sagan's attorney Michael Elkin refuted the claims in the lawsuit, saying he is confident his client will prevail.
"The lawsuit is unfounded, the facts are wrong, the claims are deficient," said Elkin, of Thelen Reid in New York. "Wolfgang's Vault has the right use the posters, photographs and music. The rights were acquired in a series of transactions and can't be challenged."
Elkin added that a good portion of Wolfgang's Vault's inventory is made up of acquisitions of other pieces and collections the company has bought in the last three years.
"This is just a smear campaign against a smart, honest and aggressive entrepreneur," he said.
Attorneys for the musicians claim Graham had a limited license to produce promotional material that did not allow him or anyone else to sell the physical items. And they said Sagan does not have a license to play any of the music performed by the artists on his site.
"What Sagan doesn't understand is the original stuff he's selling, Bill Graham wasn't even allowed to sell," said Ashlie Beringer, an attorney for the plaintiffs. "The legal issues are open and shut. We're all scratching our heads wondering how Sagan thought he could do this."
The brouhaha over the archive is a reminder that while Graham not only helped usher in the modern rock era with his business practices, he was also documenting and archiving its growth, creating one of the greatest collections of rock memorabilia in existence.
Graham got his start in 1965 promoting the San Francisco Mime Troupe. He quickly became a force in the San Francisco music scene, promoting top-notch concerts out of the legendary Fillmore and other concert halls. Graham helped boost the careers of the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin and promoted shows for a who's who of rock music, everyone from the Doors, Jimi Hendrix and the Who in the 1960s to Nirvana in the 1990s.
Graham's concerts, especially the ones at the Fillmore, were known for his trademark free apples and giveaway posters. The vivid posters of the 1960s and 1970s, created by local artists like Stanley Mouse, Rick Griffin, Alton Kelley and Randy Tuten, captured the freewheeling times in general and the local flavor of the San Francisco music scene in particular. With striking colors, ornate lettering and wavy lines, the posters heralded the arrival of some of the greatest bands of the time.
"I was just trying to make a nice-looking poster," said Tuten, who created hundreds of posters and advertisements for Bill Graham Presents. "That's what I tried to do with every job. I was trying to make stuff that stands up over a period of time."
Jerry Pompili, a former booker and archivist for Bill Graham Presents, said Graham conceived of the posters as a giveaway, first for the attendees and later as a gift for the bands and employees of the company.
"Doing small runs didn't pay, so we made 500 to 1,000 of them," said Pompili, who started with BGP in 1968. "Everyone enjoyed the posters and we just saved the leftovers."
It was that way with a lot of what Graham did. He created elaborate tickets that looked like miniature posters. When the fans arrived, they surrendered their tickets to gain entrance and Graham kept them all. Pompili said there might be more than 2 million tickets in Graham's archive.
In previous interviews, Sagan said he might have more than a million slides and negatives and about 500 posters so rare they could fetch at least $15,000 apiece.
Most stuff sells for less, though it's hardly cheap. A 1968 poster serigraph reprint featuring Hendrix's classic "flying eyeball" image goes for at least $7,728. A Grateful Dead backstage pass circa 1994 is a more reasonable $20.
Sagan told the Wall Street Journal his Web site did about $3 million in business last year.
While the posters and other artwork are enough to get collectors running, the bigger find among Graham's archive is his collection of audio and video tapes, more than 6,000 in all. Pompili said Graham just recorded the performers for himself, knowing he would not be able to resell them without permission from the artists.
The collection includes gems like the Who's last performance of the rock opera "Tommy" and early performances of Crosby Stills Nash & Young. It also includes video of artists who were often not captured on film, like Bob Marley and a young Miles Davis.
"It's a wonderful thing if the public could see some of these performances like Bob Marley at Henry J. Kaiser" Convention Center, said Greg Perloff, former president of Bill Graham Presents. "This was amazing video that was shot like home movies. This is part of Bay Area music history."
Perloff said Graham had no interest in selling his collection. He had a larger vision for his memorabilia and considered opening a museum at one point with Santana and the Grateful Dead, Perloff said.
"There was no conversation while Bill was alive about selling anything," Pompili said. "Bill loved all this stuff; you just didn't bring up the idea of selling it."
Graham's death in 1991 changed all that. His archive remained dormant, even as the company he built changed hands. Bill Graham Presents was purchased by the employees, who later sold the company to SFX Entertainment in 1998. The collection, which was considered an asset of the company, then passed to Clear Channel Communications, which bought SFX in 2000.
Perloff said Clear Channel sought to sell the archive because it wasn't producing revenue. He said Clear Channel sold it to Sagan with the warning that all of the licensing had not been cleared.
Sagan, however, has not been shy about his rights to sell parts of the Graham collection. He has rebuffed attorneys representing angry bands and he's also sued publishers who have tried to reprint work originally created for Bill Graham Presents.
Former employees of Graham said from the early years, he applied a copyright to almost all the posters he commissioned. Sagan has since asserted that copyright, including in a case in 2003 against a publishing company that was seeking to use Grateful Dead images that were part of Graham's original collection.
Lionel Sobel, a media law professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, said merely owning a copyright of a piece may not grant Sagan full right to sell it without cooperation from other rights holders, such as the original performer.
"It's very common for one item to be owned by one company and the same item to be owned by a different company with the result no one person can use the item without the consent of the other," Sobel said.
He said Sagan could also face trouble replaying the live performances if he has not secured a license from the copyright holders of the performer.
Jacaeber Kastor, a New York art and poster dealer who recently sold his large collection of rock posters to Sagan, defended him, saying he's a shrewd but fair businessman. He said copyright law is in a constant state of flux and cases like this will help define the shifting lines.
Kastor said that despite the differences between Graham and Sagan, he found much in common between the two.
"This is a step back to the past when Graham was the industry strongman who wanted to sort things out and control things," Kastor said. "People asked what gives him the right to run everything, but everyone was pretty pleased with the concerts he put on. Graham won over people, and I think Sagan will, too."
E-mail Ryan Kim at [email protected].
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| 27th December 2006 06:13 AM |
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| corgi37 |
As the surviving members all reach their dotage, its all about money.
Though i guess it is a dodgy legal situation.
Surely some agreement can be reached. |
| 27th December 2006 09:49 AM |
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| Bitch |
Yeah but since he paid $6 Million for the goods, then doesnt he have the right to sell them off if he wants to? |
| 27th December 2006 01:19 PM |
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| monkey_man |
quote:
Bitch wrote:
Yeah but since he paid $6 Million for the goods, then doesnt he have the right to sell them off if he wants to?
I think he should be able to sell off everything but the live recordings. Bill just did those on his own for his own personal enjoyment. The bands never gave permission for them to be sold. BTW if anyone is looking for posters from the Fillmore (post '94) or Warfield (post '90) shoot me a line. . .I might have extra's to sell. |
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