There's No Dirtier Business Than Showbusiness And Now There's a Book That Tells It All. Don Perretta Meets Simon Garfield, the Man That Dug Up The Dirt.

It's often said that rock 'n' roll is a dirty business, but it's very rare that people know just exactly how dirty it is. It's an industry where the potential rewards are huge, and wherever there's money there's always going to be somebody who is quite willing to take it from you. Wham!, Elton John and the Sex Pistols are the best known of many who have been in the courts during the last couple of years, all suing over contracts that syphoned off large cuts of their earnings to other people.

Expensive Habits, published this month by Faber and Faber, shows how vast a minefield the music business is for the young and unsuspecting (who are always the victims), and that the scams operate across the board, Management, publishing, recording, concert promotion — sharp operators are at work all the time. The book scrutinises many of the cases involving the more prominent names of the last 25 years — from the Beatles, Kinks, Who and Fleetwood Mac from the Sixties, right up to Wham! and Hazel O'Connor — all of whom had huge chunks bitten out of them by some of the biggest sharks in the water. People signed things because they didn't know any better, and didn't talk to anybody who did.

The book was commissioned by Matthew Evans, MD of Faber, after he read an article by Simon Garfield about the Wham! case in Time Out magazine (where Garfield still works in the music section) in June 1984. Expensive Habits is a major achievement. Researched and written in under a year, Garfield sorted through stacks of legal documents and contracts of alarming complexity and incomprehensible terminology and made sense of it all. What could have been a mind-numbing wad of legalese is a good, if at times depressing, read.

The book's subtitled 'The Dark Side Of The Music Industry', and the picture that is painted is a very black one indeed, but Garfield maintains that it wasn't a depressing book to work on.

'It was immensely interesting to write, first of all because when I started it I knew very little about the workings of the music biz. I knew a small bit about management and publishing, but I'd obviously had no opportunity to delve into it in any sort of depth at all. But it wasn't depressing to write, the more gory the details are, the more awful the deals that people sign, then the better they look in print. I was caught halfway between thinking 'poor sod' and 'wow this is great stuff, what suckers.' But I was conscious as well that things have improved, that most of the really awful deals happened either in the late Sixties or early Seventies. So you look back and think it was bad then and it's not as bad now.'

Some of the deals that were signed in the Sixties defy belief. The case involving Fleetwood Mac is a fine example of a music publishing deal that, well, takes the piss. During the early Seventies Christine McVie and Bob Welch emerged as the group's major songwriters and they signed a deal almost too awful to contemplate. By today's standards, some of the clauses are harsh (5 year deal, extendable to 10 but only at the publisher's option; a 50/50 royalty split) but roughly standard for the time. However, on top of the usual clauses, McVie was contracted to write at least one song a month, for which she would receive one shilling (5p), and after that the publisher was not bound in any way to do anything with the song, he could even reject it. He could even give the copyright to any third party without the writer's consent. So, for 5p he could do whatever he liked with a song and do nothing in return.

The fact of the matter is that deals like this were not uncommon at the time, and people signed them with no qualms whatsoever. Is it just naivety?

'Up to a point yes. I think had I been in that position, I would have done exactly the same thing. Had I been eighteen, had I been Elton John, had I thought I was desperate to get out of a job as a tea boy or post boy, it's just the same old thing, if one person is interested in you when no one else is, then you're not going to turn them down. I feel more sorry for the people who were totally cheated and never even made it to the courts. There must have been hundreds of those who just signed such an awful deal that their career was so ruined by a crooked publisher or record company that simply wouldn't push their work.

The obvious conclusion to make here is that you shouldn't do anything without consulting a lawyer. Garfield himself, with so many legal documents to sift through in his research, sought the guidance of some of the leading music business lawyers, as well as getting a lawyer to check his own contract for the writing of the book.

'We said at the time wouldn't it be a wonderful gag if I was doing this book about how everyone got done and then I got done myself, so I got it totally checked out and hardly anything was changed. As for my research, of the ten or twelve major rip-offs in the book, when I started I knew of about half of them, could get the material on about half of those, and the rest was done by talking to people. I spoke to three of four lawyers who were only too happy to point me in the right direction.'

