February 13, 2023 • 37 mins
In this episode - Thomas and Larry discuss what will happen in the upcoming trial of Alec Baldwin after the accidental shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins while on the set of the movie "Rust". Then they explain why Priscilla Presley - who filed a petition questioning the authenticity of a amendmended will by Lisa Marie - may remain trustee of her daughter's estate. Next they chat about Rick Astley who is suing rapper Yung Gravy for impersonating his voice from his eighties hit “Never Gonna Give You Up.” And finally they talk about the fall out after the senate hearing over the apparent monopoly of Ticketmaster/ Live Nation.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Good day, entertainment brother, Goodday, Good afternoon, entertainment brother.
The docket is full, it alwaysis, lots of cases. I was
gonna make a Neil Young reference,go Rust never slep oh this man.
Every week you just come up withit. So, lots of new developments
in the Rust case against Alec Baldwinand the cinematographer are rather the armorer in
(00:23):
that case. We'll get to thatin a minute. We've also got some
stuff in Bob and Lisa Marie estateand the future of Grace Land, and
a little blast from the eighties whichwe'll get to as well. Yeah,
ladies and gentlemen from Times Square.We are the Entertainment Brothers, and now
(00:50):
the Entertainment Brothers. Here's Larry Hackettand Thomas Valentino. Okay, welcome back.
Let's get in to it. Thomas, we have the Baldwin case.
There has now been the complaint hascome out, come forward from New Mexico
authorities and also the witness list.There's gonna be a hearing later on this
month in New Mexico where for thefirst time, prosecutors will be in court,
(01:12):
presumably spelling out the case they haveagainst him. The complaint and the
witness list are really really interesting.You and I have both read it,
and there's some things there I thinkwe should talk about. One is there
are constant references to the disgruntled crewmembers who had complained and then left the
set based on what they claimed waseverything from COVID protocols to questions about safety.
(01:34):
My guess as the prosecutors are goingto worry most about the questions about
safety. There's interviews with police thatwill no doubt be there as well.
There were also repeated references in thecomplaint to things that Baldwin had said to
police, his different stories that hetold to police, and then his subsequent
comments to the press that were usedquite frankly against him in bringing charges against
(01:55):
him. If you needed a betterexample of why you don't talk to unless
your lawyer is there, this isexhibit ay. This will be taught seriously,
no matter what happens with the verdict. This will be taught in law
schools about what not to do.We all understand the notion that Alec Baldwin
believed he didn't do anything wrong,which is why he spoke to cops,
and he wanted to get to thebottom of it, and he wanted to
solve this problem. But man,his own words came back to haunt him.
(02:20):
Yeah, yeah, right. Imean, you don't go out there
and talk without your lawyer. Imean, in fact, sometimes we've seen
people when they go on camera andtheir lawyer is right there with them,
right, And if they're not oncamera, then they're off camp, right
right. And there's a reason forthat. So a couple of things to
(02:42):
think about here, and again we'regoing to focus on Baldwin and less on
Hannah Gutier as Reid, who isthe armorer in this case, who's also
being charged with the chippensive manslaughter.Yeah. I think it's pretty obvious that
somewhere down the line their respective defensesare going to diverge, because clearly they're
going to take their lawyers are goingto represent their respective clients, and it
may not in the best interests foreither for them to kind of team up.
I don't see any way why theywould do that. Their situations are
(03:05):
different, the circumstances are different.What they did was different. In particular,
something that you have noted in thecomplaint. They are coming after a
Baldwin in two different ways. Oneis as the man who held the gun,
the actor who pulled the trigger.He says he didn't pull the trigger,
but a FBI report says there's noother way this gun went off.
So it's about his actions as anactor, his failure to really pay attention
(03:27):
in safety class. There's an allegationthat he was on the phone with his
family while he was being taught tosafety class, and that he put off
other ones. So there are hisactions as a performer in the film.
They're gonna come after it, addbut maybe concern that that's not good enough.
They're also clearly coming after him asa primary producer on the film who
was responsible for the safety and wellagain, the safety and the protection and
(03:51):
the well being of the crew,right, right, So what do you
think is the stronger case? Ithink they're both strong, okay, But
believe it or not, I thinkthat it might be liability as a producer,
and then therefore that attaches to theliability as an actor. Right all
(04:12):
right, And here's you read thiscomplaint, okay, and it's just full
of references about how it's not goingthere and saying that, hey, you
know what, you never even shouldhave tried to make this movie because you
(04:32):
didn't have enough money. But whenI read it, that's the subtext of
what they're saying, Right, thiswas chaos from the get go. Yes,
and they never had the proper controlsin place to make sure that these
kinds of things didn't happen. Thereare accounts of guns going off with dummy
dummy Browns, several accounts of thatthat go off. I'm a little bit
(04:56):
more when I was finished reading thecomplaint, I felt more positive from Baldwo.
I think you're absolutely right. Ithink that his real culpability or a
vulnerability is as a producer over theoverall set. I think the fact that
he spoke to cops about what happenedwhen he lifted the gun, I think
there's ways that he can appeal tothe jury that there's no way he should
(05:17):
be responsible for that. I alsothink there's constant reference in the complaint to
industry standards, common practices, theway you take care of guns. I
think that a good lawyer can runcircles around that. Right, we know
how Hollywood works. There are nocommon practices. There is no central repository
of how to handle a gun ona movie set. It's catches. It
(05:38):
may not be catch as catch can. But the idea that you were being
brought criminal charges of being brought againstyou because you didn't follow industry standards from
Hollywood, it's just to me thatthat seems very kind of flimsy. Nowhere
in the complaint did anybody say thatthe handling of the gun violated a law.
Right, it's all about industry standards. It was a loppy said it
(06:00):
was like it was an It wasjust not run very properly. But law,
I don't know about that, AndI think they're gonna be able to.
I think they're gonna get dueling expertsabout how to handle a gun,
and that kind of stuff may godown the drain, I really do.
There may not be a specific referenceto breaking of a law per se,
(06:21):
other than what he's being charged for. Right, but we're talking now about
the firearm. Yeah, correct,guess what they are saying that a law
was broken? And you know whatthe law is, the law of common
sense. The law of common sense. You moron to take a first rule
(06:45):
of weaponry, Okay. And Iknow this only because for a very very
short period of time in my life, there was an attempt to teach me
how to hunt, okay, Andthe first thing that I was taught is
that you never ever ever point agun at anybody, whether it's loaded or
(07:09):
not. But nobody on your huntingtrip was carrying dummy rounds. They were
carrying lives. Still, it doesn'tmatter whether the gun is wait, whoa,
whoa. Let me let me jumpin here, right, I don't
care if there's dummy rounds or not. Let's assume that the gun is not
loaded with anything. If you giveme a gun and you say to me,
(07:30):
open the gun and look at it, and I opened it up and
there's no rounds in there, Iwould still not point it at you.
Fair Enough, they're not going toconvict him on that. I think this
is a very I think this isgonna be a really, really hard case.
And what they're gonna do is muddythe waters. What are industry standards?
What are you talking about industry standards? That's not what went on there.
The armorer told him the gun wascold, or the direct the assistant
(07:54):
director told him the gun was called. He had reasons no reason to believe
the gun was live. And still, despite all of the research, the
fifteen months of investigation. We stilldon't know how or why there was live
ammunition on that set. We knowwhere it didn't come from. It didn't
come from the person who provided thedummy bullets. The cops went there and
(08:15):
they weren't there. The cops foundsix live bullets on the cart in various
places around the set. Why AndI don't think any reasonable person would have
assumed there was no live ammunition.Why would there be live ammunition in a
gun on a movie set? Okay? Why? Why? Oh? Why?
