January 03, 2000
Publication title: Report Newsmagazine, vol. 26, Iss. 45, pg. 24
Place: Edmonton
Writer: Unknown
Canadian chanteuse McLachlan wins in court and puts to rest doubts about her authorship
Daryl Neudorf is thanked in the liner notes of Sarah McLachlan’s debut album Touch for “inspiration.” For this inspiration, he was paid $3,000. Mr. Neudorf wanted more: song-writing credits. For this he would have been paid a further $30,000 – money Ms. McLachlan could easily afford. But the cost of this credit to Ms. McLachlan’s reputation would have been incalculable. After a bruising trial, her reputation remains intact, but her record label is $500,000 in legal fees poorer.
In 1987, Ms. McLachlan was the 19-year-old singer in a little-known Halifax band, October Game. The owners of a fledging Vancouver label, Nettwerk, saw greatness in her and lured her to Vancouver with a contract. Their prescience has been amply rewarded. Ms. McLachlan has sold upwards of 10 million records and is the impresario of the lucrative Lilith Fair concert tours.
Ms. McLachlan had not yet written any songs when Nettwerk signed her. By day she worked as a waitress and by night she worked at composition. Later that year Nettwerk introduced her to Daryl Neudorf, former drummer for 54-40, which would become one of Canada’s most successful bands years after he left it in 1986. He made her “demos,” the initial productions that serve as a template for the finished product.
In addition to “inspiration,” Mr. Neudorf is credited with “pre-production coordination and production assistance” on Touch. Mr. Neudorf has long claimed his contributions to “the Sarah project” were more substantial. He maintained that Ms. McLachlan’s composition skills had been so rudimentary she didn’t know the difference between a verse and chorus. “There was a core talent there that was begging to be tapped,” he testified. “She had a lot to show me, and I had a lot to show her, and we worked together developing songs.” Specifically, he claimed co-production of Touch and co-authorship of four songs.
Touch established Ms. McLachlan as one to watch, but it sold little. The dreamy, lovelorn and love-laden ballads of subsequent albums Fumbling Towards Ecstasy and Surfacing made her a feminist icon. Touch eventually sold 625,000 copies. Ms. McLachlan was rich but Mr. Neudorf felt ripped off. He sued.
Ms. McLachlan, whose appearances at B.C. Supreme Court last year were greeted by ecstatic young fans, testified, “Daryl has a very elevated…a deluded sense of what he did on this project.” On December 10, Justice Bruce Cohen agreed. He concluded that there are three conditions for songwriting credit: 1. The contribution must change the song substantially. 2. The contributor must be acknowledged at the time his contribution is made. 3. The acknowledgement must be made in writing at the time. The judge ruled that Mr. Neudorf’s claim failed his test and that he had acted only as an arranger.
Some have hailed Mr. Justice Cohen’s ruling as a landmark precedent, but other courts have held that the distinction between songwriting and arranging is not so clearcut. In 1998, for instance, the British Court of Appeal ruled that Morrissey and Johnny Marr of the band the Smiths must pay former drummer Mike Joyce 31 million pounds sterling in backdated royalties for his contributions to their albums.
On his website, legendary producer Tony Visconti declares, “The definition of what ‘writing’ is has changed over the years,” Describing his contribution to David Bowie’s The Man Who Sold The World, he explains, “Some songs were Bowie’s loose chord structures that [guitarist Mick] Ronson and I would whip together into final backing tracks. In the old days that was called ‘arranging.’ Nowadays that’s called co-writing. For instance, all the guitar and bass parts were written by Ronson and myself, so I was amused to hear ‘TMWSTW’ by Nirvana playing our exact parts and also seeing my bass part published in Guitar Player magazine with David Bowie given the credit.”
Credit is crucial to Sarah McLachlan’s credibility, argues Ira Robbins, editor of the Trouser Press Guide To ’90s Rock. “She is fighting an uphill battle against a male-dominated record industry that has always looked down its nose at women,” he says. He cites three recent examples: Shania Twain, mocked by many as a puppet of her husband, producer Mutt Lange; Alanis Morissette, the success of whose first album is ascribed routinely to collaborator Glen Ballard; and Courtney Love, whose songs are rumoured to have been written by her late husband, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, and, later, by her lover Billy Corgan.
“Sarah McLachlan is seen as a self-created singer-songwriter, a wholly original visionary,” Mr. Robbins says. “If it were proved that she needed a man’s help, she would be held up to ridicule.”