It turns out that the lawyers, who cost around £150 an hour to hire, were more willing to help if it would make their jobs any easier.

They were helpful because they wanted to see a book that actually set out how various people were done in the past and the basic pitfalls. Because obviously most people who go in to see them have no idea, all they know is how to tune their guitars. So they were helpful, and obviously it was also a good ego boost for them because they could spout on about all these things.'

Lawyers have become an increasingly important component in the workings of the music industry, and as the courts have tended to favour the artists in recent cases, recording contracts all now have a magic condition that you must seek 'independent legal advice', to cover themselves in the event of a court case. But even though, of necessity, things have improved since the bad days of the '60s and '70s, even now if people think they can rip you off, they will. Budding artists are not presented immediately with a fair contact, the onus is always on them to take it to a legal adviser to alter it as necessary. And a record company will always know if you have seen a lawyer because the amounts of money involved will have gone up by at least 300%. It's almost as if the Record Companies and lawyers are in collusion, that bad contracts are always drafted initially so that people have to see a lawyer.

'Worst of all is that the people who benefit more than anyone else are the lawyers. The awful thing is that bands do have to invest a certain amount of money, not only on demo tapes, gear and all that, but also on getting good advice, because otherwise there's no way they won't get eaten alive. And for a sort of average long term recording deal, a lawyer will cost an artist around two grand. Two grand for a few hour's advice.'

And there's nowhere else?

'Apart from the Musician's Union, who have a legal adviser, and a few people go to Equity, there isn't anywhere you can go for advice. So you turn to the lawyers, but even then, when you are given a contract, quite often the label will give a list of their favourite 'independent' lawyers that you should go see. And these people, say the head of CBS or WEA will go out to lunch regularly with the head of Russell's or Clinton's (Ed's Note — two leading music business law firms). In a way that's good because the lawyers know their opposition and know just how much they can ask for in a contract, but you can't help wondering about their 'independence.' But without them you could easily find yourself in the A&R office of a major company and the man will ask 'what sort of money do you want?' and you'll say I don't know, what's the norm?' and he'll says 'about five grand, but for you I'll make it ten'. And then you find out it's normally thirty grand. There's no doubt that a record company will try it on.'

The most frightening aspects is that the rip offs come at you from all sides, potentially from whoever you happen to be dealing with.

'I think the worst thing is to think that you can trust your manager and let him or her do all your deals for you. That's really bad news and what a lot of people fall into. You know they think 'this manager's been around, he knows everyone, let him deal with the paperwork and we'll deal with the chords.' You have to have your management deal checked just as thoroughly, if not more so. Otherwise you could find yourself, like Joan Armatrading, paying money to an ex-manager four years after he was no longer involved.'

Expensive Habits pulls no punches. It names names and gives a clear picture of how the scams were worked, how they were discovered and how they were resolved. Because of the seriousness of the some of the accusations (bribery, theft, embezzlement, violence), the book was read by a specialist lawyer called a libel reader to make sure everything could be substantiated just in case they have to go to court. For this reason several pages had to be cut from the original manuscript before it could be cleared for publication. (Although they are hoping for 'a small writ from a really major pop star' and all the ensuing publicity. It would do wonders for the sales of the book). But even before that there were some stories that were far too hot too handle.

'There was stuff I left out because I knew that I couldn't hope to get away with it, great tales of people holding guys who owe them cash out of windows, forty floors up, by their heels; drug bribes and so on. Fifteen years ago, chart positions could be raised by five points if you put two grand in a brown paper bag on a Friday afternoon. I have people who will swear to me it happened but who have no evidence, so I couldn't use it.'

So you have been warned. Some of the biggest names in pop music have been ripped off for countless millions, let alone the struggling artists who may never, and this is really the biggest tragedy of all here, earn enough money to make it into the courts to sue for what's rightfully their's. You have to take every precaution you can.

'There's no way you can read a book like mine and say 'right I kow everything, I can sign a deal'. It's obviously not supposed to be some sort of primitive guide to the industry, it's just supposed to be very much of a learning by example and good anecdotes and good stories about how people were done. The only really important thing is that you get the best legal advice you can afford and make sure he goes through everything you have to sign. Hopefully, if the books does have any beneficial effects, it'll teach people just what can happen to them if they trust anyone blindly.'