Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My Dad Painted Jethro Tull’s ‘Aqualung’ Cover and It’s Haunted Him

theoutline.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 122 posts

Re: My Dad Painted Jethro Tull’s ‘Aqualung’ Cover and It’s Haunted Him

#21

Post by wpietri »

donatj wrote: post #2

I have trouble feeling bad for the guy. He was paid what he had agreed to.

Easy thing to say. But imagine Zuckerberg had hired you to code the first version of his site, paid you a few thousand bucks, and then he went on to be one of the richest men in America?

We here in SV have evolved a culture and a set of business practices that do a much better job of compensating us fairly. We make good cash money, and we tend to get a share of the success when things get big. It's not like we as individuals were clever enough to negotiate all of the details; it's a system mostly other people worked out over time.

But we're very lucky in that people with our talents and skills are still much rarer than business types would like. That's not true with artists, and the music industry's default practices, especially then, were generally shitty. There's no reason this guy shouldn't get as fair a shake as we do.

(And before anybody has a personal story of not getting a fair shake: yes, that sucks, which is exactly why you should want to see systemic changes that minimize that happening to others.)

Re: My Dad Painted Jethro Tull’s ‘Aqualung’ Cover and It’s Haunted Him

#22

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

paulsutter wrote: post #6

He should have leveraged the success of the album to get high paid work. Jim Carrey was offered $350K for Dumb and Dumber, which he turned down (he wanted $400K). Then when Ace Ventura became a surprise hit, the offer for Dumb and Dumber was raised to $7,000,000, which he took. He made only $350K for Ace Ventura, but that opened the door to a bigger payday. Based on the success of Dumb and Dumber, he was the first ac…

They live in an UWS brownstone. Can't have had too much of a struggle through life.

Re: My Dad Painted Jethro Tull’s ‘Aqualung’ Cover and It’s Haunted Him

#23

Post by soperj »

wpietri wrote: post #21
donatj wrote: post #2

I have trouble feeling bad for the guy. He was paid what he had agreed to.

Easy thing to say. But imagine Zuckerberg had hired you to code the first version of his site, paid you a few thousand bucks, and then he went on to be one of the richest men in America? We here in SV have evolved a culture and a set of business practices that do a much better job of compensating us fairly. We make good cash money, and we tend to get a share of the success when things get big. It's not like we as ind…

Isn't this exactly what happened with Dos & Microsoft?

Re: My Dad Painted Jethro Tull’s ‘Aqualung’ Cover and It’s Haunted Him

#24

Post by soperj »

crystaln wrote: post #13

The nature of employment is that we produce works for hire. I don't see any exploitation here. Do album cover artists ever get windfalls from successful? Unlikely I think, unless of course they were well known artists who insisted on royalties. The album would have been similarly successful with any cover or no cover.

Would they still be selling t-shirts and posters of any cover or no cover and pocketing that money?

Re: My Dad Painted Jethro Tull’s ‘Aqualung’ Cover and It’s Haunted Him

#25

Post by djsumdog »

legitster wrote: post #16

I couldn't imagine getting so caught up in one piece of work. I'd like to imagine I would have just immediately turned around and told everyone I was the guy who made the cover for Aqualung and focus my energy on the next project. Also, it's very presumptive to assume I deserve a cut of your project just because it is successful. Not only do I claim my artwork had something to do with it (I doubt many people cared mu…

If you sell a man or women a piece of artwork, yes they can put it up in their home and people can see it. If people take photos in front of it, well the photo is of the people and the art could be fair use context. If they take that piece of art and copy it and put it on a book cover .. now that's not right.

I've never actually bought art at an art fair, but I was with a friend who bought a ballet drawing once. I don't remember her signing anything to indicate use. She used her debit card and bought a painting which later hung up on her wall.

I feel like if this happened today, this wouldn't be acceptable. If I sell you a piece of art, you don't get the copyright for that art. You can sell the art like you sell socks, and the person who buys that art can resell it later. But you can't make copies and sell them as your own. Or stand in front of it, take a photo, and use it as a book cover claiming fair use.

If there is no contract, you haven't signed over your rights, and we should default on the side artists rights side of it.

Re: My Dad Painted Jethro Tull’s ‘Aqualung’ Cover and It’s Haunted Him

#26

Post by cromulent »

DrScump wrote: post #19

Raphael Ravenscroft, who played the famous saxophone parts on Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street.", was paid only 27 pounds... and that cheque allegedly bounced. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandpopfeatures...

Clare Torry was paid £30 for her vocals on Pink Floyds The Great Gig in the Sky but 30 years later she was given a settlement for vocal composition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gig_in_the_Sky

Re: My Dad Painted Jethro Tull’s ‘Aqualung’ Cover and It’s Haunted Him

#27

Post by thaumasiotes »

djsumdog wrote: post #25
legitster wrote: post #16

I couldn't imagine getting so caught up in one piece of work. I'd like to imagine I would have just immediately turned around and told everyone I was the guy who made the cover for Aqualung and focus my energy on the next project. Also, it's very presumptive to assume I deserve a cut of your project just because it is successful. Not only do I claim my artwork had something to do with it (I doubt many people cared mu…

If you sell a man or women a piece of artwork, yes they can put it up in their home and people can see it. If people take photos in front of it, well the photo is of the people and the art could be fair use context. If they take that piece of art and copy it and put it on a book cover .. now that's not right. I've never actually bought art at an art fair, but I was with a friend who bought a ballet drawing once. I do…

> If you sell a man or women a piece of artwork, yes they can put it up in their home and people can see it.

> If they take that piece of art and copy it and put it on a book cover .. now that's not right.

...where exactly do you think book covers come from?

> If I sell you a piece of art, you don't get the copyright for that art.

If you sell me art that I'm going to use for a book cover, I will in fact get the copyright for that art. There's no other way for me to handle that.

Re: My Dad Painted Jethro Tull’s ‘Aqualung’ Cover and It’s Haunted Him

#29

Post by cwyers »

The whole article seems to vastly overstate how important the cover art was to the financial success of the album. People rarely buy t-shirts of an album cover because they really like the artwork in isolation; it's very often because it reminds them of the songs on the album.

Re: My Dad Painted Jethro Tull’s ‘Aqualung’ Cover and It’s Haunted Him

#30

Post by tyng »

I work in the realm of public art projects and thus have collaborated with a lot of artists, mostly painters and sculpters. I must say the success of any piece of artwork - especially the ones created with the public in mind - is not the work of a single man or woman, but the result of the collaboration of a team of professionals - designers, marketers, financiers, metal bashers, crane operators, all the way down to the assistant who helped review the contracts.

So a deal is a deal, if one agrees to the terms of a deal (oral or written), it must be honoured, otherwise there will be no collaboration. Imagine the marketer who helped putting the project on every headline turns around to ask for an extra cut of the success? Not possible, but he/she can certainly charge a higher fee for the next project.

Nowadays artists are much more educated about the value of copyright and we as art consultants/project coordinators help intermediate how deals are structured, so the value of the artist's work is properly recognised and rewarded.

As others have commented, success builds upon success, one must be able to see the bigger picture to be successful in any career pursued.

Post reply on HN