(08:35):
Brother Hackett? Am I feeling thatthis is so clear? I don't
know why. I'm getting a premonitionin my gut and I'm looking at a
jury in New Mexico. Ye,all right, and all of these things
are going to be brought up now. The fact pattern reveals a couple of
(08:56):
things which were surprising to me becauseI'm actually an Alec Baldwin fan. I
love almost every movie he was in. What I didn't know was that he
was in forty westerns or forty moviesthat involved handling of guns. Right now,
that's not in his favor. Theargument's gonna be, hey, buddy,
(09:18):
you've been there before. You shouldhave known better. He might say,
hey, buddy, I was inforty movies and I never checked the
chamber of a gun on any ofYou were destined to have something go wrong
at some point in time. Here'sanother thing. Here's another thing again this
movie. I hate to say this, but any time in life you're trying
(09:39):
to cut corners with money, evenif it's painting your house, guess what
you get. A painter comes toyour house, the guy or the woman
says, I'm gonna do it fortwenty percent less than the other guy or
woman. Right, in most casesyou wind up with a paint job that's
not quite as good. So they'retrying to cut corners. He's the producer,
(10:03):
all right. The armorer is sayingthat certain restrictions were violated. She
wasn't even in the room at thesame because of COVID. He did participate
in the safety classes. He did, but he's on the phone half to
okay, okay, well you knowwhat. That shows an attitude to a
jury. But it's not breaking thelaw. I don't need this. It's
breaking the law. It's breaking thelaw. Clinton said, what is your
(10:28):
definition of is right? What dependswhat your definition of is is my definition
of the laws. There's a lawof common sense. Oh and by the
way, there may not be astatutory law, but there's a law of
common law. Let's stipulate in yourcorrect they're in. So it's going to
come down to what Baldwin's own defenseof himself on the stand about why he
(10:52):
did what he did. I justthink that it's not a clear cut case
in the idea. Originally, Originally, I was shocked that the prosecutor even
brought these charges against him, right, so imagine that, like, imagine
where my head has been in there. Okay, So okay, what did
you learn? I was shocked too, And when I read the complaint I
(11:16):
saw nothing there that maybe go aha, they have something I hadn't thought of.
I didn't see any of that,I think, ultimately, okay,
And I asked you this in likea podcast to go or So the idea
is, if I gave you agun and said it's not loaded, do
you have a responsibility to check?But you personally, I don't care about
(11:37):
Hollywood. Again, this whole Hollywoodthing of like, well, whatever,
whatever, it could work for you, and it could work against you at
the end of the day. Ifit were me and you who is my
brother, not just in word,but in many other ways. Right,
if you gave me that gun andyou said go ahead, I'm saying,
(11:58):
wait a minute. I love you, but I don't trust you like that,
because if I make a mistake,I'm going to the slammer, and
I don't want to go to theslammer. I just think that he is
going to fall upon established procedures thatwould necessitate others being responsible for what's in
the gun. I just don't Andthis is what I said. I think
the case against him is going todiverge greatly, and probably probably immediately from
(12:20):
that of the armorer whose clear responsibilitywas making sure there was nothing in the
gun. If you came to me, you right, and I'm your attorney,
and you said to me, here'sthe fact pattern, Right, we
had a death on his sad there'sthis, and that first thing I'm gonna
do is I'm going to sue theproducers, and then in a case like
this, I'm going to sue theactor responsible. But the first move would
(12:43):
be to sue the producers. Sohe's getting hit a civil case, and
he better start dancing because one ofthese bullets may hit him. And then
you know he's going to be out. Like I said, the hearing is
later on this month. We'll bethere, we'll be talking about whatever happens
at that hearing. I honestly readthe documents and I feel mean I have.
I think, as a strategist oras someone observing this and an analyst,
(13:07):
I think the news is good forhim. I really do you disagree?
I disagree, and I'm on therecord, but hey, don't go
by me. We are leaving thedusty hills of New Mexico I don't know,
(13:33):
and heading to Memphis, Memphis.From New Mexico. We're caught a
trap. Oh I can't walk out? Oh yeah, because suspicious minds are
ruling over Memphis. What am Italking about? I am talking about Lisa
Marie Presley's will and the news thatcame out very recently that Priscilla Presley,
(13:54):
Elvis's widow and Lisa Marie's mother,is contesting changes that were made to Lisa
maries will several years ago that removedLisa Marie as the trustee over Graceland and
over what could be, according todifferent people, tens of millions of dollars
of revenues that come out of gracelandand replaced Priscilla with two of Lisa Marie's
(14:15):
children, one of whom is nowdead, so the remaining survivor is Riley
Kio, her daughter. She hastwo younger children who are not of age
yet, but they presumably will alsobecome the new trustees. According to the
new paperwork. Priscilla has said thather name that she's suspicious why her name
was spelled incorrectly in one of thecourt documents. The signatures that are there
(14:35):
do not look like the signatures ofher daughter. The document was not notarized,
which I know you as an attorney, you know fetishized notaries, and
there are questions about whether any witnesseswere there. I mean, it has
all the earmarks, you know,some kind of Southern Gothic drama. It
kind of sounds like the next episodeof Knives Out, you know, the
movie with Daniel. This could bean episode. No, all kidding aside,
(14:56):
It is a real Southern Gothic dramathat's going on here. You my
friend and my brother. When LisaMarie died, you predicted almost immediately that
something like this would happen. Tellme what your take is on all of
this. Well, first of all, I'm not a sayer or a profit
or anything like that. Right.It's a statistic, all right. So
(15:18):
if you go to talk to aprobate attorney, which is wills get probated,
okay, and you ask a probateattorney how many wills get contested when
someone passes, it's a very veryhigh percentage. I don't know the exact
percentage. I was once told bya probate attorney that it's ninety okay,
(15:41):
So imagine that even with a will, and look, yes, yes,
even with the will. That's theirony. So the idea is in one
sense, And here's the other fascinatingfact. It doesn't matter if there's potentially
a hundred million dollars, which youknow we might be talking about here,
right, or sixty thousand, Itdoesn't really matter. People can test wills
(16:07):
and guess what, folks. Thereality is that people wait for other people
to die so that when they diethey can get something, whatever it is.
And a lot of times, evenif they're left something, they're not
happy with that. And that's whengreed takes over, right, Okay,
(16:30):
And are we looking at that?Here? Are we looking at that?
Here and we might be well.You know, in the aftermath of the
initial news about Priscilla's suing and tryingto stop this change to Lisa Marie's will,
stories have emerged about the amount ofmoney Lisa Marie was getting from the
estate. There was a report inthe New York Post that she gets as
much as nine hundred thousand dollars ayear from the estate, though she does
(16:53):
nothing when it comes to the actualrunning of it. So clearly both sides
are now arming themselves to fight oneanother in the court of public opinion at
the very least about who deserves themoney and who should take over. The
finances of Bells Presley, not surprising, are somewhat complicated. My understanding is
that the family owns the home Graceland, but that Elvis Presley Enterprises, which
(17:15):
is what was running the home,was sold to authentic brands, right,
and they run it so they takea huge take up the running of the
business. They make money from theT shirts, right. But the estate
itself obviously is you know America's BuckinghamPalace, if you will, and there's
still a whole lot of value there. Have you ever been there, By
the way, no if you're not. No, it's an amazing place you
(17:36):
should go. It's a really reallybig suburban house. Yes, I wouldn't
call it a mansion. It's morelike a big house that you know is
in some you know, expensive suburb, which is what it is. Yes,
it's kind of wonderful inside. Itstill looks like something out of nineteen
seventy four or nineteen seventy seven whenElvis died. It's kind of frozen in
aspect in that way. But it'spretty cool right anyway, So we will
(17:56):
see what happens. But I meanthis clear, this is quite the shot
that she fired. She basically toldher grandkids this is fake and we're coming
after you. There have been allegationsabout all kinds of money is being squandered.
