All-Encompassing Van Halen New Album / Interscope Thread

[FORD]

The signing to Interscope is a great thing! They have some great names on that label and appear to be fair with the artists for the most part. I could give 2 shits about that turd Jimmy Iovine. What I am stoked about is the fact that Interscope loves to dish out concerts and retrospective vids along with or just after new releases. Hopefully that much closer to getting a full pro-shot 1980/1981 show. Or maybe something live from various tours and backstage and/or interview footage. Somehow I think Dave would be all about this as there are enough of us diehard CVH fans around for them to make a solid buck.

That would depend on whether Interscope only signed Van Halen for the new material, or whether they bought the rights to the back catalog as well. Universal Music Group is putting out a shit load of mega-remasters right now (see the Stones and U2 threads in House of Music) so it would be likely that such projects would eventually come from the Van Halen archives, provided Warner Brothers doesn't retain control of the material, and provided you can get Eddie to pull his head out of his ass and realize that the fans WANT to buy this stuff, and he will make enough money from it to not worry about having to pay Mike Sobolewski his share of the royalties from anything recorded in the old days.

[Vinnie Velvet]

That would depend on whether Interscope only signed Van Halen for the new material, or whether they bought the rights to the back catalog as well. Universal Music Group is putting out a shit load of mega-remasters right now (see the Stones and U2 threads in House of Music) so it would be likely that such projects would eventually come from the Van Halen archives, provided Warner Brothers doesn't retain control of the material, and provided you can get Eddie to pull his head out of his ass and realize that the fans WANT to buy this stuff, and he will make enough money from it to not worry about having to pay Mike Sobolewski his share of the royalties from anything recorded in the old days.

It would be interesting to know what the actual details of the deal entail.

[rocknrolldork]

That would depend on whether Interscope only signed Van Halen for the new material, or whether they bought the rights to the back catalog as well. Universal Music Group is putting out a shit load of mega-remasters right now (see the Stones and U2 threads in House of Music) so it would be likely that such projects would eventually come from the Van Halen archives, provided Warner Brothers doesn't retain control of the material, and provided you can get Eddie to pull his head out of his ass and realize that the fans WANT to buy this stuff, and he will make enough money from it to not worry about having to pay Mike Sobolewski his share of the royalties from anything recorded in the old days.

Good point.

[Va Beach VH Fan]

Would WB really want to relinquish the VH back catalog, though ??

[rocknrolldork]

Would WB really want to relinquish the VH back catalog, though ??

Prob not with new stuff coming out. They will make a good penny off the back catalog once people pick up on the new stuff.

[Hardrock69]

True dat. They would be stupid to unload the rights to the back catalog right now.

[jhale667]

True dat. They would be stupid to unload the rights to the back catalog right now.

WB would be idiots to give up the rights to the 6-pack; it's still a (albeit slightly smaller these days, but) cash-cow for them.

[Coyote]

Who knows, WMG might have some idiocy in the ranks, given the whole YouTube debacles etc...

[FORD]

WB already remastered the 6 pack 10 years ago. They put out a greatest hits package in 1996 with the 2 new songs, and another one in 2004 with those 3 godawful Hagar turds. They put together a TRUE Van Halen best of compilation in 2007 to coincide with the reunion announcement, then cancelled it at the last minute. After taking a huge loss on VDIII and another one on the 2004 compilation, I don't think WMG is all that committed to Van Halen anymore, in any capacity, which is probably why VH didn't sign a new deal with them. This being the case, they probably would let the back catalog go, since they probably wouldn't make much more money from it anyway. If Universal gave them a big chunk of money up front, it would probably be more attractive to the label than any potential sales of the old catalog that might result from the new album and tour in 2012.

[Hardrock69]

That's true as well.

We WILL see what happens, won't we?

Thing is...WB does not have to worry so much about "packaging" or physical media these days. Is VH on iTunes? Huge profit margin....upload an album, all you need to pay for is server maintenance and electricity....

[VHscraps]

WB can't really re-market the six-pack again unless they can come up with expanded editions. For the most part, I don't think they would be able to do that.

Why? Consider that most of those albums were wham-bam efforts, recorded in a few weeks at most. I really believe that for some of those albums there will be NO unreleased songs that were actually finished.

And when they took longer - say, three weeks - I believe that they worked in the studio only between Mon-Thurs (because Ted was Senior VP at Warners at the time, and also sometimes played drums/percussion if somebody like Randy Newman was playing in town). The point is, I think, that the band didn't cut much more in the way of songs, finished material, than actually came out.

The exceptions are probably the first album, 'Fair Warning', and '1984' (Ed went on record in late '83 in an interview saying they had cut 13 songs, they had finished 13 songs). Some of 'em probably ended up re-done for the '5150' album, who knows ...

So anyway, I don't think Warners will have much, if anything - else they would have done something with it at the time of the remasters, surely?

Could be that Ed owns his masters as well, in the aftermath of the WB contact expiring (didn't they actually end up out of contract in something like 2007, after letting the contract expire? That sound like the kind of things recording artists do to regain rights to master tapes, etc.)

If that was the case, then there could be extras available to Interscope.

Whatever the case may be, VH just need to look around at what everyone else has been doing for years. Even punk bands from the same era have put out a lot of product in the form of expanded editions. I can't think of any band of their stature and iconic status who have released so little of whatever material they have - be that video or music.

Unless there simply is nothing!

[DLR Bridge]

I'm thinking the past CVH left-overs will stay buttoned up until none of the original members are doing anything anymore. I doubt that with Wolf in the fold, they're going to start pulling out the rarities from years before his existence. If this Interscope deal is in fact a new lease on life for them, some of the unreleased nuggets that ony die hards are familiar with may stand a good chance of ending up on a new record, possibly all cannibalized. I'm looking at it as a win win situation for all of us. If there's bits and pieces of old stuff in there, great! If there's not and it's all new stuff, great!

[Hardrock69]

Well, consider that when Judas Priest released their expanded remastered editions, they only had I think 5 unreleased studio tracks. The rest were live tracks. Spread over what...20 albums?

VH or WB have all the Zero demos. Those would be great rarities to release. Not to mention any live stuff.

And, as they only would only have the 6 pack, they could easily dig up stuff to add to each one to make it an expanded edition. Some of the VH Zero tunes were really kickass!

[Heater]

From what I have heard, the new album is reminiscent of Fair Warning. Let's hope so, some of Ed's best playing is on that record.

[Rikk]

From what I have heard, the new album is reminiscent of Fair Warning. Let's hope so, some of Ed's best playing is on that record.

What the hell would you fucking know about it? Do you have a personal copy of the fucking album?