The Day the Music Burned

UMG's lawyers are having a fine day, I'm sure. This was a really rough read, but gripping. Scary to realize how fast this stuff can disappear.

It is sad to read this. The decline of the SACD format aside, this is another reason we won’t ever get more high-definition reissues of Coltrane’s Impulse albums than we already have.

Most countries in Europe, I imagine, would’ve already declared these recordings historic and placed them under preservation laws funded by the government. Would America do the same?

the Eagles are mentioned in the apocalyptically large and awful list of artists mentioned from the article

mong the incinerated Decca masters were recordings by titanic figures in American music: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland. The tape masters for Billie Holiday’s Decca catalog were most likely lost in total. The Decca masters also included recordings by such greats as Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five and Patsy Cline.

The fire most likely claimed most of Chuck Berry’s Chess masters and multitrack masters, a body of work that constitutes Berry’s greatest recordings. The destroyed Chess masters encompassed nearly everything else recorded for the label and its subsidiaries, including most of the Chess output of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, Bo Diddley, Etta James, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy and Little Walter. Also very likely lost were master tapes of the first commercially released material by Aretha Franklin, recorded when she was a young teenager performing in the church services of her father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin, who made dozens of albums for Chess and its sublabels.

Virtually all of Buddy Holly’s masters were lost in the fire. Most of John Coltrane’s Impulse masters were lost, as were masters for treasured Impulse releases by Ellington, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Alice Coltrane, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders and other jazz greats.

...

The list of destroyed single and album masters takes in titles by dozens of legendary artists, a genre-spanning who’s who of 20th- and 21st-century popular music. It includes recordings by Benny Goodman, Cab Calloway, the Andrews Sisters, the Ink Spots, the Mills Brothers, Lionel Hampton, Ray Charles, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Clara Ward, Sammy Davis Jr., Les Paul, Fats Domino, Big Mama Thornton, Burl Ives, the Weavers, Kitty Wells, Ernest Tubb, Lefty Frizzell, Loretta Lynn, George Jones, Merle Haggard, Bobby (Blue) Bland, B.B. King, Ike Turner, the Four Tops, Quincy Jones, Burt Bacharach, Joan Baez, Neil Diamond, Sonny and Cher, the Mamas and the Papas, Joni Mitchell, Captain Beefheart, Cat Stevens, the Carpenters, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Al Green, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Elton John, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Buffett, the Eagles, Don Henley, Aerosmith, Steely Dan, Iggy Pop, Rufus and Chaka Khan, Barry White, Patti LaBelle, Yoko Ono, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Police, Sting, George Strait, Steve Earle, R.E.M., Janet Jackson, Eric B. and Rakim, New Edition, Bobby Brown, Guns N’ Roses, Queen Latifah, Mary J. Blige, Sonic Youth, No Doubt, Nine Inch Nails, Snoop Dogg, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Hole, Beck, Sheryl Crow, Tupac Shakur, Eminem, 50 Cent and the Roots.

(the comments are also full of "why didn't they digitize them?" which is an especially bleak chaser, considering 50 million digital songs were reported lost in a separate incident just two months ago)

That's weird. The Eagles' catalogue is with Warner Music, who weren't using that wearhouse.

holy shit, this is horrifying

The REM tweet and Hole comment sort of confirm what I was thinking while I was reading that I bet most of these artist have no clue this happened

Yes, and Geoff Downes trying to locate the masters for his own album, completely unaware that they may have went up in smoke. Clearly, nobody told him that it might have even been a possibility.

Unsurprisingly, there seems to be very real tears shed over this over at the Hoffman boards. An effect of this, of course, is that a lot of recordings issued post-2008 on reissue labels for audiophiles may not have come from first generation masters, which is very embarrassing for those labels.

Most countries in Europe, I imagine, would’ve already declared these recordings historic and placed them under preservation laws funded by the government. Would America do the same?

― Naive Teen Idol, Tuesday, June 11, 2019 10:44 PM (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

From my research into early recordings for centuries of sound, easily the best archive of acoustic era recordings is that of UCSB, in terms of scope of collection, preservation quality and ease of access for the public, there is nothing even approaching it anywhere in Europe. I love the British Library, but they have nothing to compare. UCSB is what, 100 miles from the Universal Studios lot? So I think this is less to do with the lack of a national culture of preservation, and more to do with these assholes at UMG.

This Twitter thread is interesting:

Looking back, the massive loss of music master tapes at Universal seems like a secret hiding in plain sight. The label's reissue division slowed considerably in the past decade, releasing very few of the deluxe and expanded editions they offered during the 2000s.

