Two members of The Smashing Pumpkins are suing Virgin Records America, claiming the label has screwed them out of ringtone fees and other stuff.
James Yoshinobu Iha and D'Arcy Wretzky-Brown claims in 2005, five years after the band broke up, Virgin negotiated a deal solely with frontman Billy Corgan for electronic transmissions (ringtones, download computer files, etc), without ever getting the consent of Iha or Wretzky-Brown.
In the suit, filed today in L.A. County Superior Court, the plaintiffs are seeking unspecified damages.
Celebrity Justice7/24/2008 6:57 PM PDT BY TMZ STAFF
Smashing Pumpkins Lose Their Virginity
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Reader Comments
(Page 1 of 3) | 1 | 2 | Most Recent | Next 15 Comments1.
Sue away... works for me. It's not surprising to me that Corgan would be that greedy.... after ALL - he WAS porking Courtney Love - queen of ALL gold diggers.
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2.
it's always the background players left
shouting for crumbs off an eaten table.
in more cases than not, it''s the TRUE talent that
wrote the music that owns most of the band name,
catalog, copyrights, publishing and merchandising.
there won't even be a
settlement in this case.
it's a filed case
without merit......
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4.
Everyone KNOWS BILLY CORGAN did everything in the band and played both of their instruments in the recording sessions that were used on the studio albums.. He is the musical GENIUS behind it all. They were glorified studio musician who came along for the ride that HE took them on.
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5.
Yeah, ring tones & yeah it's serious. Everytime someone downloaded a Pumpkin song, they didn't get the money for it.
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7.
doing coutrney love he should really go get himself tested for STD's and maybe if they are still seeing each other he should let vigin hang onto those fees before she tries to get her hands on them..REALLY!
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8.
lynneb88;
wipe up the spilled milk and
wash away the tears already.
you got and will
get nothing here......
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10.
I can't stand Corgan, but he is NOT someone you wanna mess with when it comes to business. Dude is all about it...he's just like Gene Simmons, he wants every penny owed to him and thensome. I respect him as a business-man, but personally I think he's a complete tool.
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11.
wow. you people know NOTHING about this band. Billy played alot of guitar and basstracks off Siamese Dream BUT NOT ALL OF IT. also, Iha co-wrote Soma and Mayonaise with Billy. and YES D'arcy DID play on Siamese Dream. other than that album, GISH, Pisces Iscariot, Mellon Collie, etc., were written by the band. If Virgin is using music from these albums up to Machina2 then IHA and D'arcy ARE OWED THE SAME AS BILLY AND JIMMY.
if you don't know, then you shouldn't say S*#T!!!!
you're all a bunch of losers.
also, i miss D'arcy sooooooooooooooooo much
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12.
to #11 does paul dennis reid ring a bell? one in the same i think. anyways once again tmz probably doesn not have all the facts so before we shoot down people again we should wait till they post 10 or more comments(ie-bale) before we all take the wrong side and then feel like shi???REALLY!!!
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15.
Matt, Matt, Matt......now while you are right about Iha co-writing a few songs off of Siamese Dream and then a few b-sides, all others (as every single liner note in every studio album the band has ever produced say) were written by Billy Corgan. Not "Smashing Pumpkins" as a collective, but Billy Corgan. As in, and this has been true for the past 20 years the band has existed, he owns the copyright and publishing on about 98% of the catalog. Whether or not Iha or D'arcy played on the album is damn near irrelevant. They do not have official songwriting credits, because....and here's the kicker...THEY DIDN'T WRITE THE SONGS. These arrangements have been in place since their first album.
So while they are within their rights to file breach of contract due to the emerging technology clause (i.e. yes, Virgin was contractually obligated to get their signatures to distribute digitally), they aren't owed much. Let me rephrase that: Iha isn't owed much (as you mentioned, he has co-writing credit on a few songs), D'arcy is owed nothing. She didn't write anything.
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