HW/NIK: Question for Messrs Anderson & Turner

[Jon Jarrett]

On Fri, 17 Jan 2003, Keith Barton wrote:

> Just been reading at the Nik interview on www.starfarer.net
>
> Nik says:
>
> "The only album which I have had any thing to do was 'Bring Me The Head
> Of Yuri Gargarin' on Demi Monde [Dave Anderson's label]."
>
> and Dave Anderson is playing bass with spaceritual.net
>
> Perhaps somebody, if they get the opportunity, can ask them at the shows
> why the market is being saturated with the same product & who's getting
> the royalties from these releases?

        <snip>

        That's really quite interesting, and the possibilities are, well,
at least twofold. The Starfarer page's list of the Bring Me The Head of
Dave Anderson albums says _Yuri_ first emerged 1985 on Demi Monde. As did,
of course, ICU's _New Anatomy_, featuring Nik and Dave Anderson among
others. So OK there's no mystery about how the tapes got to Dave Anderson,
though more about why he owns them and not Nik, perhaps Nik didn't have
his business head on that day. I'd love to know, however, whether _Yuri_
came out before or after Dave Anderson released the ICU album without
paying any of the rest of the group after they'd fired him as bass
player. That might illuminate whether or not it's likely that Nik got
anything or gets anything from these sales. My guess is that he sold the
tapes clean and free then and Dave Anderson doesn't have to pay him
anything, and screwed him as much as the rest of ICU if not more so, but
my guess is also that Nik doesn't care enough to let it matter and
probably doesn't mind what happens to Hawkwind's market profile. The
alternative is that Nik is also the villain of the piece, in which case he
should be richer than he appears to be...

        Either way, again, it's a live recording not owned by the
band, and there are therefore no royalties to be paid. That might
be wrong but it is legal. The money comes from licensing the use
of the tapes, or as it presumably now is, the masters. I suppose
it's possible Nik was paid for the first but not the second? Thoughts,
anyway, yours,
               Jon

ObCD: Scorched Earth - _Fed To Your Head_
--
"I recognise that I have transgressed many of the precepts of the divine
law, and that I am subjected by various vices and iniquities, disobedient
to the words of the divine mystery brought unto me and a worshipper of the
delights of this military age." Marquis Borrell of Barcelona, 955 A.D.

             (Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College London)