— Stephen Thomas Erlewine (@sterlewine) June 11, 2019

What it made me think about is that the recent cheapo catalog boxes, 5 CDs for $20, which started rolling out in roughly 2010-2011, all came from the other two majors, Sony ("Original Albums Series") and WMG ("Original Album Classics") - Universal never had their own line like those, and maybe this was why.

An effect of this, of course, is that a lot of recordings issued post-2008 on reissue labels for audiophiles may not have come from first generation masters, which is very embarrassing for those labels.

I was wondering about this. Sundazed, for instance, has done a ton of UMG reissues on vinyl and CD in last several years that were pitched as coming from original tapes and such.

XP UMG did a number of those boxes, usually branded "# of Great Albums" (the number usually being 3-5), but they weren't as widely marketed, and some of them were poorly put together (like, say, three KISS or Skynyrd albums paired w/Greatest Hits covering the same period).

xp yeah and at least the mono Safe As Milk was a total hack job/scam:

http://www.zappateers.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=30559

XP Those UMG boxes were also pretty much exclusively Rock and R&B albums that had been remastered prior to the fire.

the fire actually explains a lot about why that particular reissue (Safe As Milk) was so badly botched, they had nothing to work with

Yeah I'm not sure that the situation is much better in Europe. First there's WW2 where most efforts were made to save old works, and also after that you read story after story of wiped and reused tapes, water damage (like the recent Bob Marley finds), etc.

This is like the saddest thing I have ever read

I brought this up over on a Sonic Youth thread not too long ago, but I had looked into the library of UMG Deluxe Editions, which did slow down to a halt Stateside in the early '10s. The line kept going for a few more healthy years in the UK, but with almost exclusively UK artists (Thin Lizzy, Sandy Denny, Uriah Heap etc.) whose tapes presumably weren't stateside.

Chronological Discogs List of UMG Deluxe Editions

Most of the last several pages are European Artists/Editions.

That’s five of my albums up in smoke

— Maria Mckee (@realmariamckee) June 12, 2019

Yeah reading between the lines of the article it seems pretty clear that UMG had a ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ policy with regard to artists and their tapes - some seem to know, but seems like UMG wasn’t proactively informing artists who were affected. Like all coverups, now it seems like the blowback from having kept it secret all these years will be worse than if they had just come clean in the first place.

Something I’m curious about (and I may have missed it in the article) is to what extent NBCU — owner of the studio lot — was on the hook to UMG (the tenant) for the damage caused by NBCU’s fire.

UMG sued NBCU over the fire, and they eventually came to a settlement. In the article she says that most of the info that’s been made public about the fire was from various documents from the court case.

Ah, yeah — thanks. Then I guess on some level I wonder why UMG went to such lengths to cover it up, rather than point fingers at NBCU and say “it’s their fault.” I guess the fact they had to sue answers that question to some degree.

And having been involved in a corporate separation, I know how the paperwork between former sister entities (which are now unrelated) can be thin...

Nirvana's bassist, responding to a question about the whereabouts of the Nevermind masters. https://t.co/R4mQdMo4HR

— Jody Rosen (@jodyrosen) June 12, 2019

For everyone asking why Do You Want More & Illdelph Halflife wont get reissue treatment https://t.co/Vs0ykRcyAK

— Questlove De La Rose (@questlove) June 11, 2019

Doesn’t sound good for R.E.M.

They sent someone to check out the vault log and then it hit them: B-F & O-S artists took a hit the most. I think everything else was salvaged

— Questlove De La Rose (@questlove) June 11, 2019

this is so terrible

The Curse of The First Letter!

If true, than Maria McKee and Lone Justice should be okay?

N(irvana) comes before O

The Nirvana thing is weird, because Nevermind and In Utero were among the last UMG Deluxe editions released stateside earlier this decade. What did they use for those?

I wonder though if Novoselic is merely referring to the multitracks when he says "Masters".

That said, I can see now why the label didn't proceed with seemingly No-Brainer Special Editions of stuff like Live Through This and Tragic Kingdom.

OK, so here's a question: Tom Petty is listed as an artist affected, but his estate just released that giant boxed set of unreleased material. Was that sourced from somewhere else?

I'm glad y'all are asking these questions because I was thinking the same thing last night wrt REM and all of their recent deluxe remasters.

I also wondered the Nirvana thing. Questlove’s info could be incomplete. That said, the statement that UMG issued in its defense y’day:

...goes on to cite “the tens of thousands of back catalog recordings that we have already issued in recent years – including master-quality, high-resolution, audiophile versions of many recordings that the story claims were ‘destroyed’...

