The Unheard Music

The Legendary God's Foot, lost to the vaults.

As an artist advocate, I’ve been thinking of things I can do - or encourage - to address some of what I consider anti-artist behavior from the old industry. The “old industry,” meaning pre-streaming, gatekeeper era, the recent past. It’s an era when record companies had immense power over artists. The vast majority of artist signings failed to revenue, let alone hits.

There’s an incredible passage in Mike Campbell’s great new memoir, Heartbreaker. As soon as Campbell, Jeff Lynne, and Tom Petty finished making Full Moon Fever in Campbell’s garage studio, they walked it into MCA’s offices to play it for the brass. Energized by the ease with which they’d made what they believed to be a hit-laden masterpiece, they expected a warm and enthusiastic reception. Instead, the executives all agreed: the album didn’t have a hit. They heard Free Fallin’, I Won’t Back Down, Runnin’ Down a Dream, Love is a Long Road. No hits. The trio recorded several more tracks and presented it to the brass a second time. No single, hard pass. Full Moon Fever remained in the vaults until a new regime took over a year later and put it out in the wake of the Traveling Wilbury’s success.

What happened in that room? These meetings happened when Irving Azoff - one of the greatest executives in the history of the music business - led MCA. Was it personal? How could a room full of executives, sitting in the room with the artist and producer, loud on some state-of-the-art system, hear Free Fallin’ for the first time and say “meh”? Do yo remember where you were when you first heard Free Fallin’? Because I sure do.

I’ve written about the major label business model during the CD boom, and I’ve expressed why I believe it wasn’t a very artist-friendly model. Hit albums made so much money; all the incentives favored blockbuster successes. The home runs made the money, the industry demanded home runs. The labels spent so much money, they relied on blockbuster success. Artists who sold hundreds of thousands of CDs lost their deals, because modest profitability wasn’t enough to fill the money hole.

I had quite a few opportunities to observe the major business up close in the 90s, but never too close. I had a major deal for a fleeting moment, but it amounted to less than nothing, a thorn in my side. I lived vicariously through friends and bandmates who were in the middle of it. I got over petty jealousies when I saw just how stressful it all was. My major label recording artists were not happy with the experience, especially my friend and former bandmate Juliana Hatfield.

I met Juliana in 1986 at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Together with my high school girlfriend Freda, Juliana and I formed Blake Babies and got right to work. We built a decent national following and critical reputation over several independent albums between 1989 and 1992, when the band splintered and Juliana went solo. She had significant commercial success on Atlantic Records, both with her solo releases and with her short-lived band, The Juliana Hatfield Three.

Juliana had a couple minor hits and became a widely recognized pop culture figure in the early and mid ‘90s. After her second Atlantic album, Only Everything, failed to sell as well as her debut by JH3, Atlantic exercised its option for a third album for another JH3 album. Juliana spent months producing the album herself, with the working title God’s Foot. Nearing completion, she played the tracks for her A&R guy at Atlantic. His response: “I don’t hear a hit.”

Juliana returned to the studio and worked to come up with some options for potential hit songs, but nothing convinced the A&R guy that it had the goods. He’d given her great freedom, but little guidance or useful feedback. After months back and forth, Juliana and her manager decided to ask to be let out of their deal. Atlantic agreed to let her out, but refused to let her have the God’s Foot masters without full reimbursement of the costs. She didn’t have another record deal, nor did she have money to pay the hefty, six-figure sticker price. She left the label, but God’s Foot stayed behind, in the vault.

A year or so after leaving Atlantic, Juliana found a home at a new independent label called Zoe, a subsidiary of Rounder. See, as my partner Robert says, it’s all connected. Juliana signed to Zoe/Rounder. We made a Blake Babies reunion album for Zoe/Rounder in 2001. I became President of Rounder in 2017. All the while, God’s Foot sat in the vaults.

You might ask why she didn’t just re-record the songs and release them on Rounder. Because major label contracts - in fact nearly all recording agreements - include “re-record restrictions” - like non-competes for songs. The idea behind re-record restrictions is to prevent having to compete with soundalikes. But if nobody has ever heard the songs, should it apply? Sure, you could negotiate for it to apply only to songs that are commercially released; but that isn’t how ‘90s contracts worked.

Some of you reading might want to argue that there wasn’t anything wrong with the label’s conduct. The label made a big investment in the project. Shouldn’t they have the right to protect their investment by shelving the album? Shouldn’t they be protected from what they consider unfair competition? Once they’ve paid for the album, shouldn’t they have the right to hold it back to release it later, should Juliana become a huge star?

Here’s the thing, the A&R guy failed her. Saying “I don’t hear a single, go write some songs and let me hear them to decide if they’re hits” without actual guidance or resources is unhelpful at best. I’m not going to name names, but this isn’t someone with a golden ear. With some big time executives, it’s hard to tell if they even like music. But you can always tell they really love money.

It’s how you’d characterize well more than half the albums of the era: an A&R failure and a business failure. Atlantic wouldn’t release another album on her unless they believed it would break, like contemporary and label mate Jewel. They needed a Who Will Save Your Soul for Juliana, even though she wasn’t really that kind of artist. They needed a home run, and anything short of the mark would be considered a failure.

Think about Juliana’s career before and after her relatively brief moment in the 90s mainstream spotlight. She’s a real artist. She’s clearly put in the work. She connects deeply with her fans - who stick with her from project to project. She had enough of a fanbase and sufficient momentum in 1996 to propel Gods’s Foot - if not to platinum success, at least to a decent commercial performance.

In today’s business I believe it would have come out, because who knows? Today we’re able to control the spending much better. You can test the waters - it doesn’t have to be all in or nothing. Back then, if the label didn’t believe it would be a smash, it wasn’t worth the effort. Maybe with a modest marketing spend it could have been modestly profitable - that’s very possible. Maybe it would set her up for greater success in the future. But no. The label made the choice to effectively kill an artist’s career to avoid the effort required for a modest success. It was the hit record business, nothing less. Why help a talented artist on the label get there, when another artist coming up is breaking on MTV? The money followed the heat.

This is true story, but it’s also a fable. I believe Atlantic should have given Juliana God’s Foot back at the time. They rejected it, they deemed it not sufficiently commercial. They declared failure and threw in the towel, didn’t waste another dime. Maybe another label would pick it up, reimburse their out-of-pocket costs. I believe they should have apologized for not holding up their end of the bargain and handed it back, all right, title, and interest as they say. Their end of the bargain - to bring the music to market. To help make it more marketable. Not to give up, declare failure, and quickly move on. That’s why it’s an anti-artist business model.

Juliana struggled through the period of recording God’s Foot, as she’s shared in her brilliant memoir When I Grow Up (which you should read). Juliana and I have been friends for decades, and we were close as bandmates. However, we didn’t really speak much during her Atlantic years. I mourned the loss of our band together, and it stung to witness her incredible success from afar. I didn’t give much thought to the God’s Foot debacle - if I was even aware of it - until I read her book. Then it made me mad. It offended me on a deeply personal level, because I love Juliana as family, even if we went through a period of estrangement. If things had gone a little differently, that could have been my experience. And of course, I had bad experiences of my own.

I’m telling this story because it’s one of many. Juliana would love to put out the actual master of God’s Foot. Her fans would be thrilled, it would be a healing experience. Bootlegs are available, but it isn’t the same. To be clear, I do not expect every major label to hand back every shelved album regardless of circumstances. Many albums were shelved for good reasons. Many are forgotten. But many - like God’s Foot - mean a whole lot to the artist and their fans. If the artist wants to share the music after so many years - whether or not there’s a significant public demand - they should get their wish.