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A Conversation with Taj Mahal (continued)
TM: But the point is that the music should be out there. They don't have enough live venues anymore. There's the big control. I mean, SFX, all these big--what's that, Clear Channel?
PM: Clear Channel, yeah.
TM: I mean, these guys--the pyramid stacks up and moves over to Universal, and then it goes up to Seagram's and similar conglomerates. So they own the radio stations, they own all of this stuff like this. Hey, you know, and they just got greedy. Not just now, but they've always been real greedy about it. They don't want to share. They're complaining about, "We're losing revenue." Well, they never worried about that when they gave Marvin Gaye a three percent part of the music that he brought to them--or six percent to musicians like myself, when we had to fight and when somebody said eight or ten percent they was acting as if we were really asking for the world. What about fifty/fifty? I mean, even Michael Jackson, I don't care how big a king of pop he is, he don't get fifty/fifty.
PM: No.
TM: No. He gets 25%. And that's it. That's crazy. Ford Motor Company couldn't afford to have ten cars and only one of them going to come through. And why, with the practices that are happening within the music industry, doesn't the government get involved? They got their nose stuck up everything else. I mean, this is crazy. These are American citizens and the legal system of the United States is being used to enslave them. And this is not just about black people. This is about all the people who are making music. I think, essentially, at the bottom of it, they think it happens to you for free, so therefore they should take it for free.
PM: It's interesting on the corporate and more yuppie side that Steve Jobs of Apple finally made it available for people who were afraid to download tunes for free to buy them for ninety-nine cents.
TM: Right, exactly.
PM: And did you see where in 16 days he did two million dollars?
TM: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, because I mean, people went like, "Oh, well, gee, maybe this is not such a bad idea after all. Ninety-nine cents and I get what I want? Sure, I don't mind that."
PM: "And then I don't got to think that I'm ripping somebody off."
TM: Right, or worry about that. And then there's the other people who don't care. I mean, right now, they'll do that. I'm sure they'd pay--at ninety-nine cents, you probably would get a lot more people aboard. That way you get twelve songs for twelve bucks, instead of twelve songs and three you like and the other nine songs you don't like, or don't care about, because you're buying the artist. And the record company doesn't understand--I mean, they're pimping the artist. That's what those kids are buying. And they're not going to pay once they see on VH-1 how they're being ripped off, and the kind of absolute audacity these guys are trying to work under.
PM: Download-ability kind of puts it in the consumer's power.
TM: Right, right.
PM: It's just like, "Okay, if you're going to put out CDs with two good songs, I'm just going to buy those two songs."
TM: That's right. "It costs me two bucks, and I'm happy. And I can make as many of them as I want them." And that's fine. I think that's great.
PM: So you've recorded with Caribbean musicians, African musicians, Indian musicians, Hawaiian musicians.
TM: Uh-huh.
PM: It's unbelievable. Are there any other global grooves in your sights?
TM: Oh, there are. There are tons, man. The music is never done. I mean, some people, they would have been happy just to get to the Caribbean groove, and that would have been their thing for the rest of their life. But I figure that while we're moving, let's keep moving, because at some point it's going to be like, okay, I've been there and done that, but boy am I glad that I did that. Now I can look back and say I didn't wait for nobody to give me a high five and say, "Well, all right, you can go now." I just went. At some point I may stop wanting to play music for a bunch of years and just kind of chill out. I mean, I've done this really pretty solidly 40 years.
PM: Right.
TM: There's other things to do in this life, and I got to stop trying to live in between the raindrops. continue