Hmm, "master-quality" does not equal "directly sourced from the original master tapes"...

Yeah, they’re obv. still being slippery... But somehow they did the Nirvana reissue, maybe they had made special dubs of those masters?

all three of those adjectives modifying "versions" are suspect

my impression is that the real loss is things we've never heard and now never will, artists known and largely unknown.

Regarding their defense, to what degree is this "master quality" business true? We've had high fidelity digital for years. So why are there constantly remasters and remixes of relatively recent recordings? The fidelity of the transfer doesn't necessarily speak to its quality, if I'm getting the picture at all.

Wonder if they would've done digital backups of all isolated tracks for things they have reissued recently. If consumers are holding the best of the best that still exists of all this stuff... that's nuts

"many" is also suspect

Regarding post-2008 deluxe editions and remasters, if they're newly-remastered, we don't know what tapes were used, despite what's on the packaging; there's been numerous reissues since the beginning of the CD era touted as "from the original master tapes!" that weren't. And the bands and producers might not even know -- they may have tried to locate the two-track masters only to be given a safety copy or other low-generation copy and told it was the "best available source."

The fire mostly destroyed two-track masters, not multitracks (though there are apparently exceptions, like the possibility the article mentioned of Steely Dan multitracks of unreleased songs supposedly destroyed). So if the R.E.M. and Petty releases contained unreleased material, those could have come from multitracks that were never mixed down, and that were never in the UMG vault. If they included live material, those tapes might've been held onto by the bands/management/someone else rather than the label -- the 1984 Chicago show on the Reckoning deluxe was recorded for a local radio station, and it seems unlikely that I.R.S. would own that tape.

It’s impossible to itemize, precisely, what music was on each tape or hard drive in the vault, which had no comprehensive inventory.

my impression is that the real loss is things we've never heard and now never will, artists known and largely unknown.

It’s impossible to itemize, precisely, what music was on each tape or hard drive in the vault, which had no comprehensive inventory.

imo this whole thing says a lot about bad archival practice as well as mismanagement

Thanks Tarfumes. I'm getting multitracks and two track masters mixed up a bit.

The piece goes on about how playback technology lags recording technology. But are we now at a place where archivists consider digital transfers to capture the "full" content of master tape? To the extent that "remastering" in 10 and 20 years can be done from digital copies made today?

Asking for a friend's warehouse.

It’s odd to consider in the age of Trump and everything else going on, but this should absolutely compel the government to step in and declare remaining tapes historic artifacts – and fund their ongoing preservation. There’s no question if these were paintings this already would’ve been done.

But even taking into consideration that popular music hasn’t really been taken as seriously as art historically and (as noted previously) that Americans tend to be very laissez faire compared to other countries about stuff that actually is taken seriously, this shouldn’t be remotely controversial.

imo this whole thing says a lot about bad archival practice as well as mismanagement

Yeah, the Universal archivist is portrayed in a v sympathetic light, but I couldn’t help but think/wonder whether he really did the best job (or maybe he did the best he could).

There’s no question if these were paintings this already would’ve been done.

How, other than putting them in the Smithsonian or something?

It’s odd to consider in the age of Trump and everything else going on, but this should absolutely compel the government to step in and declare remaining tapes historic artifacts – and fund their ongoing preservation. There’s no question if these were paintings this already would’ve been done.

But even taking into consideration that popular music hasn’t really been taken as seriously as art historically and (as noted previously) that Americans tend to be very laissez faire compared to other countries about stuff that actually is taken seriously, this shouldn’t be remotely controversial.

― Naive Teen Idol, Wednesday, June 12, 2019 10:08 AM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

even if you discount everything else about the Trump administration, Donald Trump is probably in the lower 5th percentile of people caring about music

Full story here:

https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/universal-musics-chief-archivist-explains-companys-post-fire-artist-outreach-plan-exclusive-1203253708/

How the prospect of lawsuits concentrates the mind wonderfully.

speaking of odd headlines:

"Universal Music’s Chief Archivist Explains Company’s Post-Fire Artist Outreach Plan" would be more accurately rendered as "Universal Music’s Chief Archivist Explains Company’s Post-Article-About-Fire Artist Outreach Plan"

Ever so minor details!

