Sharon Osbourne Presents Rock 'n' Roll's Dodgiest Deals

For the past 40 years, THIS has been my world.

Managing Sabbath and Ozzy.

My dad did it before me,

and my kids, and now grandkids have grown up with it.

As long as I've been doing this,

the story of deals has always been about the artist versus the man.

You're basically at war with the music biz.

Ozzy's first solo record deal was with CBS in 1980.

We signed a really crap deal, and the label threw a listening party.

Ozzy comes, the man of peace, with two live doves in his pocket.

But when we get there,

the people from the record company are less than friendly.

Ozzy goes to sit on a girl's lap,

but she freezes and she pushes him away.

And I don't know why,

but he takes out the first dove and decides to put it in his mouth

and bit its head off.

The record label went nuts.

Obviously, they were disgusted.

But at the end of it, they knew who was boss, and it wasn't them.

My advice to most musicians is don't sign a record deal.

Somebody taking your money,

you're not going to want to make music, point-blank.

Exploit, written into every contract.

Scary.

You need a lawyer.

Royalties... I don't believe they pay ANY royalties.

The greatest names in our business have suffered

at the hands of unscrupulous people.

On the radio, your record was number one...

..and you're still broke!

This programme contains some strong language

Anybody who's anybody in pop has sat down in a boardroom

and been asked to sign a deal that changes their life -

be it for records, publishing, concerts, whatever.

The history of deals

is like a long-term tug-of-war

between the artist and the music biz -

the artist seeking a just reward,

and the music biz trying to limit the risk of their investment.

The first deal you usually need to get, just to be heard,

is a record deal.

Record deals are in principle one-sided -

the record label own the recordings and give you a royalty.

A bit like them owning your house and giving you a cut of the rent.

And when record deals began back in the '50s, that cut was very small.

GUITAR PLAYS BLUES

Specialty, the big label.

Art Rupe ran Specialty Records.

He was more like a businessman, strictly businessman.

# Yeah, people talk about me

# Call me all outta my name... #

I'm 99 years old.

I'll be 100 on September 5.

A record has a lot of competition, and in order to get attention,

it's good to have a good intro,

and I had never heard an introduction to a record

like Little Richard's.

He had the bee-bop-a-lupa in there from the beginning.

-That's my drum.

-HE DRUMS HIS HANDS

-Kick drum.

-HE IMITATES KICK DRUM

# Wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom...! #

That was my drum. He got that from me.

Wop bop a loo bop a lop... Kick drum, boom.

# Tutti frutti, oh rutti

# Tutti frutti, oh rutti... #

Oh, it blew my top.

# Wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom!

# I gotta girl... #

When it was played in New York, we had an immediate reaction.

We kept all the presses going.

It sold well over a million records.

# She walked to the west

# But she's the girl that I love best... #

Richie came back from California and said,

"I got a contract, look,

"my contract from Specialty Records."

We all felt good.

That was a big thing, though, then, to get a contract.

Our deal was sort of typical.

He did start out at half a cent to start with,

of each record sold.

Half a cent per record is very, very, very, very low.

Richard's deal saw roughly half of the record's 59 cents

go to the retailer,

and after deductions for packaging and breakages

and Specialty taking their cut,

he was left with this much as a royalty.

When he got out then, he talked to Fats Domino

and people like Chuck Berry

and all those people. He felt that he was being cheated.

He had to sell two records to make a penny.

-The record cost 59 cents, didn't it?

-Yeah.

There were 58 other pennies going somewhere.

Oh, boy!

I will say this, one of the reasons we attracted artists, word got out,

Rupe at Specialty is not going to pay you much,

but he'll pay you what he promises.

HE LAUGHS

And that got us a lot of artists.

I slept well at night.

Meanwhile, back in Blighty,

record sales from the early '50s to early '60s boomed.

But record labels weren't generous to artists hungry for a deal.

EMI's boss found these fresh-faced boys

were thrilled with a record deal

not much better than Little Richard's.

One old penny for every record sold at six shillings and thruppence.

But there was something The Beatles had

that gave them a chance to make

another kind of deal.

They wrote their OWN songs.

And like every other wannabe songwriter,

they headed for the world of publishing.

So now we're in Denmark Street,

and this was the publishing hub in London.

Tin Pan Alley.

And you see all the stores down here and now they're restaurants

and different things, a hairdresser.

They used to sell all the sheet music here

in these shop fronts,

and then it was pianos and guitars,

and all the publishers were above.

And years ago, my dad had an office here, but it was so long ago,

I can't remember what number.

Somehow I think it was 22 Denmark Street.

And any time you would come down this street,

it was full of writers, musicians,

and they used to come up with their songs,

go up to the publisher's office,

usually play guitar or a piano that would be in the office,

sing their songs and they would either sell them or they wouldn't.

Do you really think that's your song?

The window up there on the first floor

was the office of a very famous publisher,

Dick James Music, and in 1963,

a very important deal was signed in that office.

