A Conversation with Beth Nielsen Chapman (continued)

PM: How many number ones have you written in your life?

BNC: Six, I think. And then several that have gone knocking around up in the top ten.

PM: That's amazing. That's a big number of number ones.

BNC: Well, I'm happy with it. [laughs]

PM: Any idea how many cuts have come from your deep catalog?

BNC: Wow, I don't know. It's probably less than you would think. The thing is that I've had a really nice batting average in terms of if somebody cut the song, it usually got on the record, and then the average for it being a single has been fairly decent, too. That's the best thing. It doesn't necessarily matter how many cuts you have, it matters more how many of them you can actually make money from. [laughs]

PM: Right.

BNC: I've become very involved in the whole issue of downloading. I just went to Washington.

PM: So I heard.

BNC: It's a crucial time. I mean, I brought my son with me, actually, as sort of representing the youth position. There are a lot of kids his age--and he deals with a lot of them and knows a lot of them--who just want to be able to download music for free, and they don't understand why they can't. They think that they're just stealing from the big bad record companies.

PM: Right. It's such a misunderstood situation.

BNC: Yes, it is. And so it's so important, I think, more than ever, right now, for us to just try to re-educate people as much as possible. I think the model is going to have to change. There's not going to be the same system of payment and the same royalty rates and stuff. But the fundamental thing that has to be put back in the barn is the obvious need for there to be compensation for the people who create the works that are the reason that you buy the iPod. [laughs] You're not going to walk around with an empty metal shell. And if you don't feed the people who create the music, there won't be very many people doing it.

PM: How about this 99 cents a song from iTunes paradigm, is that working? Is that paying the songwriters?

BNC: Well, it helps to show that there can be monumental income from this. One of the most telling things for me as a young songwriter was when I was first starting out, and I was eighteen, and I signed a really bad publishing deal, basically I signed a five-year artist deal/publishing deal that was like a slave contract. But I was so excited that somebody wanted me, and I was so excited that I was going to be a star. I mean, you could have just gone up to me--which this guy did--and said, "I'll take those songs." And I went, "Great! Have them." But the mentality of "I need to be famous" overriding "I need to make a living" is very temporary. As soon as you start to delve deeply into the life of being a creator of intellectual property, you find out that you could have millions of people who know who you are but if you're a songwriter and you don't go out and perform, you don't have any way of making a living, right? Obviously, if I become really famous as a singer, even if I give my songs away on the internet I can go do a concert and make money that way--as long as Clear Channel doesn't come after me.

[laughter]

BNC: But there is this great gap in awareness. People don't realize that there are many, many people who make their living as producers, engineers, all the musicians who do demos, just an incredible amount of people who lose their way of making a living. Songwriters like Harlan Howard or Irving Berlin, Otis Blackwell, people who didn't go out and perform, who gave us the most incredible music that we have, because they were able to make a living and concentrate on it and get really good at it.

So when I was eighteen and I found out that this guy wasn't going to do anything for me, I couldn't get out of the contract, went through this whole thing for two years. Finally, by virtue of some good fortune, Screen Gems bought my contract from him.

PM: Wow.

BNC: And I began to work with Charlie Feldman and the people at Screen Gems, who were a legitimate publishing company. And that's how I first started to come to Nashville. Screen Gems paid him $12,000 for my songs, fifty songs. And you could have knocked me over with a feather when I found out that somebody paid somebody else $12,000 for what I did all by myself, and that money passed me by completely, went right over my head. And I was like, "Wait a minute! Are you kidding? You paid $12,000 for those songs?" And they were like, "Yeah, and we're going to give you a weekly salary, because you're now going to write for us, and this is a legitimate publishing deal. And you're supposed to get paid, honey!"

PM: Wow.

BNC: To me that was an amazing realization. I saw that I needed to protect what I created, and to learn as much as possible about how to protect myself, because it is something of great value. And unfortunately, a lot of people who download songs don't think that it is. But they will learn that it is.

PM: Well, I hope they will, anyway.

BNC: Yes.

PM: Of that first batch that Screen Gems paid 12K for, did anything happen with any one of those songs?

BNC: Well, I recorded an album with Barry Beckett in 1979. It came out in 1980, on Capital Records. So I recorded ten of them.

[laughter]

BNC: And of course, they were my songs on the way to learning how to be a songwriter, which is even more amazing to me--that somebody actually found them valuable. And what they saw was my potential. My talent was there, and so they were interested in--

PM: Like publishers are supposed to.

BNC: Yeah, that's what they used to do.

PM: Yeah, right.

BNC: [laughs] Yeah, and I think Crystal Gayle actually recorded one of them, as well.

PM: Wow.

BNC: So, a little bit of action. But the next five years were much more of a growth period for me as a writer, and where I really started to get much more focused and in the ballpark.

PM: Right.   continue

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