Most recent example I remember is Lindsey Buckingham getting fired from Fleetwood Mac, but it’s something that happens from time to time. The majority of the (most important?) band members disagree with one guy over this or that, or just find the guy difficult to deal with in general, and inform him that he’s been ousted from the band. What I’m wondering is the legal underpinnings of this.
I would have thought that a band is legally a partnership, and that all the members would have ownership rights, absent some contract specifying otherwise. So how does it work when they fire a member? Does the guy maintain rights to X% of revenue? I assume he gets a cut of past recordings and such, but what about the brand that he was a part of building? Are there typically contracts giving majority rights? Or this automatically the case with any group of guys who get together and do something?
The musician would still be getting his payments for songwriting and, I believe, any albums he recorded with the group. Anything else would be negotiated.
There must be many cases where the band says “We’re sick o’ ya!” And the offender says “Tough, you’re stuck with me!”
I mean, I’ve never seen a powderkeg as close to going off as a band. A lot of pressure, especially on tour or making an album. I’d think there’d be daily firings/quittings, then getting together the next day to continue recording…
This happened with Blondie and guitarist Frank Infante. He resisted being pushed out by bandleaders Chris Stein and Deborah Harry, even sued the band and had a contract to back him up. So he got credit for appearing on the album The Hunter but didn’t record in the studio with the rest of the band, rather just came in occasionally to add fills and whatnot.
That bad blood continued with he and bassist Jerry Harrison not being invited to Blondie’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but they showed up anyway to create a small scene.
Once they get recording contracts don’t they need some kind of legal partnership agreement? If it’s just a partnership then it must get messy when someone gets forced out.
Queen was jointly owned by its four members (Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon), who agreed to jointly make all important decisions regarding the band. After Freddie’s death, the remaining three members retained ownership of the band, and still do; John has retired from playing (and public life), but is still part-owner, and is still consulted by Brian and Roger, particularly on business decisions.
On the other hand, we have Yes. The band is, apparently, co-owned by longtime members Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, and Alan White; Chris Squire was also a co-owner until his death a few years ago. Unlike Queen, they’re a band which is infamous for infighting and changing lineups; until his death, Squire was the only member who had been with the band from the start, and had never left. For the past decade or so, there have been two separate factions of Yes groups, both of which contain longtime members, both of which can lay title to the name, and between which there is little love lost: one group features Howe and White, while the other features Anderson (along with other longtime members Rick Wakeman and Trevor Rabin). The article below contains some of the contentious details.
In some of these cases the fired member may be a full member, own the band the same as the rest, but they are outnumbered. In theory they could maybe sue, but if the other members then refuse to tour anyway, they’re not gaining anything by suing rather than just taking a settlement.
With Fleetwood Mac, it came down to Stevie Nicks not wanting Buckingham in the band anymore, and the rest siding with her. Buckingham had equal rights. Same with Don Felder and Eagles. Felder was a full member, despite not being a founding member. Walsh and Schmitt were not, they were just salaried. So the full members were Henley, Frey, and Felder. Henley and Frey wanted Felder to take a smaller piece of the pie, he refused and was fired, and took a settlement. Yes, he was a full partner, but the other two were teaming against him.
I imagine being in a band is difficult due to different temperaments and the egotism often associated with success or the creative process. I always think it would be something like this… (amusing debate among superheroes to choose their identity and group name)…
Roger Daltrey was fired from The Who in 1965 after an incident where he punched Keith Moon and flushed his drug supply down a toilet. Lucky for the band they reconsidered and let him back after he promised to mellow out going forward.
Even pre-download/streaming era most of the biggest bands are/were corporations that make a lot of revenue outside of recording contracts and royalties via touring business, merch, and other avenues. Sometimes they have multiple corporations and holding companies, etc. You could have Such and Such Band Touring LLC or whatever that handles costs on the road and splitting profits and so on. If the member had royalties and publishing rights as an individual they are going to keep those unless they sell the rights off. As others have said it varies, because often the member does own a 20-25% or whatever (some bands don’t do even splits) of multiple corporations involved in the band’s business and they could be fired and kept from participating in the creation and performance of new music but still own rights to profits as any stockholder of a corporation would. So usually all of that is negotiated and litigated. A lot of bands have hired guns so it would be as simple as just letting the guy go and that’s that. I’ve heard various stories about the original breakup of Guns n Roses, Queensryche, Mike Anthony being fired/bought out of VH and then hired as a touring employee for the later tours, I think Steve Perry gets paid something from Journey still, pretty sure Jon owns all of Bon Jovi as others have said, I think Gene and Paul own Kiss 50/50 and everyone else is an employee (including Ace and Peter for their reunions). Some guys will give up ownership in exchange for getting hired onto a big tour. Other times this is a snag with reunions when the originals and/or guys the fans want to pay to see have no rights and the leaders offer low salaries. Someone like Buckingham is still going to get tons of royalties off the songs he wrote unless he sold it off in one of those Hipgnosis deals, and I guess lawyers will try to get a piece of any future merch sales and show money if applicable.
I know that the members of the Doors were equal partners in the band. John Densmore and the Jim Morrison estate vetoed the use of the name by Krieger and Manzarek in 2003.
Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones didn’t become a full profit-sharing member of the band until ~19 years after he was first hired, long after the band’s peak. He gets a full share these days, but before that was just a salaried employee.
A punch in the face from time to time and flushing down his drug stash wasn’t the worst idea to keep Moonie in check. Sadly, in the end he turned out uncontrollable.
I’ve been meaning to start a thread similar to this for a long time, but never really got the inclination to do it while available to do it and sorta figured out what I thought might be happening.
The easy way is if there’s a mechanism in the operating agreement to remove members, in which case it would be very clear exactly what happens, but would depend on the group in question and how they decided to go about it.
If there is no operating agreement, or it is silent on the issue, then you’d have to fall back to the common law of whatever jurisdiction they were first organized in. I’m not a lawyer so I can’t say what that might be for any jurisdiction, but in general (just from what I feel as a tax professional) the group member would have rights to the net income of the group until they reached a settlement by which the rest of the group bought back their interest. If the person fired refused to settle, it would be a simple matter of simply not having the group generate any profit by having it all paid out in salaries to the members who are actually still working for the band. Or even better if it goes on long enough, have income assigned to the fired member still on the tax documents, but don’t actually distribute the income, leaving the member to pay taxes on income they didn’t earn or collect and have no hope of collecting until they settle. This last trick was mentioned in school by a professor as one reason why you shouldn’t invest in a venture as a minority owner unless you really trust the rest of the people investing to not do such a thing to you.
Story told about Rick Wright from Pink Floyd is that he was fired/left during the sessions for The Wall. Roger says he didn’t contribute, Rick says his contributions were ignored or something, that type of thing. Then during The Wall tour / stage show, he was in the band essentially as a contract musician earning a wage. Ironically, because the shows were so expensive to put on, Rick did a lot better financially than the band members themselves.
I think the answer to the OP is that it just depends. There are all sorts of different arrangements between band members about royalties and so on. Lennon and McCartney famously share song writing credits regardless of who actually wrote the song.
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