Dick James, in a previous life,

had sung the theme tune to TV's Robin Hood.

MUSIC: The Adventures Of Robin Hood by Carl Sigman

For their first single,

John and Paul signed their publishing

to Sir Joseph Lockwood's EMI.

The competition is absolutely terrific,

and anyone who thinks that this is an easy business

should come and have a try.

And that is exactly what Dick James did.

He stole a march on EMI.

He set up a new publishing company with John and Paul

that saw them not only make royalties from their songwriting,

but also gave them a chance to part-own their songs...

MUSIC: Please Please Me by The Beatles

..something that in that tug-of-war was unheard of.

When you signed any publishing deal in those days, the publisher,

not the artist, owned the song forever.

At that time, all other songwriters were green with envy

that John and Paul were writing their own songs,

getting them recorded,

making money from them and half owning them,

because they couldn't have deals like that.

It seemed like the golden deal.

Lennon and McCartney were gaining ground.

They already had a royalty from the record deal

and from their publishing deal,

they got another slice of royalties.

And a separate royalty every time

the song was performed on TV or radio.

And they weren't the only ones performing their songs.

# Got a good reason

# For taking the easy way out

# He was a day tripper... #

The job of a music publisher is to get other artists

to record their songs.

And I think we were pretty good at that.

Here it is. Korean-style Beatle music - verses in English,

chorus in Korean.

This results in a big increase in the royalties that they could earn.

Every time any of these songs was played on the radio,

any time a school orchestra played All My Loving,

they were in for a share of it.

# And I'll send all my loving to you

# All my loving... #

Within 18 months of its release,

Yesterday had been covered almost 450 times.

# Yesterday

# All my troubles seemed so far away... #

-That's Yesterday.

-Sounds like a fortnight!

LAUGHTER

They had success on a level that had never been imagined possible.

The Beatles had this vast sum of money

that was coming in from all angles from their songwriting,

from their record sales.

But what that meant was, they had a problem.

The moment you put your hands on it, the Government goes,

"And where's my 91%?"

# Taxman... #

In bombsite Britain, still rebuilding after the war,

tax was set at 41% basic rate,

rising to 91% for high earners.

# There's one for you

# 19 for me... #

But Dick and The Beatles came up with a way of making money tax-free,

by getting into bed with the original men in suits.

They floated their company on the stock market,

and with the proceeds, John and Paul bought grand pop-star mansions.

And they weren't the only ones splashing out.

Dick James rather ostentatiously had a Rolls-Royce.

He moved to nice big offices on New Oxford Street

above Midland Bank, which was appropriate.

And I think they looked at it and thought, "Hey, that's our money."

They were making the Let It Be film.

And they were a little bit rude to him.

There was references to him being a pig and fascist.

My father picked up the phone to Lew Grade and said,

"Maybe now's the time to sell."

He, at this point, hadn't discussed it with Lennon or McCartney.

They were extremely upset

that they were never given the opportunity of buying it themselves.

Lew Grade mounted a takeover bid.

But Paul and John couldn't agree on what to do,

and sold up to THE fat cat in a suit.

The golden deal was gone.

The deal that gave John and Paul ownership of their songs.

Ownership of pop songs,

I think people thought would be a very ephemeral source of income

and a very temporary source of income,

and, of course, it turned out

that classic pop songs are worth a fortune.

You know, I think that would be upsetting for any artist

to find that something that you felt was entirely yours

because you'd made it, wasn't yours any more.

Those songs, like property, would rocket in value.

And after being snapped up by Michael Jackson and Sony,

are now worth an estimated £500 million.

No wonder Paul is still in a tug-of-war to get them back.

-ARCHIVE:

-'Sir Paul McCartney is taking legal action against Sony

'as he fights to reclaim ownership of The Beatles' hits...'

In the early '60s,

talent like The Beatles were so young and vulnerable,

they'd often look for a heavyweight in a suit

to put on their side of the tug-of-war,

a bulldog style of manager who would take care of business.

My dad was a manager in the '60s.

-ARCHIVE:

-'For Don Arden,

'the recording session is the most testing moment...'

He was very strong.

He would fight tooth and nail for what he believed in -

many occasions physically fighting with people

over his artist.

He was larger than life.

'I think everybody wants to make money.

'If I've ever exploited anybody, it's for their own benefit.'

The Small Faces came into my dad's office.

They were lovable, naughty little boys.

He loved them, loved their personalities.

He's a fantastic guy to meet.

He offered us a deal. He said,

"We'll give you a wage of £20 a week each,

"or you can have a royalty."

So we said, "Hold on a minute.

"So the first thing is, we're just going to go out of the room

"and have a little chat, see what we want to do."

So we went out of the room, come back in and said, "We want both."

HE LAUGHS

Who could it be but... The Small Faces?

They were so fresh and so different from everything else at that time.

# Girl, hold my hand... #

My dad knew that this band were going to break huge.

He just knew.