Their allegations at Lisa or we squandereda lot of money. I mean
again, this is something that isa soap opera at large, and is
only going to get soapier as timegoes on. Okay, so I have
(18:19):
to say something. Yes, right, and here's the first thing that came
to my mind. Besides the factthat when most people die and they have
a will, it gets contested,right, what you have here is it
me? Or like, okay,Lisa passes away and her mother okay,
(18:41):
her mother within seventy two hours turnsaround and contest the will or the trust
okay that she left. How doesthis play to your granddaughter? Right?
Would you be able to do thatif you said to me, okay,
(19:02):
there's let's say there's one hundred milliondollars here, but you have to potentially
damage the relationship between yourself as agrandmother, okay and your granddaughter, right,
and you're willing to do that.You're willing to do that for money?
Again, the drama or melodrama,because if there was a ten thousand
(19:22):
dollars left and there she wasn't anybody. If Lisa Marie wasn't anybody, right,
okay, and there was ten thousandon the table, would Priscilla be
doing this? Who knows? No, Yeah, I don't think so.
You know, there's again and everybodywho's going to write about this is going
to point out the fact that LisaMarie was in the house, that this
is where Elvis died, and LisaMarie was in the room next door.
(19:44):
I mean, it's just the echoesare palpable, and it remains to be
seen. What's going to happen.I mean, there will be the dry
bits that I'm gonna be fought outin court, but there's going to be
the kind of familial drama that's goingto go on too. And it's going
to keep the Presley name in thepublic. I mean, between you know,
the Jackson family, we now havethe Presley family, and it's going
to make household names of all thesepeople because it's a great, great story.
(20:08):
It's a great story, but sadand track sun fortune most great stories
are. I always look at itfrom that point of view. When you're
wrecking a family, that's not theway you want to go. People,
you don't want to go there.We really don't recall it in a trap,
you know, and people do it. It's weird. It's like they
have no hanno. They just Iwant okay, ladies and general I know,
(20:32):
I know, you wouldn't do it, all right, all right?
Moving up several decades from the nineteenfifties would come down to the nineteen eighties
and the story of the Curious Caseof Rick Astley. Rick Astley was a
(20:56):
one hit wonder those of you outthere who don't remember in nineteen eighty seven,
Rick ass had a hit song callednever Gonna Give You Up Okay the
Entertainment and it was a huge hit. And but it was the only hit
(21:18):
really that Rick Astley had. Hemay have had someone back in the UK,
but he really that was it.Here in the Univeral States. Last
year, I got named Young Gravycut a song called Betty More Money Yeah
or Betty Betty Get Money and andit was a incredible almost facsimile of the
Rick Astley hit, so much sothat despite having gotten approval to use the
(21:41):
backing track in the song Rick Assleythat that is the Young Gravey got approval.
Rick Assley is now suing, basicallysaying, it's one thing to do
an homage, but you basically aredoing a complete total imitation and any reasonable
person would think it's me singing,and it ain't. And I'm not getting
any money based on people thinking thatit's me singing. This is your meat
(22:02):
and potatoes. Brother. You havedealt with these cases repeatedly in the past.
Yeah, what's different and what's thesame about this one? Well,
first, here's what's going on,right, Because if we have to start
from you know, fundamentals, right, permission was given to use the song.
So anytime you have a situation likethis, there's two rights. Right.
(22:26):
One is to the song person whowrote the song, the words and
words, the lyrics, the melody, or more appropriately today the beat,
okay, because the beat is reallywhat drives all music today, okay,
and beats are worth tons of money. Okay, So you have that right,
(22:47):
so keep that in your left Sarahbellum or whatever it is, okay.
And then you also have the rightto the sound recording, which used
to be known as the record okay, but today since there are no records,
there's a lot of streams, Soyou have that right, okay.
Now, in this case, permissionwas granted for Gravy to use the song
(23:15):
itself, okay, not the soundrecording. And that's where Rick comes in,
so he could recreate the notes.And yes, it's a cover song
essentially, right, It's like goingon American Idol and singing a song.
Okay, it's the same thing.It's a cover song, and so he
had permission to do that. Now, from what I can tell, he
(23:38):
was actually looking for people who couldsing like Rick to imitate it, which
is fine. You can do that, okay. And what I also understand
is that he wasn't able to findanyone who he thought was close enough,
so he did it himself. Andapparently he did such a good job of
(24:03):
doing it himself that Rick stepped inand said, whoa, whoa, whoa,
Wait a minute. You can dothis, but you can't do it
where you sound exactly like me,because that's damaging to my reputation and my
image and my name and my likenessbecause people think it's me, and I
(24:26):
didn't give you permission to be me. Let me quote the man I quote
from the complaint I love quotes.In an effort to capitalize off the immense
popularity and goodwill of mister Astley,defendant's conspired to include a deliberate and nearly
indistinguishable imitation of mister Astley's voice throughoutthe song. The public could not tell
the difference. The imitation of misterAstley's voice was so successful the public believed
(24:49):
was actually mister Astley's singing. Bythe way, Betty Getting Money reached the
top thirty, reached number thirty inthe Hot one hundred last year. So
that's a hit. Yeah, that'sa hit. Oh, no, that's
a hit. Right, that's ahit. There's no doubt it's a hit.
(25:11):
Right. And okay, so youhave a question, I do not.
I'm waiting now, okay. Sothat is exactly what counsel for Rick
should be saying. Okay. Whatyou just read is what the councils should
be saying. Okay. So itcomes down to, you don't really have
(25:34):
permission to sound exactly like me,and if you sound too much like me,
I'm going to sue you. Now, why do people do this anyway?
They do it because they either don'twant to pay for the master recording,
okay, or in some cases,if they aren't given permission. And
(25:59):
I can't remember if they actually approachedRick or not, because Rick is a
partial owner of the master recording alongwith Universal Records, and whether he said
yes or no, Okay, theymight have actually approached him. But the
idea is that people either do itbecause they don't have permission or because they
want to save money. And wesee this every night every night. Just
(26:22):
watch your television and you will seea song that you might remember from your
childhood or whatever, and it soundsalmost like the original, and you say,
wait a minute, what's going onhere? This sounds a little Well,
basically, to save money, allthe advertising agencies and networks realized,
(26:44):
well, we only have to payhalf the money if we re record the
song but don't use the actual versionof the sounds. Okay, So maam
all right. So if you takethis to its extreme level, conceivably you
could buy or lease or whatever youwere doing, get rights to use the
(27:07):
entire song and and the original nineteeneighty seven recording and then reissued under your
name. And it's called sampling,and as long as you have permission to
do it. But it's sampling.Usually there's a snippet. There's limits about
how much you can use things likethat. Um, it might be a
snippet, you pay less. Butif you're paying Puffy yeah right where he
did every breath you take from thepolice right. A lot of times the
(27:30):
deal is, hey, I'm doinga new recording of your song. Yeah,
we're gonna split it fifty fifty.And by the way, the owner
of the original recording and the ownerof the original song can make maybe a
hundred grand in a case like soin this case, Rick Astley probably didn't
get anywhere near that. But basically, they took the underlying, they took
the words and musical music composition underand then Basky I teach music publishing one
(27:55):
on one at Berkeley, and thenthey aped the song correct correct. And
he's saying not and he sang,you can do this, but you can't
do it to the point where yousound exactly like me. Now we should
tell the listeners that we have acertain familiarity with the Young Gravy song because
you and I, in our oftenintermittent attempts to promote our podcast, did
what's called a sizzle Real, andthe music in the Sizzle Real is Young
(28:18):
Gravy. And when I heard aboutthis lawsuit, I thought, wow,
that's incredible. Maybe we need tochange the music. And then I thought
no, In fact, it's actuallya kind of meta reference to the kind
of stories that we cover. Ithought i'd point that out. Oh well,
it might be a busy afternoon.No, no, me. But
my broader point is this, I'veheard the song. It doesn't it sounds
a lot like let's talk about this. It sounds a lot like the Rick
(28:41):
has this song, but it's notthank you wait wait, wait, this
is any reportable person would know thisis not the original song, So what
I do is the minute. Alot of times I'm I'm sitting with my
wife at night, do you knowvery well? Right? And she gets
annoyed because the will come on andshe's kind of getting into it, and
(29:02):
then I'll say, hey, guesswhat. This isn't the original recording,
right. This is someone trying tosound like the original recording. All right.
