Jerry Garcia Sued By Fellow Deceased Member of the Grateful Dead
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Artist:
TMZ reports the estate of Merle Saunders, the former keyboardist for the Grateful Dead, has filed a lawsuit disputing royalties for a 2004 live album. Saunders' estate claims they were not aware of the album's release, though they have equal rights to the music, and wants to be compensated over $100,000.
I suppose even the passing of rock legends doesn't stop the lawyers to just keep on truckin'.
This was originally posted on TwentyFourBit.com here.
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Comments (16)
i have no idea where i stand on this. at first i thought "not cool," but if merl earned it then it belongs to him. but the guy is dead so it doesnt really make much sense to me.
Hmmm-well if it was his money his estate-hopefully meaning his survivors and not just the lawyers, deserve the money.
Unfortunately, survivors and lawyers go hand in hand. Oh whatevs, the best part about this story to me is that if these guys were alive and still jamming they wouldn't give a damn.
classy
yeah .....i agree hyman. merl saunders probably didnt give a fuck about this and now his kids are broke so they are suing a dead guy. the coolest dead guy ever.
you know....(shakes head) ....smoke a bowl and sort it out.
i'm w/ dave and charley on this one...100k is nothing to garcia estate, so hopefully they can make it right and get the negative stuff overwith asap. just shows, no one is immune.
Merl wasn't in the Dead but I don't doubt that TMZ reported that he was. Hornsby was but... whatever.
He wasn't? Oh man, I better check it out. I suppose if he wasn't an official member, that's why his royalties are in question.
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Well, are the royalties for a Dead album because he did make albums with Jerry.
Oh, it was a live album. yeah that would explain why they never knew that it was released. Do you know what the album was? If it was a Dead Show and he sat in then it sounds shady. If it was a Garcia/Saunders album then it would be a lot more reasonable considering that he may have been one of the top two names drawing in sales.
Well, are the royalties for a Dead album because he did make albums with Jerry.
Oh, it was a live album. yeah that would explain why they never knew that it was released. Do you know what the album was? If it was a Dead Show and he sat in then it sounds shady. If it was a Garcia/Saunders album then it would be a lot more reasonable considering that he may have been one of the top two names drawing in sales.
sorry about the double post.
I did just read that it was a "2004 archival Garcia/Saunders release., Keystone Berkeley." So the family should have rights to it. Especially, if the album is still generating revenue which i'm sure that it probably is. I have the Keystone shows on vinyl if it is the same as the "Live at Keystone" releases. That is arguably one of Saunders' most well known albums. It probably is the most famous work he's done all around. I'm sure that rerelase pulled in a lot more cash in it's current version.
I'm not saying that it doesn't sound like a dick move for a family of one dead man to sue the family of his dead friend but, realistically, Jerry died in '95 which means that Jerry Garcia never made any money off of this album either. This means that, basically, someone sold Jerry's music and Merl's without hooking either of them up so the 2 artists could almost be left out of it all together. It's just a group of people suing another group for rights that they actually should have and of which they are only asking for their portion.
People are wondering how they would feel if they were still alive and I can pretty much guarantee that this scenario would never even had existed because Garcia would have just cut him in when it was released.
Thanks for the info, Dead C. I agree this whole problem would'nt have been a big deal if either of the two guys were still living. It's interesting how the the very idea of a jamband scene with people collaborating without worry becomes so complicated legally.
In that sense these awesome people might even be glad to have passed on before they had to deal with this stuff. One might even say grateful.
It's so sad that this had to happen.
I bet it has something to do with that last wife of Jerry's, Deborah Koons Garcia. I believe that she was the mastermind behind the "Pure Jerry" series that the disputed album is a part of.