Don Henley and the Eagles vs. Frank Ocean
phongone
1,652 Posts
I guess it was just a matter of a time. Frank did lift the entire Hotel California track. Love how Frank is thumbing his nose at them though.
http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/44797/the-frank-ocean-don-henley-beef-heats-up
The Frank Ocean-Don Henley Beef Heats Up
By Amos Barshad on March 2, 2012 9:37 AM ET
Good news for ascendant R&B crooner Frank Ocean: He is now famous enough that Mr. Don Henley knows his name. Unfortunately, acknowledgement of that knowledge has come via the threat of legal action ??? apparently, Henley and his label finally got around to checking out Ocean's rad breakup jam ???American Wedding??? and are not too psyched about the fact that Frank wholesale lifted ???Hotel California??? for it.
The tussle went public when Ocean posted a message to his Tumblr:
"Don henley(???s label ??? Rhino) is apparently intimidated by my rendition of Hotel California..
He (They) threatened to sue if I perform it again. I think that???s fuckin awesome. I guess if I play it at coachella it???ll cost me a couple hundred racks. If I don???t show up to court, it???ll be a judgement against me & will probably show up on my credit report. Oh well. I try to buy my shit cash anyway. They also asked that I release a statement expressing my admiration for Mr. Henley, along with my assistance pulling it off the web as much as possible. Shit???s weird. Ain???t this guy rich as fuck? Why sue the new guy? I didn???t make a dime off that song. I released it for free. If anything I???m paying homage."
MTV then touched base with Larry Solters, a spokesperson for The Eagles, who explained the dudes were mad because ???Frank Ocean did not merely 'sample' a portion of the Eagles' 'Hotel California'; he took the whole master track, plus the song's existing melody, and replaced the lyrics with his own. This is not creative, let alone 'intimidating.' It's illegal." Also: ???For the record, Don Henley has not threatened or instituted any legal action against Frank Ocean, although the Eagles are now considering whether they should.???
Drag. With all due respect to intellectual property laws, why are The Eagles being such dicks about this? "Release a statement expressing my admiration for Mr. Henley"? Isn't that what the song does? It'd be one thing if Ocean had taken ???Hotel California??? and then let his Odd Future pals on the track to rap about abducting Glenn Frey's children or whatever. But he made a smart, earnest song that's a boon to the original. ???Shit???s weird. Ain???t this guy rich as fuck???? pretty much says it all.
But let's not forget the positive in all this: The Don Henley is checking out Frank Ocean's stuff!
http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/44797/the-frank-ocean-don-henley-beef-heats-up
The Frank Ocean-Don Henley Beef Heats Up
By Amos Barshad on March 2, 2012 9:37 AM ET
Good news for ascendant R&B crooner Frank Ocean: He is now famous enough that Mr. Don Henley knows his name. Unfortunately, acknowledgement of that knowledge has come via the threat of legal action ??? apparently, Henley and his label finally got around to checking out Ocean's rad breakup jam ???American Wedding??? and are not too psyched about the fact that Frank wholesale lifted ???Hotel California??? for it.
The tussle went public when Ocean posted a message to his Tumblr:
"Don henley(???s label ??? Rhino) is apparently intimidated by my rendition of Hotel California..
He (They) threatened to sue if I perform it again. I think that???s fuckin awesome. I guess if I play it at coachella it???ll cost me a couple hundred racks. If I don???t show up to court, it???ll be a judgement against me & will probably show up on my credit report. Oh well. I try to buy my shit cash anyway. They also asked that I release a statement expressing my admiration for Mr. Henley, along with my assistance pulling it off the web as much as possible. Shit???s weird. Ain???t this guy rich as fuck? Why sue the new guy? I didn???t make a dime off that song. I released it for free. If anything I???m paying homage."
MTV then touched base with Larry Solters, a spokesperson for The Eagles, who explained the dudes were mad because ???Frank Ocean did not merely 'sample' a portion of the Eagles' 'Hotel California'; he took the whole master track, plus the song's existing melody, and replaced the lyrics with his own. This is not creative, let alone 'intimidating.' It's illegal." Also: ???For the record, Don Henley has not threatened or instituted any legal action against Frank Ocean, although the Eagles are now considering whether they should.???
Drag. With all due respect to intellectual property laws, why are The Eagles being such dicks about this? "Release a statement expressing my admiration for Mr. Henley"? Isn't that what the song does? It'd be one thing if Ocean had taken ???Hotel California??? and then let his Odd Future pals on the track to rap about abducting Glenn Frey's children or whatever. But he made a smart, earnest song that's a boon to the original. ???Shit???s weird. Ain???t this guy rich as fuck???? pretty much says it all.
But let's not forget the positive in all this: The Don Henley is checking out Frank Ocean's stuff!
Comments
Yeah, pretty much.
I did think it was funny that Henley's people were like, "No, we're not going to sue Frank Ocean. But now that you mention it, maybe we should sue Frank Ocean...."
Almost reminds me of Larry Sellers, enemy of the Dude and, yeah, flunking social studies. It's not a stretch to see that young man growing up to spox the Eagles. Also not a stretch to see Henley deciding to sue simply out of spite -- has to be a double-digit percentage of all lawsuits in America filed on those same grounds. Ocean, meanwhile, missed a chance there on releasing a press release on Eagles Admiration -- not often does someone invite you to openly express your admiration, could have made it special!