So for me, I'm like you, I listened to three seconds of
this and I was like, thisis not an exact duplication. Now there
(29:22):
is a case there is. Actuallythis is one of the few times that
I can remember where we have precedent, right, which means that, hey,
ladies and gentlemen, there was adecision a long time ago that helps
us look at this because the theoryof law is that you can't overturn a
precedent something that's happened before, otherwiseyou just have total chaos. Okay,
(29:45):
that theory has sort of being ignoreda little bit in the modern era.
Okay, But the idea what I'mtrying to get at is that there was
a case like this with Bett Midler, and I believe it was a so
called do you want to dance.And it was an advertisement for Ford Motor
Company, and someone came on andthey sounded exactly like Bett Midler on the
(30:10):
commercial. Yes, And there wasenough confusion even for me, not that
I'm an expert, but I youknow, I know Bette Midler when I
hear her right for days, peoplewere like, it's Bet, It's not
Bet, it is Bet. Andit was that kind of a thing where
you really couldn't tell. And soBette Midler went to court and won.
Wow, she won because the personsinging sounded It's amazing how someone can sound
(30:34):
like somebody else. It is incredible. I was in a restaurant not that
long ago, and there was whatsounded like kind of seventies you know,
Carol King Eagles, Jackson Brown playingin the background, and you really had
to listen, yes, and realizedit was a kind of new form of
musaic. It was not the originalartist, and it was song after one
(30:55):
after the other after the other playingin this restaurant, and I thought,
wow, that's really interesting. Andit's clearly, I'm guessing, is a
lot cheaper than paying BMI or ASCAPsome kind of rights. Am I right?
Yes, yeah, Well you're paying, you're paying the song rights.
Go with BMI and ask Cap whatyou're trying to do is avoid paying the
record company. I see, whichyou know? Yeah? Yeah, really
really interesting. Yeah. So anddo you care to venture a guess as
(31:18):
to how this case ends? Ido, actually, and it might kind
of be a little disappointing, allright. Settlement, Yeah, settlement.
This one smells of settlement to me, because where does it go? Otherwise
you can't retract the number? Thirtygoes to a jury and you get musicologists
in and oh my god, doyou really want to do that? Right?
(31:40):
Right? Because I think the publicityRick Ashley is getting and frankly,
Young Grave you're getting right now,you cann't pay for it. Yeah,
So realize that, shake hands,settle this thing. We move on.
Yeah, that's uh. I thinkyou're right. That's my call on.
I think you're right. All right, going out, let's do one last
(32:09):
one. We have discussed the Greatticket Scandal in barodial controversy going on.
We talked about the hearings in Congresslast week or two weeks ago involving Live
Nation and ticket Master, and wetalked about how they were conflating what is
a legitimate question about whether or notTicketmaster is a monopoly and Live Nation is
(32:30):
a monopoly, and whether or notit's a mopoly that should be broken up.
And I know you think otherwise,because there are questions about if that
monopoly was broken up, would ticketprices go down? And more importantly,
conflating that with the latest scandal,which was the ticket snephu over Taylor Swift
Bright the fall, those two meare separate issues. The fact of the
(32:50):
matter is twelve million people or fourteenmillion people tried to get Taylor Swift tickets
and whether or not a monopoly wasdealing with those tickets or a mom and
pop ticket as he was doing it, twelve million people weren't going to get
tickets and that's the way things go. That's right, And addend him to
that. It's a story that wecovered in the summertime when Bruce Springsteen tickets
went on sale and there were complaintsthen about the fact that the pious price
(33:13):
tickets were four thousand dollars and Brucebeing the kind of paragon of the working
man. Whether you believe that ornot, it remains to be seen.
And how dare a guy like thiswho's always been singing about the average middle
class. Joe charged that kind ofmoney for tickets, and now I can't
get tickets. Well, there's beena development in that Backstreets, which is
a long time fansyne that has coveredall things Bruce for over forty years,
(33:36):
has put itself out of business asa protest to what Bruce Springsteen is charging
for tickets, making the claim thatthey simply cannot be the champion of the
champion of the working man if he'sgoing to charge this kind of money.
It's got a lot of attention becauseit's a delicious little story. It's not
going to make a hill of differenceto anybody. I don't think anybody that
(33:58):
I know was getting backstreets these daysanyway. But it's a commentary. And
when that's become public about this notionabout ticket prices and the Star, you
have always said that if you thinkthe Star doesn't know what they're charging for
tickets, you are sadly mistaken andyou are naive. So even if Taylor
Swift goes after Live Nation, andeven if Bruce kind of shrugs his shoulder
(34:19):
saying this is what everybody else ischarging, they know full well what's going
on? Correct, right? Doyou see any lasting damage to Bruce or
anybody else coming down the pipe?No? When it comes to ticket price,
no, no, no, nodamage to Bruce. He's Bruce.
Okay, so let's first talk aboutBruce. Okay, Okay, Bruce,
this fanzine right decides to shut down. It's like, okay, well when
(34:42):
I mean, was it thirty yearsago that you realized that he was a
billionaire or like what kind of likewhat took you so long? Right?
Okay, so you have that factor, then you have Taylor Swift. Okay,
but do you know, as ofyesterday, I believe Beyonce tickets went
on sale, and Beyonce is isbig as Bruce and Taylor, right she
is. It's a fact. Soyou know, so far there doesn't seem
(35:06):
to be any snaff foos there.Okay, and yes, well maybe no
snaff foos, but millions of peopleare not going to get tickets. But
that's the applying demand, as youso eloquently pointed the problem last less that
it's the problem in economics one Oone you're doing with two different things.
Is there a monopoly? Maybe that'snot gonna get you a Taylor Swift ticket.
No, no, no, Butthis is always This goes back to
(35:28):
anything right, supply and demand.If you want, if you're a billionaire
and you want a new boat,you know you may have to wait three
years because the demand is so great. Twenty eight years ago, Pearl Jam,
Pearl Jam went before Congress and complainedabout Ticketmaster. They did about the
amount of money Ticketmaster was making.Ticketmaster back then was not owned by Live
Nation. I think their quarterly profitsor annual profits were about seven million dollars.
(35:51):
I think now they're four billion.Hello. Obviously, the great efforts
of Pearl Jam went no or infact, that actually arguably broke up the
band because a lot of people didn'tA lot of guys in the band didn't
want to be taking on ticket Masterand they just wanted to make music.
So it's a fraud topic and afraud landscape. I'm with you, you
know. Do I think Bruce's reputationmight get dinged? I do. I
don't think anybody has gone up nowI do. I do. I think
(36:13):
a combination of that. I thinkBruce's public appearance is recently. I think
the fact that when he finally didspeak about this tickets naffu. He was
not sympathetic in the least, andI think he may be a teeny bit
tone deaf on this one. Okay. What might do damage to Bruce's reputation
I disagree a little bit is thefact that he sold his catalog for five
(36:35):
hundred million dollars. Okay. Ithink that is when people really super duper
woke up and said, wait aminute, why would you do this?
Right? It was always okay,we knew you weren't the real working class
hero, but we did think youhad a connection to your songs, which
you called your kids, and nowyou just gave your kids away. Here's
(36:55):
why I disagree with you on thatone, because nothing about the sale of
those songs is prevent think anybody fromlistening to them. They can still hear
them whenever they want. Look,all of this is basically selfish act.
I can't get tickets. I'm madat Bruce. It's all about you,
right, and that's why these thingsmatter. And if you can't get tickets
because you're getting priced out of it, yeah you feel bad about it.
(37:15):
Yeah, it's self indulgent. Youwant to call in Professor Freud here for
a little psych one oh one,maybe next to me. We gotta go.