I was not kidding with this post, this is an actual headline, via Alternative Nation

This is an actual headline about the Universal archive fire. NOT THAT YOU COULD TELL. pic.twitter.com/LZrdDZCyPS

— Ned Raggett (@NedRaggett) June 27, 2019

The power of the press

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2019/06/26/vivendis-sale-umg-indefinite-pause/

Every artist who has been cursing the majors' terrible inventory practices for decades must now be praying that they were so bad there still may be a chance their recordings survived.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobbyowsinski/2019/06/27/vivendi-feeling-the-heat-over-umg-music-vault-fire-as-shares-tumble/#1ea5bcebe6e6

finally read the articles, and thus, this thread

as i scrolled through the complete list of artists i thought to myself this is a bee ok post, guaranteed and lo(l)

I just noticed this obit. Mickey Kapp, who ran Kapp Records for many years, died on June 11. The masters for nearly the entire Kapp discography were destroyed in the June 2008 fire at the UMG vault on the Universal studios backlot. https://t.co/3fZqVRQcWF

— Jody Rosen (@jodyrosen) July 9, 2019

i dunno if you can beat "made mixtapes for astronauts" as an epitaph

UMG files motion to dismiss, arguing (among other things) that the destroyed tapes were its own property: https://variety.com/2019/music/news/universal-fire-motion-dismiss-soundgarden-hole-tupac-tom-petty-1203270567/

Also (FWIW), a long new memo from the label’s head archivist: https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/universal-music-fire-damage-update-masters-archivist-internal-memo-read-1203270621/

I suggest reading this thread from Jody Rosen in response:

In a new Variety piece, Universal Music Group offers an update on efforts to tally its losses in the fire that struck its Hollywood tape vault in 2008. UMG also pushes back—again—on @NYTmag reporting on the fire & losses incurred. https://t.co/e2MvM8A642

— Jody Rosen (@jodyrosen) July 17, 2019

As well as this separate follow-up tweet:

Hours after UMG pushes out a memo downplaying its losses in the '08 fire, its lawyers file a motion to dismiss lawsuit by artists...bc the statute of limitations has expired & after all UMG "publicly stated that hundreds of thousands of recordings were destroyed" in '09. Wild. pic.twitter.com/shsOCs3hFk

— Jody Rosen (@jodyrosen) July 18, 2019

New thread just now as well

Universal Fire update: I thought I'd devote a few tweets to highlighting some rather extraordinary discordances between the message that Universal Music Group is pushing in public statements & the assertions that the company has made & is continuing to make in legal filings.

— Jody Rosen (@jodyrosen) July 18, 2019

Separately but relatedish, this thread is making the rounds:

Warner Music Group has halted ALL archiving globally, except ultra-specific Abbey Road projects, until at least Oct 1. No indication was given if archiving would continue after that. Archivists received an email on July 1, indicating a 3-month minimum lay-off would begin July 10. pic.twitter.com/ZX6TzK2D7f

— Zachary Jaydon (@ZacharyJaydon) July 18, 2019

Internal documents provided to me, indicated archivists were to keep this information out of the press, & not to discuss past mastering projects or losses of Master Recordings, due to damaged or lost tapes, & acknowledged the company has over a million “assets” left to archive. pic.twitter.com/pSOTqBkHdp

— Zachary Jaydon (@ZacharyJaydon) July 18, 2019

“We do not need @JodyRosen calling,” indicating WMG are aware of the press that UMG is currently receiving, criticizing their lack of accountability for the 2008 fire that gutted the company of more than 150,000 Master Recordings from some of the best-selling artists in history. pic.twitter.com/kdNKz4Fd6e

— Zachary Jaydon (@ZacharyJaydon) July 18, 2019

Jody shared it but notes:

THREAD.

If true, this is quite weird. Also, I think it's fair to say, poorly timed. https://t.co/W0UxR0qU8F

— Jody Rosen (@jodyrosen) July 18, 2019

ffs, UMG is handling every aspect of this, and every subsequent step, in the dumbest way imaginable.

https://variety.com/2019/music/news/universal-music-fire-hole-many-suing-artists-masters-not-damaged-1203306883/

Hole is off the suit, other changes etc.

https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/universal-music-refutes-soundgarden-lawsuit-claims-2008-fire-dismissal-1203315143/

“We told you six years after it happened!”

More artists pull out of the lawsuit: https://variety.com/2020/biz/news/tupac-soundgarden-universal-music-fire-lawsuit-1203533645/

Everyone should stay in a lawsuit demanding their rights back due to mishandling of assets, rather than specific damages suffered

Jody Rosen of NY Times tweeted in response to Variety article: Next time UMG passes along an internal memo for publication, @Variety might require on-record answers to follow-up Qs. Here's 1: The vault destroyed in the '08 fire held 10s of 1000s of historic master recordings on the Decca & Chess labels. Any update on the fate of those tapes?