“Bill Murray Faces Legal Threat From Doobie Brothers – A lawyer for the band demands that the actor pay for using the song ‘Listen to the Music’ in an ad for his William Murray golf wear. https://nyti.ms/3cwuNiH
What kind of crazy, fucked-up world do we live in where a letter from a lawyer gains more traction than the work of almost every musician?
One in which said letter evidences creativity that the music does not.
Google shows 1,250 results when I search on “paterno doobie.” Furthermore, my e-mail inbox and iMessage threads have been going wild since yesterday. I didn’t get this much reaction when Bruce Springsteen released new music, I don’t get this much reaction when ANYBODY releases new music!
Now if you know Peter Paterno you know two things. One, he actually is a music fan, a big one. And two, he’s a real lawyer. Too many music lawyers are actually schmoozing business people masquerading as attorneys. And if you think you can’t go against Trump, they consider themselves part of a club, which protects each other. The acts come and go, but they and those who are ultimately responsible for their revenues, labels much less these days, sustain. But Peter will give you the legal theory, and he’ll stand up to anybody. He’s one of a kind. HE’S GOT PERSONALITY!
Oh, I’m not saying he’s dancing on the table being the life of the party, just that he’s in color when too many are in black and white. And he’ll challenge precepts. Whether it be those in the music business or traffic court. Too many lawyers are by the book, not Peter. Which is why after his tenure at Hollywood Records he went back to practicing law and his clients came back, which has never happened before. Yes, if you know your music business history especially in the seventies, labels were run by lawyers. They’d leave for the big check and after their tenure was over, and it always comes to an end, if they were lucky they could get a gig at a big firm and fade away. The clients did not come back, they had new people, and their old attorney was not THAT good, but that is not Peter.
But this isn’t about Peter’s client roster, which includes everybody from Dr. Dre to Metallica, but the nature of our business.
Too many are unwilling to rock the boat. Both creatively and in business. They get locked into a mind-set and then they repeat it endlessly. And we haven’t had a breakthrough sound in decades. Used to be something would come along and wipe out what was stale, the way grunge killed hair bands and their ballads, but not today. It’s possible to ignore new music and be quite comfortable, whereas music, its acquisition and listening to it, was religion. You didn’t go to the gig to shoot selfies, you went to meld your mind with the band!
If you can teach creativity at all, it’s when kids are very young. Then again, our educational system beats innovation right out of children. It teaches them to conform, by rote, schools teach to the test. Isn’t it funny that some of our greatest legends dropped out of college? I went to college, it didn’t set our minds free, if anything it taught us to respect our elders and do what was expected of us. And if you tested the limits, even got close to the rails, even if you were doing the work well, you were blackballed. I know from experience.
And I went to law school where they teach you to write in a way the rest of the world cannot understand. The gobbledygook you see in record contracts. They could be written in plain English, but then lawyers would not get paid as much and labels would have less elbow room to screw artists. Ever since Watergate no one respects attorneys, no one! And even the best are compromised, like David Boies with both Harvey Weinstein and Theranos.
If you’re not willing to challenge convention, if you’re not willing to hang it out there, don’t even start in the music business, we don’t need you. Which is why some of the most legendary songs of all time were written in a matter of minutes and Berklee and other schools training musicians rarely turn out hitmakers, these schools teach you to be members of the group and conform, when true artists are individuals with an edge. Come on, those you respect, like John Lennon, also had reputations for being assholes…maybe they just couldn’t suffer fools.
Paterno injects humor into something that’s always dry. And it’s not only one line, it flows throughout the letter. And he insults the product when it’s got nothing to do with the subject matter at hand. Murray is a comedian and he knows he can’t keep a straight face. And the dirty little secret of high level business is lawyer letters are sent all the time, usually sledgehammers, and oftentimes the recipients ignore them, if anything they’re laughing at the money and force spent in delivering them. But Paterno is showing Murray that they come from the same irreverent background, and zetzing him to the point where I’m sure Murray is ashamed.
What most people don’t know about the law is it’s all about the end result. I certainly didn’t learn this in school, but from a sole practitioner. You don’t sue someone who can’t pay and you don’t waste money setting up your lawsuit if you can settle it easily. And it’s almost always about settling. It’s only the deep-pocketed assholes with attorneys on retainer who fight you to the end.
As for copyright infringement? WHAT WAS BILL MURRAY THINKING? There’s no excuse. You can’t use his likeness or anything related to him without paying. He can try to blame someone in the chain, but it doesn’t ring true. As for all that e-mail I get from business owners pissed that performing rights associations are charging them to play music in their establishment, just one boom box in a coffee shop, maybe this will make them understand what is at stake. If you use it, you should pay for it.