It's been fun, it's been anenergetic it has been good. Tell
your friends, tell your neighbors,Tell Bruce, tell anybody that you know
that the Entertainment Brothers are here tryingto make sense of the world of entertainment
for you. I'm going to bebusy until next time, all right,
Good day, entertainment brother, Goodday, Good afternoon, entertainment brother.
The docket is full, it alwaysis, lots of cases. I was
gonna make a Neil Young reference,go Rust never slep oh this man.
Every week you just come up withit. So, lots of new developments
in the Rust case against Alec Baldwinand the cinematographer are rather the armorer in
(00:23):
that case. We'll get to thatin a minute. We've also got some
stuff in Bob and Lisa Marie estateand the future of Grace Land, and
a little blast from the eighties whichwe'll get to as well. Yeah,
ladies and gentlemen from Times Square.We are the Entertainment Brothers, and now
(00:50):
the Entertainment Brothers. Here's Larry Hackettand Thomas Valentino. Okay, welcome back.
Let's get in to it. Thomas, we have the Baldwin case.
There has now been the complaint hascome out, come forward from New Mexico
authorities and also the witness list.There's gonna be a hearing later on this
month in New Mexico where for thefirst time, prosecutors will be in court,
(01:12):
presumably spelling out the case they haveagainst him. The complaint and the
witness list are really really interesting.You and I have both read it,
and there's some things there I thinkwe should talk about. One is there
are constant references to the disgruntled crewmembers who had complained and then left the
set based on what they claimed waseverything from COVID protocols to questions about safety.
(01:34):
My guess as the prosecutors are goingto worry most about the questions about
safety. There's interviews with police thatwill no doubt be there as well.
There were also repeated references in thecomplaint to things that Baldwin had said to
police, his different stories that hetold to police, and then his subsequent
comments to the press that were usedquite frankly against him in bringing charges against
(01:55):
him. If you needed a betterexample of why you don't talk to unless
your lawyer is there, this isexhibit ay. This will be taught seriously,
no matter what happens with the verdict. This will be taught in law
schools about what not to do.We all understand the notion that Alec Baldwin
believed he didn't do anything wrong,which is why he spoke to cops,
and he wanted to get to thebottom of it, and he wanted to
solve this problem. But man,his own words came back to haunt him.
(02:20):
Yeah, yeah, right. Imean, you don't go out there
and talk without your lawyer. Imean, in fact, sometimes we've seen
people when they go on camera andtheir lawyer is right there with them,
right, And if they're not oncamera, then they're off camp, right
right. And there's a reason forthat. So a couple of things to
(02:42):
think about here, and again we'regoing to focus on Baldwin and less on
Hannah Gutier as Reid, who isthe armorer in this case, who's also
being charged with the chippensive manslaughter.Yeah. I think it's pretty obvious that
somewhere down the line their respective defensesare going to diverge, because clearly they're
going to take their lawyers are goingto represent their respective clients, and it
may not in the best interests foreither for them to kind of team up.
I don't see any way why theywould do that. Their situations are
(03:05):
different, the circumstances are different.What they did was different. In particular,
something that you have noted in thecomplaint. They are coming after a
Baldwin in two different ways. Oneis as the man who held the gun,
the actor who pulled the trigger.He says he didn't pull the trigger,
but a FBI report says there's noother way this gun went off.
So it's about his actions as anactor, his failure to really pay attention
(03:27):
in safety class. There's an allegationthat he was on the phone with his
family while he was being taught tosafety class, and that he put off
other ones. So there are hisactions as a performer in the film.
They're gonna come after it, addbut maybe concern that that's not good enough.
They're also clearly coming after him asa primary producer on the film who
was responsible for the safety and wellagain, the safety and the protection and
(03:51):
the well being of the crew,right, right, So what do you
think is the stronger case? Ithink they're both strong, okay, But
believe it or not, I thinkthat it might be liability as a producer,
and then therefore that attaches to theliability as an actor. Right all
(04:12):
right, And here's you read thiscomplaint, okay, and it's just full
of references about how it's not goingthere and saying that, hey, you
know what, you never even shouldhave tried to make this movie because you
(04:32):
didn't have enough money. But whenI read it, that's the subtext of
what they're saying, Right, thiswas chaos from the get go. Yes,
and they never had the proper controlsin place to make sure that these
kinds of things didn't happen. Thereare accounts of guns going off with dummy
dummy Browns, several accounts of thatthat go off. I'm a little bit
(04:56):
more when I was finished reading thecomplaint, I felt more positive from Baldwo.
I think you're absolutely right. Ithink that his real culpability or a
vulnerability is as a producer over theoverall set. I think the fact that
he spoke to cops about what happenedwhen he lifted the gun, I think
there's ways that he can appeal tothe jury that there's no way he should
(05:17):
be responsible for that. I alsothink there's constant reference in the complaint to
industry standards, common practices, theway you take care of guns. I
think that a good lawyer can runcircles around that. Right, we know
how Hollywood works. There are nocommon practices. There is no central repository
of how to handle a gun ona movie set. It's catches. It
(05:38):
may not be catch as catch can. But the idea that you were being
brought criminal charges of being brought againstyou because you didn't follow industry standards from
Hollywood, it's just to me thatthat seems very kind of flimsy. Nowhere
in the complaint did anybody say thatthe handling of the gun violated a law.
Right, it's all about industry standards. It was a loppy said it
(06:00):
was like it was an It wasjust not run very properly. But law,
I don't know about that, AndI think they're gonna be able to.
I think they're gonna get dueling expertsabout how to handle a gun,
and that kind of stuff may godown the drain, I really do.
There may not be a specific referenceto breaking of a law per se,
(06:21):
other than what he's being charged for. Right, but we're talking now about
the firearm. Yeah, correct,guess what they are saying that a law
was broken? And you know whatthe law is, the law of common
sense. The law of common sense. You moron to take a first rule
(06:45):
of weaponry, Okay. And Iknow this only because for a very very
short period of time in my life, there was an attempt to teach me
how to hunt, okay, Andthe first thing that I was taught is
that you never ever ever point agun at anybody, whether it's loaded or
(07:09):
not. But nobody on your huntingtrip was carrying dummy rounds. They were
carrying lives. Still, it doesn'tmatter whether the gun is wait, whoa,
whoa. Let me let me jumpin here, right, I don't
care if there's dummy rounds or not. Let's assume that the gun is not
loaded with anything. If you giveme a gun and you say to me,
(07:30):
open the gun and look at it, and I opened it up and
there's no rounds in there, Iwould still not point it at you.
Fair Enough, they're not going toconvict him on that. I think this
is a very I think this isgonna be a really, really hard case.
And what they're gonna do is muddythe waters. What are industry standards?
What are you talking about industry standards? That's not what went on there.
The armorer told him the gun wascold, or the direct the assistant
(07:54):
director told him the gun was called. He had reasons no reason to believe
the gun was live. And still, despite all of the research, the
fifteen months of investigation. We stilldon't know how or why there was live
ammunition on that set. We knowwhere it didn't come from. It didn't
come from the person who provided thedummy bullets. The cops went there and
(08:15):
they weren't there. The cops foundsix live bullets on the cart in various
places around the set. Why AndI don't think any reasonable person would have
assumed there was no live ammunition.Why would there be live ammunition in a
gun on a movie set? Okay? Why? Why? Oh? Why?