# I've been waiting for a long, long time

# Think everything's gonna turn out fine

# Hey, hey!

# It's all right... #

This was a real personal management deal.

My dad was betting on them being huge,

and started out laying money on the band,

thinking he would get it back

from record and publishing contracts and concert fees.

Everything went through his office.

So he would find them songs, he would find the producer,

he got them signed.

He moved them all to London,

put them in a house together so they all lived together.

# Wouldn't it be nice

# To get on with me neighbours? #

He said, "I think you should all live together

"so you can write songs and stuff like that,"

so we rented a house in Pimlico.

Next door was Honor Blackman,

and she was great, because we all loved her,

cos we were always giving her wolf whistles

and saying how much we fancied her.

But I didn't realise at the time she was as old as my mum.

# Lazy Sunday afternoon

# I've got no mind to worry

# I close my eyes and drift away... #

Whatever they needed came through my dad's office.

He did everything from arranging payment for their clothes

to their hairdresser, they were driven everywhere,

to getting their clothes dry cleaned.

There was only three shops in Carnaby Street.

Because they wanted us to look good, we wanted to look good as well,

he got us an account in each three shops.

One was Toppers, one was John Stephen

and another one was called Lord John.

# I thought you'd listen to my reason... #

Don Arden, he worked us very hard.

Sometimes we'd do three gigs in one day, like, we'd play, like, Leeds,

Manchester and then Liverpool.

# Try to make you see

# How it's got to be...

# Yes, it's all right... #

Then we had a number one.

We kept saying, "Don, where's all our money?"

Because he never paid us any royalties.

And he said, "Well, I'm looking after it, don't worry about it.

"I've opened up a bank account for you,

"and I'll make sure it's all right,

"I'll look after it for you."

And he certainly did look after it - for himself.

It don't take the Brain of Britain

to work out that you've done so many gigs at X amount,

we would ask Don, "Where's the rest of the money, then?"

Cos we knew there was got to be more.

You know, because renting a flat in those days wasn't that expensive.

Hey, Steve. What are you going to do about it?

Their PARENTS came into the office.

# I want you to know that I love you, baby

# Want you to know that I care... #

The parents were like, "OK, my son's famous, where's the money?"

Don Arden said, "They've spent it all."

And they said, "What have they spent it on, then?"

They said, "Well, they were all on drugs,

"like, heroin and stuff like that."

That would take your mind off money, wouldn't it?

And, of course, all our parents were very concerned

that we were all on drugs, which we weren't.

I mean, we were, but not to the extent

that Don Arden was talking about.

Once the band are pissed off with you,

AND the parents, you've got no chance.

So The Small Faces told my father

that they were approached by another manager, Robert Stigwood.

Now, we are in Robert Stigwood's old offices now.

So my father came up here

to have a conversation about this situation with Mr Stigwood.

The conversation didn't really end well,

because at the end of the conversation,

my father dangled Mr Stigwood

out of this window here.

-ARCHIVE:

-'Now, this is the story of The Animals

'and the rock and roll scene in general.

'They made some records that enabled them to travel far...'

Don Arden was The Animals' booking agent.

Tough, threatening, fierce,

demanding.

Not a bad guy, apart from that.

My dad was only the booking agent.

The band's manager was Mike Jeffery, owner of Newcastle's Club A' Gogo,

who came up with a classic ploy of management,

the offshore bank account -

just as the band found fame with a folk song from the Deep South.

# There is a house in New Orleans

# They call the Rising Sun... #

I'd bought the record and I passed it around to the band

and said, "Learn this.

"And let's do it."

I always believed in it.

I mean, as soon as I heard this song,

I knew that if we did an electric version of it,

it would be mega.

# There is a house in New Orleans

# They call the Rising Sun

# And it's been the ruin of many of a poor boy

# And God, I know I'm one... #

I think that we were all led to believe

that if you put your signature on something...

..even if it's a scrap of toilet paper...

..it can constitute a contract.

Michael Jeffery, businessman,

as he pretended to be, said,

"Look, there's no time to get a contract together."

"And the money's coming in, quickly and hot and fast.

"You've got the biggest selling record in the universe.

"Until we can get a contract signed,

"we'll take a 45 rpm copy, and we'll sign it with a Magic Marker.

"And that will constitute...

"a contract between us."

It seemed to be the track to follow.

We didn't know it was the road to hell.

So we went for it.

# Some old piece of rag

# That's all faded and blue

# Like some old piece of rag

# That's all I am to you... #

Mike Jeffery, and his choice of creative accounting in London,

they formed a publishing deal to be administered out of the Bahamas,

where the money couldn't be touched.

The story was, they would set up this Bahamian bank account,

we'll call it Yameta.

"And when the touring's over, you can go make your movie, Eric,

"because you'll have, like, 1 million to fling around.

"At least. You know, the money's pouring in."

So I went along with that.

I always wanted to make a film.

