The following is an excerpt of
an interview with "The Edge" and Negativland: E: But
again, the problem is it wasn't U2 that were being affected,
it was Island.
D: I don't know whether you know this
or not, but there has actually been a lot of press about
this situation, the Negativland record and the lawsuit...
E: I know you've really taken a kicking
and I'm really sorry about how it's all come out, Island
Records hasn't been affected, but we have gotten so much
shit in the media about all this, and it's really annoying.
D: That's what I think, and that's why
it was really, from your band's perspective, a totally wrong
move that the label took.
E: Yeah.
D: And I'm wondering, well, in the future
are you going to take more care about who your label sues
in your behalf?
E: That's actually not accurate, they
weren't suing you on our behalf. They were suing you on their
behalf.
D: No, I'm saying the public perception
is that they are suing us on your behalf.
M: The thing that was interesting was,
we thought: why wasn't it obvious to somebody at Island Records
that the amount of money they're going to make from us is
nothing, and that in the end they're only going to- whether
U2 is involved or not, it's going to, in the press it's going
to end up reflecting badly on the band. And we thought that's
so obvious that you'd think they would've just dropped it.
But also it felt as if they thought we were so tiny and infinitesimal
that no one would even care, we would just sort of drop off
the face of the earth once it was over.
E: I don't know, quite, I mean you really
have to ask them. I know that they probably reacted quickly
and then, maybe on the matter of principle, felt like, "Well,
we shouldn't be out of pocket for this. Of course damages
may be inappropriate and we'll forget about that, but why
should we be out of pocket?" And that's again the lawyers'
thing. Once you press that button...
D: Well, I think they should be out of
pocket because they made a mistake and they should pay for
it.
E: Ha ha ha. I'm sure they wouldn't see
it like that...but again, I can't talk for them, really.
M: I wanted to ask you a question which
I feel very strange doing, and we hadn't planned to ask you
this at all, but: We used to put out our records ourselves
on our own label. We did the whole do-it-yourself thing,
and then we were working with this much larger independent
label, SST, but we've decided now, looking at everything
that's happened and weighing the various- what we think is
going on in the world of music in general, we've decided
to go back to our own record label and doing it ourselves.
Click
here to read the whole thing. Click
here to go to Negativland's website.
Click
here to discuss this on our forums!
|