But, what is worth using?
If you didn’t crack up, if you didn’t smile reading the Paterno letter I feel sorry for you, you’ve got no sense of humor. You marveled at the creation, it sustained its tone and quality throughout. It was an album where all the tracks were great, and how often do you encounter that these days? It made its point without overplaying its hand, like a musician who knows what you don’t play is often more endearing than what you do, in other words you can layer so many instruments, add so many notes, that you end up killing the production.
So, everybody talks about virality but almost no one achieves it. Furthermore, it’s all done by established recipe. Old wave PR is especially excruciating. Get hype ink in traditional media, to the point if you’re paying attention at all, and most aren’t, you’re turned off. Or, manipulating TikTok. Yes, the business and its artists find a formula and repeat it to the point it’s stale, they use it up and the public goes elsewhere. Meanwhile, Peter Paterno writes a private letter and it goes wild, everybody knows about it, even people who don’t care about music, who’ve got no idea who Peter Paterno is.
The story was broken by Eriq Gardner on Twitter: https://bit.ly/365piGI Eriq’s only got 10, 700 followers. He’s not Kim Kardashian. He found the story interesting and then it went wild. Everyone always asks me how they can get their song heard, how can they spread the word. WRITE SOMETHING AS GOOD AS PETER PATERNO’S LETTER!
Which may be one reason Paterno’s still working and so many have been excommunicated from this business. Yes, if you’re old, you’re gone, unless you’re working on the touring side or on stage playing your hits of yore.
And Peter could not have written this letter without experience. He tapped all he’d been through, learned to deliver this short letter. Which is why the music of the prepubescent is so often worthless. Who cares if your kid is twelve, I don’t want to hear what she or he has to say, there’s no insight, no wisdom, no road miles. Which is why kid stars usually don’t have any legs, once they grow up, no one’s interested, the main attraction was their youth.
Too many of our creative fields are stale. Because they’re not populated by people like Peter Paterno. These people call themselves “creatives” well, all I can tell you is Paterno is more creative than seemingly everybody employing that moniker, and he’s a lawyer. Creativity is something you exhibit, you need to earn your stripes over and over again, testing the limits, pushing the envelope.
Like Peter Paterno.
Responses from Bob’s readers. Please note that these comments are not edited for grammar or content.
Many years ago, Peter was on a panel at the dinner meeting of the California Copyright Conference (theCCC.org) at the Sportsman’s Lodge. No one was thrilled with the food there and in Paterno style, he had a pizza delivered to the panelist’s table on the stage. Hilarious.
Thanks for your emails.
Best,
Rhonda Bedikian
Heavy Harmony Music
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Good post Bob. Makes me wonder if Paterno would be the ideal guy to go after Trump for his unauthorized and widely reported use of popular songs by popular artists.
Certainly a different approach would be required….sans the wink and nod. Then again, what’s the point?
Dave Dalzell
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Bill Murray? Are you kidding?
He can use any song of mine in
any way he wants for free.
The Doobs should be paying him.
Obviously they don’t play golf.
Joe Walsh
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Apparently Bill Murray has changed his contract and IP lawyers.
Bill’s 1983 Ghostbusters contract stated that on the home video packaging no one‘s head would be larger than his. The company I worked for did the 1985 duplication, packaging, and physical distribution of the videocassettes. When the packaging arrived a picture of Sigourney Weaver‘s head on the back of the box was larger than Bill Murray‘s head in another picture on the back of the box. Columbia Pictures received samples before we got the shipment, and a sharp Columbia lawyer spotted the contractual violation and they were obligated to recall all of the 400,000 boxes, which they did. Most importantly they had to re-print, die cut, fold, glue and ship new boxes to our location in Northbrook, Illinois and the deadline became so tight that we risked missing the release date which anyone in entertainment knows is unforgivable.
Our hourly workers made overtime based on the enforcement of Bill Murray’s contract, and so did some people at FedEx. The release date was met.
I suppose Bill never knew about the boxes. We loved him like everyone does but always said, ‘No one has a bigger head than Bill Murray.’
Tim Trummer
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In the 90s, I had an act (“Eleven”) I was signing to Hollywood Records. Peter was running it, and when I got the draft of the record contract to review, I was floored. It was under 50 pages (when most were hundreds of pages long), and it was written in plain English! WTF??!! I asked, and it turns out Peter had taken the time to redraft the entire contract so that anyone could understand it. There was no benefit to Hollywood Records in this – Peter did it because it was the RIGHT thing to do, and it provided an unmatched level of transparency to the artists he was working with. Probably the best example of fairness ever seen at a label… No surprise that he would address the Bill Murray situation in the most creative of ways. Kudos, Peter!