# And I know you want to destroy

# And that's all I am to you... #

And then I met this lawyer, who said to me...

"What about the money from The Animals?

"The Rising Sun?"

He said, "It's about 4 million."

"Well, it's in the bank account in the Bahamas.

"That's what I was told."

So I went down there and the bank...

..wasn't there. It had disappeared.

It was no longer a building.

Or it never HAD been a building.

# Oh, Mother, tell your children... #

I certainly found my head spinning.

# Not to do what I have done... #

It led me to deep depression.

# Spend your lives in sin and misery

# In the House of the Rising Sun. #

I'm alive.

I'm alive. I walk into people's offices

that I haven't seen for years

and they go, "Man, you're still alive?!"

Yes.

I'm still alive.

By the end of the '60s...

-ARCHIVE:

-'In Elysian Park, Los Angeles,

'these are the hippies who've opted out of American society

'and have chosen to live by their own rules...'

..the music business changed.

I was hanging out with Hendrix.

It was not about the money, it was about creation.

People in the '60s,

the hippy flower child consciousness or just wanting to just...

..groove, right?

The music belonged to everyone.

A lot of people felt that way.

I saw every band I loved at love-ins.

They played for free.

They would just, you know, dance and groove.

# Well, I stand up next to a mountain

# And I chop it down with the edge of my hand... #

But soon a certain breed of operator

moved in to make money on the hippy culture.

And a tug-of-war started between bands and promoters

who liked to keep musicians in their place.

Out of the ticket price, they would deduct overheads like venue hire,

security, equipment, and the rest was split,

up to 65-35 between artist and promoter.

But promoters were renowned for inventing overheads

and finding other ways of increasing their profits.

One man confronted these promoters head-on,

and changed the world of live performance forever...

..the enormous Peter Grant.

I went to his house once.

"Let's go out onto the balcony and we'll get a machine gun

"and shoot bottles in the moat."

HE IMITATES MACHINE GUN

Yeah, that was great.

He was rock and roll.

-ARCHIVE:

-'What does Led Zeppelin manager Peter Grant do

'when he finds bootleg recordings of HIS group?'

I personally go and confiscate the records.

-And how do you do that?

-I just walk in and take them.

Do some of the groups employ heavies, to er...?

They're not going to get anybody heavier than me, are they?

A lot of times the bands or the singers, you know, pop singers,

they'd never even see their managers.

We travelled with them.

He was with them all the time.

Very few managers did that.

Peter Grant was out for his band.

Don't fucking talk to me. It's my bloody act.

He just had a way of dealing with people.

-HE IMITATES HIM:

-"He'd speak, you know, a little bit like this, see.

"And YOU...had better do what I'm telling you."

I'm sure that a lot of people watching this

have seen the Led Zeppelin film...

It doesn't matter, so long as there's an extra nickel

to be drained, by exploiting Led Zeppelin, it's great.

Promoters were always his pet hate.

That happened more or less every day.

You rented it. You rented it and you control it.

It isn't selling fucking pirate posters.

# Ah...

# We come from the land of the ice and snow

# From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow

# How soft your fields so green... #

I recall one incident in Chicago.

We were doing a club.

And I think the ticket price was 7.

And a roadie had spotted the promoter

outside one of the side doors

letting kids in, and just taking the money.

Peter Grant got in the back of the queue.

He didn't notice it was Peter Grant in the queue

until he saw these Zuni Indian rings

that he used to have on his fingers.

And I'll never forget, Peter said,

"I'll have that, thank you very much,"

and snatched the bag off the guy's hand,

but he was there defending his artists.

# To find a queen without a king.

# They say she plays guitar and cries and sings...#

Good evening. It really was the biggest crowd

ever assembled for a single performance

in one place in the entire history of the world.

The name of the group, Led Zeppelin.

Audiences grew so massively.

I mean, back then, even playing an arena was remarkable.

I think Peter Grant was one of the first people

to realise that the artist had a lot more power

than had previously been recognised.

You didn't have to do what promoters said.

You didn't have to give them 50%.

You could say, "No, we don't need you.

"We'll give you a lot less and get away with it."

And he did.

So they said, "OK, you can give us 90% of the net income."

Astonished a lot of people, but that was their deal.

If you wanted to book Led Zeppelin, that's what you had to pay.

And eventually, that became the model.

Zeppelin's '73 tour of America was the first to go stadium scale.

It grossed 4 million, 22 million in today's money.

# Been dazed and confused for so long, it's not true... #

But you can bet they fought for every penny

and Grant questioned every dodgy scam.

Cos seven years later, me and Ozzy

were still dealing with the same people.

It was Ozzy's solo tour of America.

And the first six weeks sold out the first day they all went on sale.

As Ozzy would go on stage, I would then go and sit with the promoter

at the box office and do the accounts for that show.

And I'm handed six weeks of advertising bills.

We sold out the first day,

so you wouldn't have taken six weeks of advertising.

These bills aren't mine.