(08:35):
Brother Hackett? Am I feeling thatthis is so clear? I don't
know why. I'm getting a premonitionin my gut and I'm looking at a
jury in New Mexico. Ye,all right, and all of these things
are going to be brought up now. The fact pattern reveals a couple of
(08:56):
things which were surprising to me becauseI'm actually an Alec Baldwin fan. I
love almost every movie he was in. What I didn't know was that he
was in forty westerns or forty moviesthat involved handling of guns. Right now,
that's not in his favor. Theargument's gonna be, hey, buddy,
(09:18):
you've been there before. You shouldhave known better. He might say,
hey, buddy, I was inforty movies and I never checked the
chamber of a gun on any ofYou were destined to have something go wrong
at some point in time. Here'sanother thing. Here's another thing again this
movie. I hate to say this, but any time in life you're trying
(09:39):
to cut corners with money, evenif it's painting your house, guess what
you get. A painter comes toyour house, the guy or the woman
says, I'm gonna do it fortwenty percent less than the other guy or
woman. Right, in most casesyou wind up with a paint job that's
not quite as good. So they'retrying to cut corners. He's the producer,
(10:03):
all right. The armorer is sayingthat certain restrictions were violated. She
wasn't even in the room at thesame because of COVID. He did participate
in the safety classes. He did, but he's on the phone half to
okay, okay, well you knowwhat. That shows an attitude to a
jury. But it's not breaking thelaw. I don't need this. It's
breaking the law. It's breaking thelaw. Clinton said, what is your
(10:28):
definition of is right? What dependswhat your definition of is is my definition
of the laws. There's a lawof common sense. Oh and by the
way, there may not be astatutory law, but there's a law of
common law. Let's stipulate in yourcorrect they're in. So it's going to
come down to what Baldwin's own defenseof himself on the stand about why he
(10:52):
did what he did. I justthink that it's not a clear cut case
in the idea. Originally, Originally, I was shocked that the prosecutor even
brought these charges against him, right, so imagine that, like, imagine
where my head has been in there. Okay, So okay, what did
you learn? I was shocked too, And when I read the complaint I
(11:16):
saw nothing there that maybe go aha, they have something I hadn't thought of.
I didn't see any of that,I think, ultimately, okay,
And I asked you this in likea podcast to go or So the idea
is, if I gave you agun and said it's not loaded, do
you have a responsibility to check?But you personally, I don't care about
(11:37):
Hollywood. Again, this whole Hollywoodthing of like, well, whatever,
whatever, it could work for you, and it could work against you at
the end of the day. Ifit were me and you who is my
brother, not just in word,but in many other ways. Right,
if you gave me that gun andyou said go ahead, I'm saying,
(11:58):
wait a minute. I love you, but I don't trust you like that,
because if I make a mistake,I'm going to the slammer, and
I don't want to go to theslammer. I just think that he is
going to fall upon established procedures thatwould necessitate others being responsible for what's in
the gun. I just don't Andthis is what I said. I think
the case against him is going todiverge greatly, and probably probably immediately from
(12:20):
that of the armorer whose clear responsibilitywas making sure there was nothing in the
gun. If you came to me, you right, and I'm your attorney,
and you said to me, here'sthe fact pattern, Right, we
had a death on his sad there'sthis, and that first thing I'm gonna
do is I'm going to sue theproducers, and then in a case like
this, I'm going to sue theactor responsible. But the first move would
(12:43):
be to sue the producers. Sohe's getting hit a civil case, and
he better start dancing because one ofthese bullets may hit him. And then
you know he's going to be out. Like I said, the hearing is
later on this month. We'll bethere, we'll be talking about whatever happens
at that hearing. I honestly readthe documents and I feel mean I have.
I think, as a strategist oras someone observing this and an analyst,
(13:07):
I think the news is good forhim. I really do you disagree?
I disagree, and I'm on therecord, but hey, don't go
by me. We are leaving thedusty hills of New Mexico I don't know,
(13:33):
and heading to Memphis, Memphis.From New Mexico. We're caught a
trap. Oh I can't walk out? Oh yeah, because suspicious minds are
ruling over Memphis. What am Italking about? I am talking about Lisa
Marie Presley's will and the news thatcame out very recently that Priscilla Presley,
(13:54):
Elvis's widow and Lisa Marie's mother,is contesting changes that were made to Lisa
maries will several years ago that removedLisa Marie as the trustee over Graceland and
over what could be, according todifferent people, tens of millions of dollars
of revenues that come out of gracelandand replaced Priscilla with two of Lisa Marie's
(14:15):
children, one of whom is nowdead, so the remaining survivor is Riley
Kio, her daughter. She hastwo younger children who are not of age
yet, but they presumably will alsobecome the new trustees. According to the
new paperwork. Priscilla has said thather name that she's suspicious why her name
was spelled incorrectly in one of thecourt documents. The signatures that are there
(14:35):
do not look like the signatures ofher daughter. The document was not notarized,
which I know you as an attorney, you know fetishized notaries, and
there are questions about whether any witnesseswere there. I mean, it has
all the earmarks, you know,some kind of Southern Gothic drama. It
kind of sounds like the next episodeof Knives Out, you know, the
movie with Daniel. This could bean episode. No, all kidding aside,
(14:56):
It is a real Southern Gothic dramathat's going on here. You my
friend and my brother. When LisaMarie died, you predicted almost immediately that
something like this would happen. Tellme what your take is on all of
this. Well, first of all, I'm not a sayer or a profit
or anything like that. Right.It's a statistic, all right. So
(15:18):
if you go to talk to aprobate attorney, which is wills get probated,
okay, and you ask a probateattorney how many wills get contested when
someone passes, it's a very veryhigh percentage. I don't know the exact
percentage. I was once told bya probate attorney that it's ninety okay,
(15:41):
So imagine that even with a will, and look, yes, yes,
even with the will. That's theirony. So the idea is in one
sense, And here's the other fascinatingfact. It doesn't matter if there's potentially
a hundred million dollars, which youknow we might be talking about here,
right, or sixty thousand, Itdoesn't really matter. People can test wills
(16:07):
and guess what, folks. Thereality is that people wait for other people
to die so that when they diethey can get something, whatever it is.
And a lot of times, evenif they're left something, they're not
happy with that. And that's whengreed takes over, right, Okay,
(16:30):
And are we looking at that?Here? Are we looking at that?
Here and we might be well.You know, in the aftermath of the
initial news about Priscilla's suing and tryingto stop this change to Lisa Marie's will,
stories have emerged about the amount ofmoney Lisa Marie was getting from the
estate. There was a report inthe New York Post that she gets as
much as nine hundred thousand dollars ayear from the estate, though she does
(16:53):
nothing when it comes to the actualrunning of it. So clearly both sides
are now arming themselves to fight oneanother in the court of public opinion at
the very least about who deserves themoney and who should take over. The
finances of Bells Presley, not surprising, are somewhat complicated. My understanding is
that the family owns the home Graceland, but that Elvis Presley Enterprises, which
(17:15):
is what was running the home,was sold to authentic brands, right,
and they run it so they takea huge take up the running of the
business. They make money from theT shirts, right. But the estate
itself obviously is you know America's BuckinghamPalace, if you will, and there's
still a whole lot of value there. Have you ever been there, By
the way, no if you're not. No, it's an amazing place you
(17:36):
should go. It's a really reallybig suburban house. Yes, I wouldn't
call it a mansion. It's morelike a big house that you know is
in some you know, expensive suburb, which is what it is. Yes,
it's kind of wonderful inside. Itstill looks like something out of nineteen
seventy four or nineteen seventy seven whenElvis died. It's kind of frozen in
aspect in that way. But it'spretty cool right anyway, So we will
(17:56):
see what happens. But I meanthis clear, this is quite the shot
that she fired. She basically toldher grandkids this is fake and we're coming
after you. There have been allegationsabout all kinds of money is being squandered.
Their allegations at Lisa or we squandereda lot of money. I mean
again, this is something that isa soap opera at large, and is
only going to get soapier as timegoes on. Okay, so I have
(18:19):
to say something. Yes, right, and here's the first thing that came
to my mind. Besides the factthat when most people die and they have
a will, it gets contested,right, what you have here is it
me? Or like, okay,Lisa passes away and her mother okay,
(18:41):
her mother within seventy two hours turnsaround and contest the will or the trust
okay that she left. How doesthis play to your granddaughter? Right?
