I’m going to leave the band name out of this story. I’m 99% sure I remember it correctly, but
since I can’t find the original source, I don’t want to risk the error.
Probably close to 20 years ago, I saw a story about some of
the old vocal groups from the 50s and 60s who have had their names taken from
them and given to other people. The
story focused on one band in particular who actually sued in order to be able
to perform under the name that they had created decades before, and they
lost. See, at the time, copyrights and
trademarks were owned by the management companies or record companies, and the
bands themselves didn’t always (or even usually) own their own songs and
name. So when they broke up, the
trademark was eventually sold to someone else, and that person put together a
group of completely different people and toured them as though they were the
original group.
My understanding is that things have improved for artists
greatly since then, but then again, it wasn’t too long ago when Prince had to
forgo using his birth name (his actual name is Prince – that’s not a stage name)
and had to use a symbol because his record company “owned” the name his mother
gave him. So maybe we still have a
little ways to go.
The above situation is so clearly dishonest and wrong that
it doesn’t even need explaining. You
have someone masquerading as someone else for profit. That’s lying, that’s fraud, and that’s sin. Whether or not it is legal, it’s still sin.
Other situations fall somewhere in between, and it takes a
little more examination to know whether they are wrong or not. I’m a longtime Smashing Pumpkins fan, and it
doesn’t at all bother me that Billy Corgan is the only member left. He had always been 80% of the Pumpkin sound
anyway, with Jimmy Chamberlain providing the other 20%, so the driving force of
the band is the same. It’s essentially
the same band.
I saw the Temptations several years back, and when I say
that, I really mean I saw the only surviving member of the classic lineup with
newer guys. I think I’m okay with that
too – that’s as much of the group as we’re going to see, after all, so the band
is really his to do with as he wills. At
the same time though, would I be okay if Ringo started touring as “the Beatles”
in a few years if Paul were to die first?
What about Newsboys?
This is an interesting one. When
I met the Newsboys several years back, I asked them to sign their latest album,
but I asked Peter to sign Hell is for
Wimps, because it was the first of their releases that I ever got, as well
as the first CD I ever got (along with two others when I got a CD player for
Christmas). Peter was the only remaining
member of that old lineup, but I was okay with that, because, again, Peter was
always the driving force of the band.
But when he left and was replaced, I really started to feel like the
band should rename itself. Yes, the
other guys (besides Michael Tait) had been with the band for a long time, and
so it was almost like they were just replacing a singer, but at the same time,
those guys had not done as much (it seems to me, at least) to define the sound
of the Newsboys like Peter had.
We could go on, but the real point is that a band name means
something, and we need to recognize that.
As Christians, we have a responsibility for honesty, and we really need
to think through if we are being honest when we identify ourselves as being a
particular group. If I told you that I
play guitar for the Beatles, you would understand that I am being
dishonest. And I would still be
dishonest if I actually did have a band that called itself “the Beatles,”
because there is a meaning behind that band name that I am trying to skirt
around when I claim to be part of it. It
doesn’t really matter that I am actually a member of something called “the
Beatles,” it’s not the Beatles. That name has a meaning, and I’m trying to
change the meaning of the name itself.
Which brings us to Audio Adrenaline. An all-new lineup was recently announced,
even though the last album had been an almost all-new lineup (only the bassist
remained from the old band). Seemingly,
the only thing tying this new band to the old one is the approval of Mark
Stuart, the original singer, who also co-wrote one of the songs.
Does he have the legal right to declare that this group of
people is Audio A? Probably so. I’m not a trademark attorney, but no one is
challenging that yet, so we’ll assume for now that he does. Should he?
Is it honest to say that this group of guys is Audio A?
Let me ask it this way – if Paul McCartney heard about my
garage band called the Beatles, kinda liked the idea, and cowrote a song with
me, would that make us the Beatles?
No, it wouldn’t.
When I saw Audio A in their farewell tour, one of the things
that really impressed me is the willingness of the band members to let this
thing go when Mark Stuart had to step down.
I totally wanted the rest of the band to form a new group and keep
going, but I wanted it to be a new group, and not Audio A. Stuart had been too important to Audio A to
pretend that nothing had changed. They
didn’t form a new band, but they also didn’t pretend to be something they no
longer were, even though Mark had sung very little in the last couple of albums
due to his voice starting to be lost. He
was so central to that band that it would have been different.
And I didn’t think it was very honest when the band reformed
with only the bassist remaining from the old days. Will McGinnis wasn’t the driving force behind
their sound.
All that has changed, and I’m not going to speculate as to
the motives of that change. Today, “Audio
A” is apparently whoever is recording under that name, and it will probably be
different tomorrow. It is a brand that
will make the unsuspecting grab the album, thinking about some great jams from
the 90s, but not realizing that this Audio A isn’t at all that Audio A.
As Christians, we are called to better.