# I know that things are going wrong for me... #

In those days, everything was cash.

So he's holding 50,000 back from us,

charging us for this advertising that he never took.

He wasn't going to give me a break.

He gets up to leave,

and I get up and then I kick him in the crotch.

And then I grabbed hold of his ear.

He didn't have hair, so I couldn't pull his hair,

so I grabbed hold of his ear,

and I kept kicking him in the crotch,

and he couldn't believe what I was doing.

You like going crazy, huh?

But I was so infuriated at the way he was treating me,

like I was some idiot and I didn't know that I was being fucked.

It's like, "Are you stupid?!"

By the late '70s, the industry was making BIG money out of rock.

Record labels gave large advance payments

to rock bands in record deals,

although in tug-of-war tradition,

they'd take it all back out of the band's royalties.

There was an established order.

Until...

-Complacent and apathetic old

-BLEEP.

And many labels refused to invest in the style of music

openly hostile to the industry.

What about bands like Rod Stewart?

-He's an old

-BLEEP.

So punk came up with its own version of a record deal...

..starting with the Buzzcocks

borrowing money from friends and family

to press their first single, and selling it straight to record shops.

Of course, making your own records was very successful,

because apart from the pressing costs,

you wrote the records, so you didn't have to pay

any publishing royalties, apart from to yourself.

You got all the money.

I think it sold 17,000 copies, in the end, over six months.

It never got in the charts, but the impact it made was huge.

It inspired so many other acts to do the same.

OK, we are at Sunset Strip,

and we are at the part of the Strip that is legendary for rock music.

Down here, we have the Rainbow Bar and Grill, the Roxy,

and right behind me here, we have the Whisky.

So many legendary bands, especially from England, played here,

and I've seen everybody from Zeppelin to Deep Purple,

Black Sabbath's first gig in LA.

And in March '79, a new wave band made their debut at the Whisky,

a trio who had a very different attitude to deals

and how to make it.

Going back to the days of The Police,

there was really not a lot of activity

from the major record companies to sign

what they called punk bands at the time.

I had nothing I could sell the group on.

I couldn't show they were selling out concerts.

Anything really that would be positive for a record company

that would substantiate a large advance.

So, I said to my brother, "Let's record an album,"

so he immediately called Sting and says, "Good news,

"we're going to record an album."

And I, as it happened, found a studio run by a doctor.

There was a good doctor, out there in Surrey somewhere,

who just got an idea that he wanted to be, to record music.

And he had an ongoing practice as a doctor

and he was kind of doing this as a hobby.

And he had made a deal that would mean...

He said, "Look, for £1,000 I'll record

"whatever you bring me for a month."

After one month, I went into the studio, listened to it,

I wasn't that impressed.

You know, we played him all the stuff that we thought he'd like.

The stuff that goes, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."

I said, "OK, guys, I mean...

"It's OK, but what else have you got?"

The engineer said, "Well, there is this one other song."

And the group said "No, no, no, don't play him that, he'll hate it.

"It's a ballad, you're going to hate it."

It was low tempo.

We were supposed to be an up-tempo, aggressive,

angry band and here was this kind of...

-..sad song.

-Finally the engineer just stuck the song on.

It was Roxanne. And I'm hearing this song and I'm thinking...

"Man, that's a game changer."

And I looked at the group and I said, "You guys have done a classic,

"it's a game changer." They all looked at me, like, shocked.

"What?! You like that?!"

I said, I said, "That's going to change everything.

"That's bigger than me."

And that prompted me to go into EMI Records the next day.

# Roxanne, you don't have to put on the red light... #

So I basically made an offer that they couldn't refuse...

# You don't have to sell your body to the night... #

..which was "I'm going to give the band to you for free."

No risk.

But I want your highest royalty.

# Walk the streets for money

# You don't care if it's wrong or if it's right

# Roxanne... #

It wasn't like, "Give us money and we will record an album

"and buy a house."

It was just, "Give us...

"We already got the album.

"Just give us royalties."

And we asked less from them,

and we also demanded that they take less from us.

So from a record company standpoint, this was, well,

"What have we got to lose?"

18% was considered high.

"If they don't sell, I don't have to pay a high royalty, anyway.

"How bad could that be?"

So the deal was an easy yes.

So we get back to England and we had a tour,

but supporting Alberto y Los Trios Paranoias

who were like a comedy group of the day.

First night of the tour, the manager is telling our manager,

"Oh, we should have charged you money to be on this tour.

"The whole tour is sold-out.

"Best tour we've ever had.

"You know, we should charge you money to be on this."

Well, it was soon revealed who sold that tour out.

We get on stage and...

-CHEERING

-It's time...FOR THE POLICE.

# So lonely

# So lonely

# So lonely... #

You know, teeny bop. We started out as a boy band.

Take a look at Sting at age 24...

Kidding me? How could that fail?

The Police got an 18% slice of that record deal.

And after their first album sold millions,

they got bigger slices of the next albums,

as they re-negotiated the deal.