Would you be able to do thatif you said to me, okay,
(19:02):
there's let's say there's one hundred milliondollars here, but you have to potentially
damage the relationship between yourself as agrandmother, okay and your granddaughter, right,
and you're willing to do that.You're willing to do that for money?
Again, the drama or melodrama,because if there was a ten thousand
(19:22):
dollars left and there she wasn't anybody. If Lisa Marie wasn't anybody, right,
okay, and there was ten thousandon the table, would Priscilla be
doing this? Who knows? No, Yeah, I don't think so.
You know, there's again and everybodywho's going to write about this is going
to point out the fact that LisaMarie was in the house, that this
is where Elvis died, and LisaMarie was in the room next door.
(19:44):
I mean, it's just the echoesare palpable, and it remains to be
seen. What's going to happen.I mean, there will be the dry
bits that I'm gonna be fought outin court, but there's going to be
the kind of familial drama that's goingto go on too. And it's going
to keep the Presley name in thepublic. I mean, between you know,
the Jackson family, we now havethe Presley family, and it's going
to make household names of all thesepeople because it's a great, great story.
(20:08):
It's a great story, but sadand track sun fortune most great stories
are. I always look at itfrom that point of view. When you're
wrecking a family, that's not theway you want to go. People,
you don't want to go there.We really don't recall it in a trap,
you know, and people do it. It's weird. It's like they
have no hanno. They just Iwant okay, ladies and general I know,
(20:32):
I know, you wouldn't do it, all right, all right?
Moving up several decades from the nineteenfifties would come down to the nineteen eighties
and the story of the Curious Caseof Rick Astley. Rick Astley was a
(20:56):
one hit wonder those of you outthere who don't remember in nineteen eighty seven,
Rick ass had a hit song callednever Gonna Give You Up Okay the
Entertainment and it was a huge hit. And but it was the only hit
(21:18):
really that Rick Astley had. Hemay have had someone back in the UK,
but he really that was it.Here in the Univeral States. Last
year, I got named Young Gravycut a song called Betty More Money Yeah
or Betty Betty Get Money and andit was a incredible almost facsimile of the
Rick Astley hit, so much sothat despite having gotten approval to use the
(21:41):
backing track in the song Rick Assleythat that is the Young Gravey got approval.
Rick Assley is now suing, basicallysaying, it's one thing to do
an homage, but you basically aredoing a complete total imitation and any reasonable
person would think it's me singing,and it ain't. And I'm not getting
any money based on people thinking thatit's me singing. This is your meat
(22:02):
and potatoes. Brother. You havedealt with these cases repeatedly in the past.
Yeah, what's different and what's thesame about this one? Well,
first, here's what's going on,right, Because if we have to start
from you know, fundamentals, right, permission was given to use the song.
So anytime you have a situation likethis, there's two rights. Right.
(22:26):
One is to the song person whowrote the song, the words and
words, the lyrics, the melody, or more appropriately today the beat,
okay, because the beat is reallywhat drives all music today, okay,
and beats are worth tons of money. Okay, So you have that right,
(22:47):
so keep that in your left Sarahbellum or whatever it is, okay.
And then you also have the rightto the sound recording, which used
to be known as the record okay, but today since there are no records,
there's a lot of streams, Soyou have that right, okay.
Now, in this case, permissionwas granted for Gravy to use the song
(23:15):
itself, okay, not the soundrecording. And that's where Rick comes in,
so he could recreate the notes.And yes, it's a cover song
essentially, right, It's like goingon American Idol and singing a song.
Okay, it's the same thing.It's a cover song, and so he
had permission to do that. Now, from what I can tell, he
(23:38):
was actually looking for people who couldsing like Rick to imitate it, which
is fine. You can do that, okay. And what I also understand
is that he wasn't able to findanyone who he thought was close enough,
so he did it himself. Andapparently he did such a good job of
(24:03):
doing it himself that Rick stepped inand said, whoa, whoa, whoa,
Wait a minute. You can dothis, but you can't do it
where you sound exactly like me,because that's damaging to my reputation and my
image and my name and my likenessbecause people think it's me, and I
(24:26):
didn't give you permission to be me. Let me quote the man I quote
from the complaint I love quotes.In an effort to capitalize off the immense
popularity and goodwill of mister Astley,defendant's conspired to include a deliberate and nearly
indistinguishable imitation of mister Astley's voice throughoutthe song. The public could not tell
the difference. The imitation of misterAstley's voice was so successful the public believed
(24:49):
was actually mister Astley's singing. Bythe way, Betty Getting Money reached the
top thirty, reached number thirty inthe Hot one hundred last year. So
that's a hit. Yeah, that'sa hit. Oh, no, that's
a hit. Right, that's ahit. There's no doubt it's a hit.
(25:11):
Right. And okay, so youhave a question, I do not.
I'm waiting now, okay. Sothat is exactly what counsel for Rick
should be saying. Okay. Whatyou just read is what the councils should
be saying. Okay. So itcomes down to, you don't really have
(25:34):
permission to sound exactly like me,and if you sound too much like me,
I'm going to sue you. Now, why do people do this anyway?
They do it because they either don'twant to pay for the master recording,
okay, or in some cases,if they aren't given permission. And
(25:59):
I can't remember if they actually approachedRick or not, because Rick is a
partial owner of the master recording alongwith Universal Records, and whether he said
yes or no, Okay, theymight have actually approached him. But the
idea is that people either do itbecause they don't have permission or because they
want to save money. And wesee this every night every night. Just
(26:22):
watch your television and you will seea song that you might remember from your
childhood or whatever, and it soundsalmost like the original, and you say,
wait a minute, what's going onhere? This sounds a little Well,
basically, to save money, allthe advertising agencies and networks realized,
(26:44):
well, we only have to payhalf the money if we re record the
song but don't use the actual versionof the sounds. Okay, So maam
all right. So if you takethis to its extreme level, conceivably you
could buy or lease or whatever youwere doing, get rights to use the
(27:07):
entire song and and the original nineteeneighty seven recording and then reissued under your
name. And it's called sampling,and as long as you have permission to
do it. But it's sampling.Usually there's a snippet. There's limits about
how much you can use things likethat. Um, it might be a
snippet, you pay less. Butif you're paying Puffy yeah right where he
did every breath you take from thepolice right. A lot of times the
(27:30):
deal is, hey, I'm doinga new recording of your song. Yeah,
we're gonna split it fifty fifty.And by the way, the owner
of the original recording and the ownerof the original song can make maybe a
hundred grand in a case like soin this case, Rick Astley probably didn't
get anywhere near that. But basically, they took the underlying, they took
the words and musical music composition underand then Basky I teach music publishing one
(27:55):
on one at Berkeley, and thenthey aped the song correct correct. And
he's saying not and he sang,you can do this, but you can't
do it to the point where yousound exactly like me. Now we should
tell the listeners that we have acertain familiarity with the Young Gravy song because
you and I, in our oftenintermittent attempts to promote our podcast, did
what's called a sizzle Real, andthe music in the Sizzle Real is Young
(28:18):
Gravy. And when I heard aboutthis lawsuit, I thought, wow,
that's incredible. Maybe we need tochange the music. And then I thought
no, In fact, it's actuallya kind of meta reference to the kind
of stories that we cover. Ithought i'd point that out. Oh well,
it might be a busy afternoon.No, no, me. But
my broader point is this, I'veheard the song. It doesn't it sounds
a lot like let's talk about this. It sounds a lot like the Rick
(28:41):
has this song, but it's notthank you wait wait, wait, this
is any reportable person would know thisis not the original song, So what
I do is the minute. Alot of times I'm I'm sitting with my
wife at night, do you knowvery well? Right? And she gets
annoyed because the will come on andshe's kind of getting into it, and
(29:02):
then I'll say, hey, guesswhat. This isn't the original recording,
right. This is someone trying tosound like the original recording. All right.
