Well I was listening to Smells Like Teen Spirit (By nirvana) for like the millionth time and me and my friend wrote completly different lyrics to the song and we where wondering if we sang it could anything happen to us , lawsuit etc..., we do this instead of doing the song as a "cover" we kinda make the song ours you know , havent come up with a name , the only thing we preformed as is hypertone.
We have to ask ourselves. What would Ultralord do?
If you just go out and perform and you're caught, you'll be sued for the rest of your lives. The only way to legally do it is to contact the song's publisher, submit your lyrics and obtain their permission.
On a sober note, being that the song is a classic, there's very little chance of obtaining permission.
There's some ways around the law here, I think....
Ever wonder how weird Al Yankovic gets to do tunes with the melodies of other songs? Or why Paul Simon/Pink Floyd/etc. couldn't stop the use of their tunes in sampling?
As the writer of a tune, you pretty much get to decide who does it first. After that, anyone who pays the proper 'mechanical royalties' can do a cover, with or without the original lyrics.
If you play in a bar that pays licensing fees to ASCAP/BMI etc., you may actually be ok... they pay a blanket fee that covers mechanical royalties.
On the downside, if you record it and it becomes a hit, you'll find you're paying out big time on mechanicals.
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I suppose you're right, I'm not really sure about Yankovic's process, something to think about... But I agree that certainly, someone doing this will be paying royalties through the nose.
you may want to check out the Supreme Court ruling in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. (2 Live Crew parody of Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman")
http://www.ladas.com/BULLETINS/1994/0694Bulletin/US_ParodyAsFairUse.html
Now, I reckon that if Acuff Rose had copyrighted that opening riff - like Don Mclean has copyrighted individual lines of American Pie seperately from the entire song - that decision would have gone in their favour.
A
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