Beach Boys

Katy Perry Sued by the Beach Boys

Katy Perry may be in hot water over her smash hit, “California Girls,” that is homage to the Beach Boys’ “California Girls.”

The latter song’s writers, Brian Wilson and Mike Love, have both gone on record as being big fans of Perry’s tune. But the company that owns the copyright on behalf of Love and Wilson, Rondor Music, is more interested in compensation than flattery.

Rondor has reportedly threatened to sue if Perry doesn’t hand over royalties on her single, which has sold more than 3 million digital downloads, and tied a record by reaching that figure in just 11 short weeks.

Perry has borrowed song titles before and not gotten in trouble for it. Her breakthrough hit was “I Kissed a Girl,” which bore thematic as well as titular similarity to the Jill Sobule single of the same name. If anything, Perry would have seemed to be in less danger with “California Gurls,” which bears no similarity to the Beach Boys’ oldie beyond the title. Well, except for the line “I wish they all could be California girls,” uttered late in the song as part of a seeming improv by guest rapper Snoop Dogg. As far as Roncor Music is concerned, that one borrowed lyric crosses the line from tribute to plagiarism.

The dispute went public in a big way today after a report in the New York Post publicized Rondor’s threat to sue Perry. But any attentive Rolling Stone readers already knew that trouble was brewing, if they got past her barely-lingerie-clad cover shoot to the accompanying story. In the article, Perry seems to be saying she’s taking Snoop Dogg’s line off the album version of the track, due to a demand that Wilson and Love should get credit and compensation.

“As much as I want a Beach Boys credit on my album, we have to take it out,” Perry says in the Rolling Stone article.

That’s right: When Perry’s sophomore album, Teenage Dream, comes out August 24, Snoop will no longer be heard wishing they all could be California girls. Which may make the copies of the song that have already been sold collectors’ items–all 3 million of them.

One of her managers is quoted in the Rolling Stone piece as saying: “You want a Brian Wilson credit, not a Mike Love credit.” She responds: “Well, you said it, not me.”

It’s possible those remarks put an end to Love’s sense of being flattered. Just a few weeks ago, Love was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying: “I think she’s really clever. We have a lot in common now: We both have done songs called ‘California Girls’ and we’ve both kissed girls and liked it…[It] obviously brings to mind our ‘California Girls,’ it’s just in a different vernacular, a different way of appreciating the same things. The Beach Boys have always accentuated the positive, and hers is a positive message about California Girls, so what’s not to like?” In Billboard magazine, Love even referenced the rap portion of the song, saying, “I think it’s probably a stroke of genius to have the king of canine cool, Mr. Dogg, do his thing.”

Wilson, for his part, also waxed appreciative to the L.A. Times, at the time. “I love her vocal,” he told the paper. “She sounds very clear and energetic…The melody is infectious, and I’m flattered that Snoop Dogg used our lyric on the tag. I wish them well with this cut.”

Rondor has reportedly said that it’s taking the action on behalf of Wilson and Love, but the two Beach Boys (who continue to be professionally estranged from one another) both said through their reps that they have not initiated any of this action themselves.

Odds are that this will all be settled out of court, though we can amuse ourselves considered the possibilities for followup lawsuits. Maybe Perry could sue Snoop for bringing on this trouble with his overly referential lyric. Maybe Snoop could sue the marijuana industry for impairing his judgment.

And Perry has said that the “U” in “Gurls” is an homage to the ’70s cult rock band Big Star, who introduced the misspelling into the pop vocabulary with their song “September Gurls.” No word yet on whether the Alex Chilton estate plans to sue for its own cut of Perry’s royalties.

source: Beach Boys Label After Katy Perry’s “California Gurl” [abc news]

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Tags | Celebrity Crime, Gossip, Music Beach Boys, Brian Wilson, California Girls, Copyright Infringement, Katy Perry, Lawsuit, Mike Love, Rondor Music, Royalties

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Beach Boys Reunite For Pet Sounds 40th

James Joyner @ Gone Hollywood

The Beach Boys put their differences aside to reunite to celebrate the 40th anniversary of one of the landmark albums of the rock era, “Pet Sounds.”

The surviving founders of the Beach Boys — Brian Wilson, Mike Love and Al Jardine — made their first public appearance together in 10 years Tuesday, standing atop the historic Capitol Records building in Hollywood.

