$334,000 ?

Many bands have this issue.  Spandau Ballet & The Smiths have had highly publicised cases where the writers got the ca$h, even if the other band members made a significant contribution.

http://www.morrissey-solo.com/news/1999/May-19-1999.shtml

http://www.bestforbusiness.com/BusInfo/Factsheets/Sour.htm

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Originally posted by: Jules
"Yeah I've seen this before. As ArrGee says, there's always issues. Can't comment on the rest of the stuff, no-one else has every mentioned it and if we weren't there we'll never know."

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One band that never had this problem was Pulp.  They decided early on to have joint writing credits for all band members no matter how large/small the contribution was.  Hence they never had any squabbles over cash. 

Queen were another band who eventually took this line.  Apparently Freddie Mercury was always hacked off that Roger Taylor made as much as he did from Bohemian Rhapsody, as Taylor wrote the B-side. From The Miracle onwards, all songs were credited to Queen.  Freddie's illness prompted a change of heart. However it was never a massive problem for Queen as they all wrote songs and all got some percentage.

A lot of bands these days give a lyric credit to the singer/front man and a music credit to the rest.  This ensures they all get royalties.  In the past, some bands have ended up with a pair of rich members and a pair of poor ones.  Noddy Holder and Jim Lea wrote all of Slade's songs and got rich, whilst Don Powell and Dave Hill didn't make a bean.  And numerous bands who didn't write their own songs saw their income dry up very quickly, hence the numerous 60s, 70s and 80s acts out touring their old hits.

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Originally posted by: ArrGee
" Apart from his feeling of it being Bob's band and the, ahem, musical differences, was there any other reason for the fallout? From what I have read, Bob appears to respect Gerry's contribution, and Gerry is quite understanding of Bob's position now it is all in the past. I always thought Gerry's viewpoint was valid in that the Rats never established a unique sound (part of their appeal as well!) and that this halted their commercial progress post-Mondays."

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I'm afraid Gerry Cott was interviewed for the Daily Express newspaper recently (I think it's because his company, A-Z Animals, are doing stuff for the next Harry Potter movie - hooray!), and he said he's little time for Bob thesedays. I'd a bad feeling when he said otherwise to various Boomtown Rats fan sites that he was probably being polite at the time, as was always his way.

Gerry's departure was in no small part to the rest of the band treating him like dirt for voicing concerns that they were heading for disaster with "Mondo Bongo", and in the end he was right.

More to the point, they were allowing Bob to dominate things musically too much, despite the wealth of musical talent they had to hand. When a piece of pure self-indulgence like "Mood Mambo" appeared, you could see what he meant.

To be fair, Bob did try to placate Gerry, but it seems he misunderstood Gerry's motives for griping as being financial rather than 'artistic' - Man At The Top was made the B-Side of the first single (Banana Republic)from the new album (& thus the one guaranteed big seller), meaning that Bob & Gerry would be splitting the lion's share of the royalties for its success between them.

Remember that Gerry had been the initial driving force to get the band out gigging & earning cash in the first place, and by Bob's own admission he usually was the one who would question things in private rather than out loud in order to avoid discord.

It's easy in retrospect (as Bob did) to say that the band's problem was no distinct sound. But remember that the Stranglers and the Clash were both to alter their sounds enormously a year later, and enjoyed their highest peaks of success (in the latter case it was down to record company insistance after the "Sandanista" fiasco). The trouble wasn't no distinct sound - it was the switch to a particular sound, ie. Cod Reggae.

The major problem was that the band simply got lazy & allowed Bob too much slack so they were becoming Bob's backing band to all intensive purposes (incidentally, the same "one man band" thing was killing Ian Dury & the Blockheads at round about the same time, and about to destroy XTC as a successful band within 12 months). Switching from the hardline Robert John Lange to the lackadaisical Tony Visconti was a final nail in the coffin creatively (to emphasise the point, three of the songs from "V Deep" were in fact "Mondo Bongo" rejects - "Up All Night" (albeit re-recorded), "The Little Death" and "House On Fire"). Just to add to the impending disaster, Fachtna O'Kelly was being allowed to run other bands other than concentrating solely on the Rats (Bananarama, Clannad, etc) so his eye was not completely on the ball.

Still, as they say, easy to be wise after the event, and they weren't the only New Wave era band that went T up post 1981. In fact, most of them did!

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Originally posted by: Mark Boyle
" Gerry's departure was in no small part to the rest of the band treating him like dirt for voicing concerns that they were heading for disaster with "Mondo Bongo", and in the end he was right. More to the point, they were allowing Bob to dominate things musically too much, despite the wealth of musical talent they had to hand. When a piece of pure self-indulgence like "Mood Mambo" appeared, you could see what he meant.

It's easy in retrospect (as Bob did) to say that the band's problem was no distinct sound. Switching from the hardline Robert John Lange to the lackadaisical Tony Visconti was a final nail in the coffin creatively (to emphasise the point, three of the songs from "V Deep" were in fact "Mondo Bongo" rejects - "Up All Night" (albeit re-recorded), "The Little Death" and "House On Fire").

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Never read the Express, so missed all that!

Mondo Bongo had precious few guitar solos after three albums that were more or less dominated by them, and it was no surprise to me that Gerry Cott bailed out.

The sound thing was a bit of an issue after Surfacing, though commercially successful, it did not meet with any real critical acclaim, and though an evolution from Tonic, the songs weren't as strong.

Mondo Bongo had some very good moments, but also some pretty dire ones (Another Piece of Red!??!), and no doubt Mutt Lange would have thrown out at least half the songs. 

I would say that Mondo Bongo and V Deep were creative, but self-indulgent, but equally as well another Surfacing would not have gone down well.  Taking the best of those two albums would have created a pretty decent record, but the dilution of the best tracks with some fairly dire stuff didn't help either.

The trouble is that after Banana Republic no one really wanted to listen to the Rats.  As I remember Adam & the Ants had arrived along with the start of the New Romantic thing.  It quite possible that no matter how good Mondo Bongo or V Deep were the Rats were never going to be as big again.  Though as the Police proved with Ghost in the Machine & Synchronicity after the disater that was Zenyatta Mondatta and de doo doo doo, you can find a new audience.