Feel the love

Reel Funk Inc split, but a couple of years later the singer signed up with a management company who loved our demo of 'Feel the Love' and wanted to re-record the song under the singer's name.

There was only one change required to the song - instead of 'Feel the Love' the refrain would be 'We are the Law'. They already had plans for the video shoot with the singer in a skimpy policewoman's outfit. These people were visionaries.

The manager offered to get the tune recorded at a London studio, using a top producer. As well as our royalties (when the song went massive - as industry rumour already suggested, we were told), Pete and I would be paid session rates for our time, and hotel bills covered.

At last! Great God Almighty! At Last! etc..

The reality was two all-night sessions in a Manchester cellar with a twat of a producer who was somebody's friend. In the end, Pete, the engineer and I were more or less in charge with the ever present manager throwing in his tuppence now and then. On the second night, the manager asked me to sign a hand-written sheet of A4 (in pencil) re: our copyright. I demurred and took it to a copyright lawyer. The lawyer re-drafted it and the manager demurred.

In the end we never got paid a penny, and the whole thing petered out in a series of increasingly acrimonious phone calls and faxes between the manager, our lawyer and me. I suggested that instead of session rates now we could be paid a sweetener out of the advance when it came: impossible, apparently. The manager declared that we had to sign up exclusively to his management company: bollocks to that.

And so on.

Our final communication (as recommended and worded by the lawyer) was along the lines that they could do what they wanted with the demo and all power to them, but we reserved our copyright and we'd see them at the champagne party.

Never heard from them again, but by then we had a £700 legal bill to pay.

Same as it ever was, eh?