The trio gathered to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the landmark “Pet Sounds” album and the recent double-platinum certification of 2003′s “Sounds of Summer: The Very Best of the Beach Boys.” The trio was joined by veteran band member Bruce Johnston and former Beach Boy David Marks. “It’s always good to do this while we’re living,” Jardine quipped to reporters before the event, in which band members were presented with framed plaques each containing two platinum vinyl records. Plaques also were issued posthumously to Wilson’s brothers, Carl and Dennis — both original Beach Boys members.

The reunion of the Beach Boys came after decades of animosity between Love and Wilson, who are cousins. Love sued Wilson in November, saying Wilson “shamelessly misappropriated (Love’s) songs, likeness and the Beach Boys trademark, as well as the ‘Smile’ album itself” when Wilson was promoting 2004′s “Smile.” Love previously sued his cousin in the mid-1990s, seeking more songwriting credit on the band’s back catalog.

The two shared a friendly rapport Tuesday, standing side by side and patting each other on the back. In thanking his bandmates, Love lauded “my cousin Brian Wilson, for his incredible abilities that gave us all this amazing life.” When asked if all hatchets have been buried, Love pointed to his back. “The hatchets are right here,” he said with a laugh. Loved added that between the band members “there’s issues that arise, and you resolve them over time.”

Of the reunion, he said: “We’ve been together, just in different configurations and different situations. But this is a great one because everybody’s in a celebratory mood, everybody’s on their good behavior and everybody’s enjoying the fact that our records have been recognized even 40 years after we first put (them) out.”

The heyday of the Beach Boys is well before my time; indeed, Pet Sounds came out when I was still in diapers. Their music hasn’t stood the test of time in the same way that that of contemporaries like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zepellin, or the Who. On the other hand, their sound was quite unique.

As to the album, WikiPedia offers a useful if pedantic history:

Pet Sounds is a 1966 album recorded by American pop group the Beach Boys. Often regarded as the masterpiece of composer-producer Brian Wilson, it has been hailed as one of the best and most influential albums in popular music. In 1995, nearly thirty years after its release, a panel of top musicians, songwriters and producers assembled by MOJO magazine voted it “The Greatest Album Ever Made.” In 1998 Q magazine readers voted it the 31st greatest album of all time; critics of German magazine Spex voted it the best album of the 20th Century; in 2003 the TV network VH1 placed it at #3. It also placed #2 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles. In 2004, it was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry.

In many ways more of a Brian Wilson solo project, Pet Sounds was created after Wilson had stopped touring with the band, focusing his attention on writing and recording. Wilson created elaborate layers of beautiful harmonies by The Beach Boys, sound effects and unusual instruments like bicycle bells, buzzing organs, harpsichords, flutes, the theremin, and even dog whistles, on top of conventional keyboards and guitars.

Music critic Jerry McCulley offers a gushing review at Amazon.com, where you can download MP3 samples.

If you need some pointy-headed pundit to sell you on the merits of Pet Sounds, your money might be better spent on an ear specialist. Brian Wilson’s gift to 20th-century music elevated this pop album into a beguiling musical and emotional cogency that still operates outside pop culture’s fickle space-time continuum–and limited critical lexicon. There’s never been another record to compare (Rubber Soul, its inspiration, is close; Sgt. Pepper’s, its response, misses the point), and certainly no album has been as dissected, overanalyzed, and predigested for public consumption. In 1997 Capitol Records devoted an entire four-disc box set, The Pet Sounds Sessions, to its thorough deconstruction. The techno-marvel centerpiece of that project–the album’s first true stereo mix, painstakingly conjured out of multitape session sources by producer-engineer Mark Linett (under Wilson’s supervision)–was at once heresy and revelation. Now the label has gratifyingly seen fit to offer both mixes on a single disc (along with alternate versions of “Hang On to Your Ego,” the original title of “I Know There’s An Answer”), an idea that should please the orthodox and heretics alike. And while the album has always clearly been The Brian Wilson Show featuring the Beach Boys, biographer Brad Elliott’s concise new notes attempt to be more inclusive of a wider band perspective. The result (three of the five band members claim credit for the album title) sometimes resembles Rashomon. If Pet Sounds forever crystallized the band’s various creative (in)differences, it also became Wilson’s grand karmic joke on his band mates; its burgeoning reputation (Mojo magazine’s panel of pop experts once elected it greatest album of all time) guaranteed they would sing its songs–and praises–until the end. And if putting two different versions of the same album on one disc seems like overkill, look at the bright side: it’s a perfect excuse to listen to the glorious Pet Sounds twice.