Steve Stewart
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You gotta get people’s attention and get them on your side. This letter does both. The kicker was that he cc’d Jerry Aldini at PolySutra Records. So inside & fantastic.
Bob Paris
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It’s funny (to me) that you use the term “zetzing” when neither Bill Murray or Peter Paterno (or most of your readers) will know that “zetz” is “hit” in Yiddish. In this case, it’s more like Paterno is really sticking it to Murray.
Btw – did you notice that the last person on the “cc” list was Jerry Aldini of Poly Sutra Records, a character played by Bill Murray in an SNL sketch from 1978, about people trying to get backstage at a KISS concert (other people trying to get backstage are the singer Stephen Bishop [as himself] and Art Garfunkel as Paul Stanley’s brother Angus).
Take care,
Stuart Taubel
MC Mentholyptus Productions
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Of course it blew up your inbox and feed! Peter’s letter had brains and humor in a time when our country is running on a lack of both! That letter was exactly what should be written by a guy who has seen it all in the business. I loved every word and wished more people in music were just as honest and to the point without spending any air of ego or trying to prove anything. The facts are there and, since it is Peter, so are some funny jabs. Loved it!
Cheers-
Jay Coyle
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Luv Peter hate his golf swing….lol
Val Garay
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So, the world finally got to find out a slice of what we’ve always known about Peter…the genius mensch.
You nailed it. Smartest, kindest loyal human ever.
Take care, Dave Kaplan
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Loved you note. You described Peter perfectly. He’s the real deal – super creative and a genius attorney. Never heavy handed and by being nice gets the job done.
I think Peter should publish his email ‘auto replies’. Maybe you could talk him into it?!
Jennifer Hawks
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Bob- thank you for writing this! I love Peter Paterno! ( Peter loves me too….. lol which is an amazing compliment because Peter does not like anyone!) hahaha
dina lapolt
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Good one Bob, and well deserved for Peter. Having him as your lawyer is like flying WITH a net. He affords one the luxury of aiming high, because no matter how far you fall, he won’t let you hit the pavement. John Hartmann
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Exactly, Bob! He’s real! He made his point but did it in a very cool way that I hope Murray appreciated. Calling out the hideous togs was a comedic hole in one.
Scott Soules
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That letter made my day. Hilarious. A letter from a lawyer. That’s how bad it’s gotten.
Randi Swindel
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Words are our tools and Peter is a master craftsman. Better than anything Murray ever wrote. (Shame on you Bill!) Stay safe.
Michael Reinert
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Hey Bob, I read your stuff all the time. I love your writing (I was a journalism major) and find it really fun and informative. I met you years ago at a party at Steve Rennie’s house. I normally don’t write stuff like this…but… .Love Peter –he’s one of the lawyers in this industry who is very smart but doesn’t take himself too seriously. I have known him for probably 40 years…Just wanted to clarify something..I have been in private practice, chiefly repping artists, for many years. . When Peter took the Disney job, I was rooting for him. Shortly after Peter left Disney, in 1994, I went to Capitol Records as a senior executive, and as part of my deal, I was able to keep some major clients (on other labels of course). Three years later, I left Capitol to resume private practice because I found I was an artist guy, not a company guy. Not only did I keep the clients I was representing during my tenure at Capitol, but also other clients whom I did not keep came back to me quickly. So while I admired Peter for leaving his clients behind when he went to Disney (and his getting them back when he left), I was lucky enough to get an education at Capitol for three years and then hit the ground running when I left….very unusual at the time…Best.
Gary L Gilbert
Senior Partner
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP
2049 Century Park East
Suite 1700
Los Angeles, CA 90067
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The biggest bummer here is that while it’s fun to read the letter and retweet it, this should have been THE year for the Doobies. 50th anniversary tour with Michael McDonald, plus the Rock Hall induction to give those guys a well-deserved boost of publicity and adulation, and presumably a nice infusion of cash from the tour and the related revenue. I really feel for Tom, Pat, and all the guys — obviously there are a ton of artists who have suffered from the pandemic, but the stars were supposed to align for them in 2020. Long live the Doobies – let’s hope they’ll be on the road and Takin’ it to the Streets in 2021.
All best,
Greg Renoff
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I guess I should leave a tip on the nightstand. Thanks, Bob!
Peter Paterno, Esq.
King, Holmes, Paterno & Soriano, LLP
1900 Avenue of the Stars, 25th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90067