So for me, I'm like you, I listened to three seconds of
this and I was like, thisis not an exact duplication. Now there
(29:22):
is a case there is. Actuallythis is one of the few times that
I can remember where we have precedent, right, which means that, hey,
ladies and gentlemen, there was adecision a long time ago that helps
us look at this because the theoryof law is that you can't overturn a
precedent something that's happened before, otherwiseyou just have total chaos. Okay,
(29:45):
that theory has sort of being ignoreda little bit in the modern era.
Okay, But the idea what I'mtrying to get at is that there was
a case like this with Bett Midler, and I believe it was a so
called do you want to dance.And it was an advertisement for Ford Motor
Company, and someone came on andthey sounded exactly like Bett Midler on the
(30:10):
commercial. Yes, And there wasenough confusion even for me, not that
I'm an expert, but I youknow, I know Bette Midler when I
hear her right for days, peoplewere like, it's Bet, It's not
Bet, it is Bet. Andit was that kind of a thing where
you really couldn't tell. And soBette Midler went to court and won.
Wow, she won because the personsinging sounded It's amazing how someone can sound
(30:34):
like somebody else. It is incredible. I was in a restaurant not that
long ago, and there was whatsounded like kind of seventies you know,
Carol King Eagles, Jackson Brown playingin the background, and you really had
to listen, yes, and realizedit was a kind of new form of
musaic. It was not the originalartist, and it was song after one
(30:55):
after the other after the other playingin this restaurant, and I thought,
wow, that's really interesting. Andit's clearly, I'm guessing, is a
lot cheaper than paying BMI or ASCAPsome kind of rights. Am I right?
Yes, yeah, Well you're paying, you're paying the song rights.
Go with BMI and ask Cap whatyou're trying to do is avoid paying the
record company. I see, whichyou know? Yeah? Yeah, really
really interesting. Yeah. So anddo you care to venture a guess as
(31:18):
to how this case ends? Ido, actually, and it might kind
of be a little disappointing, allright. Settlement, Yeah, settlement.
This one smells of settlement to me, because where does it go? Otherwise
you can't retract the number? Thirtygoes to a jury and you get musicologists
in and oh my god, doyou really want to do that? Right?
(31:40):
Right? Because I think the publicityRick Ashley is getting and frankly,
Young Grave you're getting right now,you cann't pay for it. Yeah,
So realize that, shake hands,settle this thing. We move on.
Yeah, that's uh. I thinkyou're right. That's my call on.
I think you're right. All right, going out, let's do one last
(32:09):
one. We have discussed the Greatticket Scandal in barodial controversy going on.
We talked about the hearings in Congresslast week or two weeks ago involving Live
Nation and ticket Master, and wetalked about how they were conflating what is
a legitimate question about whether or notTicketmaster is a monopoly and Live Nation is
(32:30):
a monopoly, and whether or notit's a mopoly that should be broken up.
And I know you think otherwise,because there are questions about if that
monopoly was broken up, would ticketprices go down? And more importantly,
conflating that with the latest scandal,which was the ticket snephu over Taylor Swift
Bright the fall, those two meare separate issues. The fact of the
(32:50):
matter is twelve million people or fourteenmillion people tried to get Taylor Swift tickets
and whether or not a monopoly wasdealing with those tickets or a mom and
pop ticket as he was doing it, twelve million people weren't going to get
tickets and that's the way things go. That's right, And addend him to
that. It's a story that wecovered in the summertime when Bruce Springsteen tickets
went on sale and there were complaintsthen about the fact that the pious price
(33:13):
tickets were four thousand dollars and Brucebeing the kind of paragon of the working
man. Whether you believe that ornot, it remains to be seen.
And how dare a guy like thiswho's always been singing about the average middle
class. Joe charged that kind ofmoney for tickets, and now I can't
get tickets. Well, there's beena development in that Backstreets, which is
a long time fansyne that has coveredall things Bruce for over forty years,
(33:36):
has put itself out of business asa protest to what Bruce Springsteen is charging
for tickets, making the claim thatthey simply cannot be the champion of the
champion of the working man if he'sgoing to charge this kind of money.
It's got a lot of attention becauseit's a delicious little story. It's not
going to make a hill of differenceto anybody. I don't think anybody that
(33:58):
I know was getting backstreets these daysanyway. But it's a commentary. And
when that's become public about this notionabout ticket prices and the Star, you
have always said that if you thinkthe Star doesn't know what they're charging for
tickets, you are sadly mistaken andyou are naive. So even if Taylor
Swift goes after Live Nation, andeven if Bruce kind of shrugs his shoulder
(34:19):
saying this is what everybody else ischarging, they know full well what's going
on? Correct, right? Doyou see any lasting damage to Bruce or
anybody else coming down the pipe?No? When it comes to ticket price,
no, no, no, nodamage to Bruce. He's Bruce.
Okay, so let's first talk aboutBruce. Okay, Okay, Bruce,
this fanzine right decides to shut down. It's like, okay, well when
(34:42):
I mean, was it thirty yearsago that you realized that he was a
billionaire or like what kind of likewhat took you so long? Right?
Okay, so you have that factor, then you have Taylor Swift. Okay,
but do you know, as ofyesterday, I believe Beyonce tickets went
on sale, and Beyonce is isbig as Bruce and Taylor, right she
is. It's a fact. Soyou know, so far there doesn't seem
(35:06):
to be any snaff foos there.Okay, and yes, well maybe no
snaff foos, but millions of peopleare not going to get tickets. But
that's the applying demand, as youso eloquently pointed the problem last less that
it's the problem in economics one Oone you're doing with two different things.
Is there a monopoly? Maybe that'snot gonna get you a Taylor Swift ticket.
No, no, no, Butthis is always This goes back to
(35:28):
anything right, supply and demand.If you want, if you're a billionaire
and you want a new boat,you know you may have to wait three
years because the demand is so great. Twenty eight years ago, Pearl Jam,
Pearl Jam went before Congress and complainedabout Ticketmaster. They did about the
amount of money Ticketmaster was making.Ticketmaster back then was not owned by Live
Nation. I think their quarterly profitsor annual profits were about seven million dollars.
(35:51):
I think now they're four billion.Hello. Obviously, the great efforts
of Pearl Jam went no or infact, that actually arguably broke up the
band because a lot of people didn'tA lot of guys in the band didn't
want to be taking on ticket Masterand they just wanted to make music.
So it's a fraud topic and afraud landscape. I'm with you, you
know. Do I think Bruce's reputationmight get dinged? I do. I
don't think anybody has gone up nowI do. I do. I think
(36:13):
a combination of that. I thinkBruce's public appearance is recently. I think
the fact that when he finally didspeak about this tickets naffu. He was
not sympathetic in the least, andI think he may be a teeny bit
tone deaf on this one. Okay. What might do damage to Bruce's reputation
I disagree a little bit is thefact that he sold his catalog for five
(36:35):
hundred million dollars. Okay. Ithink that is when people really super duper
woke up and said, wait aminute, why would you do this?
Right? It was always okay,we knew you weren't the real working class
hero, but we did think youhad a connection to your songs, which
you called your kids, and nowyou just gave your kids away. Here's
(36:55):
why I disagree with you on thatone, because nothing about the sale of
those songs is prevent think anybody fromlistening to them. They can still hear
them whenever they want. Look,all of this is basically selfish act.
I can't get tickets. I'm madat Bruce. It's all about you,
right, and that's why these thingsmatter. And if you can't get tickets
because you're getting priced out of it, yeah you feel bad about it.
(37:15):
Yeah, it's self indulgent. Youwant to call in Professor Freud here for
a little psych one oh one,maybe next to me. We gotta go.
It's been fun, it's been anenergetic it has been good. Tell
your friends, tell your neighbors,Tell Bruce, tell anybody that you know
that the Entertainment Brothers are here tryingto make sense of the world of entertainment
for you. I'm going to bebusy until next time, all right,
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