And on their publishing,

they did a deal where, after seven years,

it all reverted to them.

They, unlike The Beatles, would own their own publishing.

And on the road,

the Police offered another example

of how bands could stake their financial independence

from labels and publishers.

One of the best deals in pop is the merchandise.

The T-shirt is the best product in show business.

Way better than the record.

Records are complicated.

You've got to record them, to figure out the publishing.

You've got lawyers. You've got deals.

You've got a huge corporation that has to market for you.

T-shirts, if it costs you ten bucks, you get nine out of it.

It's all money.

You know, when you play a show that's nice money, too,

but you've got to have a crew, have a tour,

you've got an agent. You know, money going everywhere.

But that T-shirt, you sell T-shirts and it's just all cash money.

We were playing these stadiums.

The merch guys are in these one-piece suits with no pockets.

Cos people are throwing cash at them,

and they're throwing T-shirts - "Here's 10,

"there's a T-shirt, here's 20 bucks, there's two shirts..."

And it was just like...

And the money's all going into these trash bins.

And so when we'd leave the show, the trash bins all...

You know, they'd tie up the thing and throw them on the plane.

And so as we fly out,

we're there, and we empty the bags of cash

and it was like Ebenezer Scrooge's money, you know,

it's a green hail and it's just like we're throwing the money around,

and I've got this on film.

It's snowing money.

We're at the merchandising booth,

and we are at one of the last shows of Black Sabbath at the NEC.

Merchandising today is so important to every touring band.

And it's amazing how it has evolved over the years.

The Beatles were one of the first

to have a whole range of merchandise,

although their manufacturers took most of the profit.

And nowadays, everyone wants a cut of the merchandise.

One thing is, that when you sell merchandise,

especially a venue like this,

the price is higher than what you would buy in a store

because the venue will charge you anything from 35% commission

for everything you sell.

And that's why they're overpriced, but at the same time too,

the fan wants to get a memento from that gig, that night.

You will remember where you were,

what was going on when you bought that shirt.

The best marketing you can ever have for any artist

is for people walking around the world,

wearing your shirt with your name on it.

There's nothing like it.

Speaking of advertising,

for decades, big brands approached songwriters

with big-money deals to use their music in ads.

With limited success.

# Ooh, I bet you're wondering how I knew... #

The reality of the music business had been,

it was sort of a standard rule that you don't sell out to the man,

basically, the big corporations.

# ..The two of us guys

# You know I love you more... #

You saw companies like Levi's would do commercials

but they were always old, known songs.

You never saw a new song being used in a commercial.

And you never saw a credible act

allowing its music to be used in a commercial sense,

because people would say, "Oh, you're selling out."

We were precious about ourselves and the way we saw ourselves as artists.

And I do remember distinctly that my buddy Stingo

was offered a lot of money

from a deodorant company for Don't Stand So Close To Me,

as you can imagine.

The synergy there... He said "No."

But by the late '80s,

with artists starting to own their own songs,

some took the money...

Go ahead.

Make a wish.

..as in Madonna's 5-million deal to license

Like A Prayer for Pepsi.

# When you call my name

# It's like a little prayer... #

But most artists still thought twice.

On the classic case, Blue Monday, New Order.

Bernard Sumner had a banner put up in front of him in the studio

that said "200,000."

And he had to look at it, to make him sing

the different line that was the tweak of Blue Monday.

-MELODY OF BLUE MONDAY:

-# When you're drinking in the sunshine

# Sunkist is the one... #

But there was one person who would take music licensing to a new place.

And he came from the most unlikely corner of the music scene.

When I was working on the album Play, to all extents and purposes

my career had kind of come to an end.

By the end of the '90s, I had sort of become a has-been.

I thought maybe I would release it,

it would disappear into obscurity,

and I would go back to school and get my doctorate in philosophy,

and go teach community college.

# Oh Lordy, trouble so hard... #

I had made the record in my bedroom,

with a few thousand dollars' worth of equipment.

And it featured vocals

from long dead African-American singers.

# ..Don't nobody know my troubles but God... #

So it was not a recipe for success.

Especially...

It was the late '90s when Limp Bizkit and Britney

and Backstreet Boys were kings and queens.

When Play was released, no-one cared.

I wasn't even getting bad reviews, I was getting no reviews.

The breakthrough was when Danny Boyle

licensed the song Porcelain for The Beach...

You hear that? You hear that?

That was when it felt like the record

went from being an obscure failure...

..to a less obscure failure.

Like, all of a sudden it was being included

in all these end of year journalist compilations,

like Best Of '99, and suddenly,

it just reached a broader audience.

Through licensing, Play became successful.

It was this leapfrogging thing where it would get licensed...

# You'd better leave that woman alone... #

..which would help it to reach a bigger audience...

'It's the place where chocolate comes from.'

..which would then enable it to get licensed...

..which enabled it to reach a bigger audience...

