I have a habit of reading contracts. I remember asking our lawyer Paul Lennon to go through every line of our recording deal with Food Records to explain what each term meant, which of course he was happy to do. I needed to understand what we were about to get into, and I wanted to learn how the music industry worked from a legal perspective, an artist’s perspective.

I discovered that although the music industry, just like every other industry, is ultimately run by lawyers, that’s not how it operates on a day to day basis. It might state something in bold terms in your contract, but in reality your experience in a band will be quite different. For example, you… [redacted on legal advice!].

Anyway, we had this song kicking around called ‘Goodbye To You’ which was a hangover from the early days of The Joans. It was a rolling psychedelic poem, and like Stars and St Swithins, it was built around a looping break beat. But unlike Stars and Swithins, the beat on Goodbye to You was instantly recognisable to anyone who was paying attention. It was Bow Wow Wow by Funkdoobiest.

As I’ve mentioned before, I listened to a lot of rap in the late 80s and early 90s. On the day we signed with Food records the anthems we played in the car on the way to London were alternating between Tricky’s Ponderosa and Gravediggaz Bang Your Head…oh, and we were transfixed with the new Stone Roses songs, although not in a good way. It was a long journey….

So with all this sampling going on around us I didn’t think a two beat steal from a lesser known LA rap act was a big deal. Consequently the song had been demoed at Graeme Robinson’s house in Darlington, and to my surprise was rerecorded for inclusion on Disgraceful.

But…I was concerned. It said in our recording contract that we weren’t allowed to include samples without letting the record company know. The agreement was clear. I had no idea how much it would cost to clear this sample or whether we would get in trouble, it hadn’t occurred to me that Funkdoobiest had sampled someone else for their loop either (to this day I don’t know who). Months later, and well after the song had been recorded, mastered and was ready to go to manufacture, I had an attack of the conscience. I told the label about the sample. I even faxed through a letter so it was all official. and I did all this without mentioning it to the rest of the act, management or even Andy at Food. There was no going back. Being from a respectable family, an honourable man with a catholic upbringing and someone who understood his contract I thought I was doing the right thing, I was owning up.

This was a mistake.

The original master DAT for Disgraceful. Note ‘Day I see You Again’ was called ‘The Day I See You Again’ albeit with a ‘Y’ for some reason.

The consequence was Goodbye To You was removed from Disgraceful where it would have been the last song and, crucially, an opportunity to get in the press by getting in trouble with a fashionable west coast rap act was lost.

You see, no matter how much it would have cost to clear the sample, it would have been cheaper than the cost of press coverage we could have received from getting into trouble. We would have been notorious (pun intended). That would have been EXACTLY the kind of company we should have been keeping. Instead the song disappeared.

I learned an important lesson from Goodbye To You. Business is exceptionally straight-forward except when it isn’t. If you want to survive, the key is knowing which is which and when to keep your mouth shut. To be fair to myself, musicians are fed a diet of stories about how bad the music industry is, how much trouble acts get into, how awful it is to be sued. No wonder most acts are so paranoid.

And so this (and a few other reasons) is why acts need management…so the artists can wonder around with their heads in the clouds doing arty things and the managers deal with the commerce. On the other hand the idea that a paranoid artist would grass himself directly to the label is a testament to the strength of our relationship with Andy Ross. And how ‘going official’ can be the exact wrong thing to do.

Anyway, Disgraceful is stronger album without Goodbye To You. Eventually we rerecorded it as the B-side for No More Talk and it lived a new life with a whole bunch of new samples in it. I have to say I much prefer that version…totally mad, full of breaks, which was exactly how we were feeling in 1997.

PS: So why did we name our second album after this song and then not include it? Basically Goodbye had a working title of ‘Death is the End’ and although it was amusing and reflected our gallows humour, it probably wasn’t the best for an act more associated with pink and blue bunnies than mortality. Plus there was something powerful about naming the follow up to Disgraceful ‘Goodbye’. These were the late Britpop days, and while every act around us was shouting and screaming to be heard we were leaving the stage. At least that’s how it seemed.

And it seemed very cool indeed to have the title track of the album included as a B-Side, not on the record. All of this was acceptable in the 90s, as Calvin almost said.

This article includes excerpts from DUBSTAR.COM. Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com

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Dubstar: GOODBYE TO YOU originally included on Disgraceful