10 years from now, Ocean has had a successful career and some teens blow up no on a mixtape that samples one of Ocean's original songs. They are set to perform the song to a crowd of 100,000 at Dobberchella. He does nothing? Maybe. I don't know, but he shouldn't be surprised that something came of this. I see his artistic addition and I appreciate that it's a mixtape and all that, but I'm not sure te Eagles are totally off base to say don't play our song in front of all of those people. You know if it was some dude on this board's music you'd all be saying "get that paper son!"
I know, they are rich as fuck. Kind of doesn't change the fact that dude is singing over their entire song.
Blast away!
Agreed!
Well, that was kind of why I said that Henley should register 100% of American Wedding at ASCAP & BMI as an unauthorised cover/adaptation. If Frank flips 'em the bird at Coachella and plays it anyway, then the performance income goes to the Eagles or into whatever dispute procedure the PROs operate in situations like that. Nobody's seriously going to rack up billable hours fighting this.
If it was a hit record and/or a legit release, it'd be a different matter. There'd be a ton of money sat on a hit, and purely on GP the rights owners wouldn't let that slide. If it was anything other than a mixtape, they'd either have tried to clear it and been refused approval, or had it approved for 100% of the new song - no way would Frank have got a piece, new lyrics or not. This way, however, the song is out there. Everyone can see what it is, there's no argument over that, but you're not going to be able to sue it out of existence. It'll end up costing more in lawyer's fees than it'll ever generate in royalties (and btw, where's Coldplay with their lawsuit?). I totally take your point, and I don't blame the Eagles for being upset about it. The dickish behaviour is in the legal threats, though. There are ways of dealing with things like this that don't involve attempts to stop the guy playing the song at a major music festival. If I was him, I'd project the lyrics onto a screen and say to the crowd, "The Eagles told me I can't sing this song at Coachella or they'll sue my ass, so y'all are gonna have to sing it for me." Can't wait to see the YouTube clip of that.
You say there are ways of dealing with this that don't involve them stopping him from performing this at a major music festival. What if that is one of their beefs? They probably think frank's song is garbage so why would they be cool with it being played for thousands. Realistically they should just accept that it exists beyond the point of going away. It won't go away in the age of the Internet. Yes, they look bad to Oceans fans, but their fans would think the opposite. I think it's just because we like Oceans music and it's easy to think fuck the Eagles.
When I was making beats, dudes used to email me versions with them rapping on top of it. They were taking my instrumental songs from a record I put out and rapping on them. They were almost all terrible. I wouldn't want people performing them, but I was sampling shit to make the beats. Totally hypocritical, but every artist is going to be protective of their creation and they have every right to.
But, someone should just tell the Eagles the reality of 2012. As you said, just work out a way to register it and make money off of it.
More money for Don Henley!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ha ha.
Ocean's song is basically a (non humorous) Weird Al track. Nobody gives Al a free pass. I don't think people would expect him to get a free pass either.
Coldplay filing suit would definitely be a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Aside from that, I can't stand this track.
Nah, not really the same thing. Weird Al never does anything without making sure it's all cleared upfront. Publishers are perfectly happy to deal with him in my experience, which isn't to say his stuff just gets waved through. People will often claim that these kinds of things in general constitute parody, which isn't strictly true. Claims like that are a cheap way of trying to dodge a straight copyright infringement suit by asserting that there's some sort of established legal and artistic basis for what you're doing. This fails to take into account the fact that you've actually avoided doing the one thing professional parodists like Weird Al always do, which is to ask permission first. The only real reason for not doing so is that you think they'll say no. Once it's out there without approval, you're more or less certain to lose all your royalties and ownership when the lawyers get involved, so you'd better hope the song's done the job of putting your name in front of an audience. Which, in this case, I guess it has.
How so? Genuine question.
I didn't get it either. Maybe this guy is a major Satriani fan.
Well, there is the Satriani incident which I know was
settled out of court. Coldplay also borrowed heavily
from the Serge Gainsbourg track La Horse for their
song God Put A Smile...
And no, not a fan of Satriani or Coldplay but I am a
Gainsbourg fan..
I got two words for Don Henley: Joe fuckin' Walsh, OK? Thanks for calling, Don. How long's your ponytail now?
Yeah, this seems totally made up, but people love to believe shit like this.
Can't find it on the Youtubes.
Thx.
Touring Europe with Coldplay this fall.
setlist full of that new new too. Man o man!
#arenas #passportstamps #sofuckinstoked"
"I love Don Henley btw...the Eagles...& John Walsh's immaculate guitar playing. -
John, Joe...who's keeping track?
And I'm with Doc: having the crowd since "American Wedding" would most definitely be the move.
Meanwhile, Don Felder is now pissed at Frank Ocean as well, and French Montana is wondering how come Don Henley doesn't want to sue him.
Here it is. The comments from the Eagles apologists at the bottom of the original soundcloud page are hilarious.
Perhaps one good thing to come out of this brouhaha is that it will stop all of the terrible American Wedding covers.