'Lease a new Pathfinder SE for just 369 a month.'

And then into 2000,

it suddenly became a number one record around the world,

ten months after it had been released.

I became the poster-child whipping-boy for licensing.

I mean, I remember when I released the follow-up album to Play,

which was called 18, the NME,

which has never really been very fond of me,

didn't review the record,

they just wrote an article about how terrible I was for licensing music.

And then it became this almost, like,

exorcism of, like, comrade Trotsky,

like erasing me from things.

It got to the point where I was headlining Glastonbury...

..and NME didn't mention that I was playing.

It even had an article, Bald Performers At Glastonbury,

and I wasn't listed, and I was the headliner on the main stage.

Because they hated me that much.

Go!

It's 2017 now.

To put it in this context,

when every musician is bending over backwards to license their music,

I just had the misfortune of doing it very visibly

and sort of at the beginning.

Moby was the first to license all the tracks on one album for ads

or film, over the years, making an estimated 10 million from licensing.

And Moby's success came in a decade

that saw music sales hit an all-time high.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Have a wonderful night!

Good night!

But of course, artists weren't the ones making the really big money.

The '90s was a boom time for the business,

and a lot of it was about the rise of this '80s invention,

which meant you had to buy your favourite albums

all over again.

Ka-ching!

This new long-playing record - all the same songs,

but a fraction of the size.

-JOHN CLEESE:

-'Take the new Compact Disc.

'One hour of Mozart out of a beer mat.'

Here was an opportunity for record companies

to actually put the price point wherever they felt like it.

-ARCHIVE:

-'It's dust-proof, scratch-proof,

'digitally recorded, read by a laser...'

I think, at that point, the vinyl album was £7.95.

But the CD, record companies had started to peg it at around £15,

on the basis of this being new, shiny technology.

It is really durable.

I'm now going to make a digital jam sandwich.

Who wants to have the first bite?

-You?

-Me!

-Go on...

I'm a historian,

and I go around interviewing people in the music business,

and I was talking to a senior lawyer from EMI a couple of years ago,

now retired, who volunteered to me,

because I wasn't even asking the question,

that record companies absolutely fleeced the public.

They were just lining the pockets of record companies.

There was money like you wouldn't believe.

The way record executives lived, the amounts of money they were earning,

the yearly bonuses they were all on, their expense accounts,

their chauffeurs, the way they travelled, private planes,

it was a whole different world then,

and they would all go bidding for a band.

They'd outbid each other just to see

who could come up with the most money.

In those days it was like, "Who's got the biggest dick?"

And they didn't care whether the artist sold or not,

it was like, "Well, we beat you." It was personal.

# What's the frequency, Kenneth?

# Is your Benzedrine, uh-huh... #

The '90s saw record companies advance, not tens of thousands,

but millions to sign big acts.

Like financial institutions,

labels were trying to increase the value of their brand,

even if they were paying more than ever before.

When a band became successful,

it was a safer bet to buy a known commodity,

and pay through the nose for it,

than it was an unknown commodity,

because let's not forget that on a good day,

nine out of ten signings were complete failures,

and the record company lost all the money.

# I never understood the frequency... #

So when you had an act like REM, what a bonanza.

I can buy this act, I pay the money,

I can almost bank what's going to happen.

It's a much safer risk than signing Joe Blow

who nobody's ever heard of,

and who has a 90% chance of failure.

But at the end of the decade,

something happened that record companies didn't see coming.

CD sales were already falling.

It's all because of internet technology called MP3.

They were getting hit with piracy, and so they were worried.

Suddenly they realised all that money

that they invested was going to make artists money

in other areas, and they weren't sharing it.

And sales fell.

In the old tug-of-war,

record companies started to look at other ways

of making money out of artists,

and floated the concept of the 360 deal,

where labels would take a share of other areas of artist's income.

You know what a 360 deal is?

We get a percentage of 360 degrees of what you do.

So there's only 360 degrees, so we get a percentage of everything.

So, if I go on the road,

the record label who actually put my record out,

that helped me get on the road,

is now collecting a percentage of my tour royalties.

That never happened in the past.

Typically, a record company will expect anything

from 25% of live revenue,

for instance, for merchandise.

Robbie Williams' 2002 deal looked very generous on the label's part.

What I remember is him walking outside the office here

and saying something like, "I'm rich beyond my wildest dreams".

I'm rich, beyond my wildest dreams!

The deal was reportedly worth 80 million, I think, wasn't it?

I think that was...

Somebody fed that out, I've no idea who.

But EMI's 80 million was offset by them

getting a share of the live income

of an artist who was THIS big.

And, of course, Robbie Williams held the record

for selling more tickets in a week than anyone.

I think it was 1.6 million tickets in a week,

which was pretty stunning.

# Hell is gone and heaven's here

# There's nothing left for you to fear

# Shake your ass, come over here

# Now scream... #

The industry has not become more favourable for the artist.

They developed just another form of ownership.

