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

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

#51

Post by [deleted] »

ygra wrote: post #36
thaumasiotes wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 copyr…

Isn't copyright non-transferrable? You'd get certain usage rights, but copyright will always remain with the original artist.

[deleted]

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

#52

Post by colordrops »

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…

Besides the obvious argument that there is no obligation to compensate beyond what the contract specifies, it's a bit presumptuous to take credit for the success of others because of a painting or some website coding. Jethro Tull's success was due to their music, and not the album cover. Facebook's success was due to Zuckerberg's savvy and not the amazing nature of the code.

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

#53

Post by srean »

laumars wrote: post #48
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…

Others have already echoed my thoughts on copyright, so I won't repeat that, but I do want to raise one other point you touched upon: > I doubt many people cared much about the album cover Back in the old days of 12 inch records, people did care about album covers. I mean yeah, the music obviously matters more but album artwork was actually pretty important as well. One of the things I feel we've lost with digital mu…

... and the liner notes.

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

#54

Post by tvmalsv »

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…

>> 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?

The GP still has it right. Paid for a task. Done. It would be different if he toiled away for 100 hours/week for no pay, with the hope of having a hit. As originally described, he has no more of a claim than the guy that made Zuck a sandwich at the food truck.

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

#55

Post by romwell »

tyng wrote: post #30

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…

>So a deal is a deal, if one agrees to the terms of a deal (oral or written), it must be honoured

Sure thing. The deal was for an album cover. Perhaps $1500 in 1970s money is a fair sum for that, even for an iconic album.

Did the deal also include T-shirts, posters, and exclusive prints of the said cover signed by the band's front man?

That's where the contention is. Some people would say yes - work for hire is work for hire. Some people would say no. Pre-1978 copyright law is one side, later versions - on the other.

A deal must be honored - so it was, and then it was not.

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

#56

Post by simonh »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #12
donatj wrote: post #2

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

There are certain revenue expectations in mind for any project. Any time something is wildly successful beyond that, I think everyone that made it deserves to split at least a few percent of the income.

That’s not a sustainable way to run an industry though. Who decides what constitutes wildly successful? Who decides how many percent and who gets what share of it? Whoever went on and did the work to make the project so successful would have had other costs in doing so, they must have budgeted it out, they might even sell on the rights to the project at some point as happened in this case. Is it fair to then hit the new owners with extra costs out of the blue when they already paid for full rights and appear to be fully legally entitled to them?

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

#57

Post by tvmalsv »

jancsika wrote: post #18
donatj wrote: post #2

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

This artist created something that got widely recognized, and the genesis of it (he alleges) was widely misrepresented by both Ellis and Anderson. Also, he got paid squat compared to what the album generated in sales. Unless you are Spock from Star Trek, you are going to have some feelings of frustration, indignation, and envy from that experience.

Doesn't matter to me what he got paid. If he wanted royalties, too, he should have negotiated that into the agreement, and he probably would have been paid even less of an upfront amount. He's not the one exposing himself to the risk involved with creating the project. By taking the fixed rate, he had a guaranteed return on his investment and didn't have to worry about the success or failure of the album.

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

#58

Post by RoiDuSilence »

mm4 wrote: post #14

never seen it before, never heard it before. I'm pretty sure that their case is as solid as the cult status they claim this pice has.

That's really just your own lack of culture. You should give it a listen, it's pretty good.

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

#59

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

This happened to an ex of mine. While we were together she was asked to do the album artwork for a top international-name stadium-filling band.

I persuaded her to charge £10k, which was around what she earned a year. She was going to charge much less. Neither of us considered future revenue from licensing or merchandise, so it was signed as a one-off work-for-hire deal. The manager still grumbled about how pushy she was being.

The imagery has appeared on countless merch items since. It’s hard to estimate the economic value, but it was surely a lot more than £10k.

She bought herself a new mattress and took a couple of weeks off.

Unlike OP’s artist, she never expected more. Creatively, it was a bit of a side project. But the truth is the band could have paid £5k or £10k a year in licensing fees without even noticing, so there’s something rather sad about it all.

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

#60

Post by ygra »

heretoo wrote: post #45
ygra wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't copyright non-transferrable? You'd get certain usage rights, but copyright will always remain with the original artist.

I think that is how it is in Switzerland. The "Urheber" is the person with the original copyright, but can hand over the usage rights to someone else, in turn losing them. [update: copyright in German might be like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_Germany ]

Ah, very dependent on the jurisdiction, then. I thought it was more or less similar everywhere.
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