And ownership is what the record industry was built on

back from the '50s on.

Not much has changed, in other words.

'You don't have zero problems, big fella.'

These days, there is a new breed of young musician

who is beginning to think, "Do I need a deal at all?

"Do I need all that hassle and heartbreak?

"I can do this on my own."

# If one more label try to stop me

# It's gon' be some dreadhead niggas in ya lobby, huh huh

# You don't want no problem, want no problem with me, bih...! #

Chance the Rapper won multiple Grammys this year,

and yet he has no deal.

And he isn't the only rapper doing it.

Rap is pointing the way forward,

and maybe that is to do with where rap has come from.

You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge.

I've seen a lot of stories about a lot of artists over the years,

and it's like, we're not the first to get took.

# Straight Outta Compton

# It's a crazy brother named Ice Cube

# From the stupid dope gang with an attitude... #

Straight Outta Compton debuted Billboard pop chart,

so this is not a rap chart.

It was the biggest thing of all time, and we all knew it.

All my friends sold a million records.

Can you say all your friends sold a million anything?

'Yo, man, that's a lot of brothers out there flaking and perpetrating

'but scared to kick reality.'

In '87...

'Oh, yeah, right about now...'

..NWA were just a collection of South Central neighbourhood rappers.

Right before I joined a group, I didn't have a job.

You know, I was 17,

contemplating going into the army at the beginner stages,

trying to make it. I was like the best.

At that time, we didn't know we were going to blow up.

We just had dreams to blow up.

# I'm expressing with my full capabilities

# And now I'm living in correctional facilities

# Cos some don't agree with how I do this

# I get straight, meditate like a Buddhist... #

Their potential was spotted by veteran rock manager Jerry Heller.

Jerry engineered their success

by introducing them to a national distributor,

as portrayed in the 2015 film...

Ryan runs Priority Records and he wants to sign you.

What do you say, fellas? Do you want to go and make a record?

-ALL:

-Yeah!

But the group's everyday dealings were still with Ruthless Records,

part-owned by Jerry.

There was Priority,

which was the parent company and then there was Ruthless,

which was the subsidiary, but where the artists were.

So they had a distribution deal with Priority.

So the big cheque comes to Priority, cheque goes to...

..Ruthless, cheque goes to everybody else, right?

So, when it got to Ruthless is when it got murky.

You understand what I mean?

Once we started making the music and the music started selling,

that's when we started thinking about

the business aspects of everything.

# All the ladies

-# All the ladies

-If you're good to go

# Come on, say, ow... #

And we were selling out arenas at that time.

We hadn't seen any money.

Maybe like a couple of Gs here, a couple of Gs there.

You know, you can't do nothing with that.

# The rules no longer apply... #

The fact that, not only did Jerry Heller manage the group,

his relative was leasing him the cars,

his other relative was leasing him the house,

it was a whole lot of Hellers.

At one time, I tried to hire, like, my own lawyers, my own accountants.

You know, Jerry found out.

Next thing I know, he'd taken them out to dinner, and all that,

trying to get them in his pocket, and I was like, "Man, that sucks."

It was just all messed up over there.

And as a group who wrote their own material,

and for other artists on Ruthless,

there was the question of their publishing.

Straight Outta Compton, we don't own any publishing, nobody in the group,

so we see no publishing from that.

Somebody is seeing it, just not us.

You want to rub it in on me?

The chaos of NWA's deals split the group.

SHOTGUN FIRES

But away from Jerry...

..Ice Cube became a rap superstar and A-List actor.

And Dre changed the face of America, producing Snoop and Eminem.

# Excuse me, my name is... #

And made hundreds of millions from Beats Electronic.

Dre set an alpha example of business-minded independence.

# I baited my whip in the vid like a prick

# Now I'm carless Cold, cold

# Now it's a Uber ting

# I've still got this regardless Cold... #

Nowadays, in a tech-minded world,

urban has multiple cases, from Chance...

..to Skepta,

to Stormzy, of artists rebelling against traditional deals.

Starting with the record deal.

The advice I would give somebody getting a deal today...

Just don't sign a record deal.

Say no.

You don't need to have a record deal.

Labels are in a slight panic.

For a long time, they had a monopoly on presenting music to the public,

and that's no longer the case.

There's only two things that matter in our industry.

It's the artist and the fan.

You can promote yourself.

All these different social media sites.

You could record something today,

put it on the same day and start selling it.

You know, back then, you had to wait to have them pressed,

they had to be shipped. It's a totally different game today.

This is a completely different ball game.

This new approach is all about ownership.

Think about where we've come from.

Little Richard sold his birthright for half a cent a record,

and now you can own your recordings and license them to a label

for distribution, and own your publishing

and get a publisher to collect

royalties for a small cut.

If Stormzy and Chance can do it,

and make big money from live and merchandise,

is this the future?

Could this be the end of the war -

the dawn of the new deal...

or the no deal?

Partnership, not ownership.