left field liver

Steve Berlin here -Wow- thats the first time I've seen Pauls response and theres so much there that is not at all what happened. First off- I didn't bring any of this up recently- it came out of an interview I did for the release of our last record about 2 years ago, so I'm hardly stirring things up- it just seems like a lot of people have spread it around recently, and I'm happy gets a proper airing. His story really breaks down when he whines about Davids singing- remember they were instrumental jams so nobody was singing anything, nor were we expected to. What happened is exactly as I told it- Paul had nothing idea-wise, and after 2 miserable days of truly pointless jamming we started playing a Lobos track we had rehearsed briefly and had intended to prepare for our next record. Paul said :What's that? excitedly and we replied it was a track we had begun to put together- he says great lets do that, and it comes together in about 90 minutes. We thought we were clear as can be that it was one of our songs that we were playing- god knows it wasnt one of Pauls BECAUSE HE DIDNT HAVE ANY, EVER during the 48 hours we spent with him. As far as getting Dave to sing - that is a complete hallucination. Were were just making music- Paul told us he likes to take the tracks to his place in the Hamptons and throw a tennis ball at the wall while he comes up with rhymes- it was on 60 Minutes back then and I believe it shows him working on our song. We never thought that we were going to sing on it- we were just happy to be away from him and Roy the engineer. Then as far as the aftermath of the release- we thought it was an honest mistake and went in search of him or his representatives to square things. Months go by, the world is totally enraptured by the concept and the sound and our piddly comlaints are off the radar. We tried for months to find someone to get to Paul and register our complaint and the next thing we hear back which I have always thought came directly from Paul to Linda Clark, our manager at that time is this sentence-:You wanna sue me? Just try it ,, see what happens to you." We didnt know what to do but we didnt want to slug it out in court, and Lenny said if we stopped whining about it he would make it all better. Basically we then got strung along till we went in to make La Bamba and then it fell off our active radar as all his other stuff began happening, I also wryly note Pauls line about hearing nothing for months after it came out- we were calling everyone we knew trying to get it worked out before more copies got sold, and then we heard he had to re do the cover to give the African players their proper credit, so that made us even more furious. And this day I dont think we ever got a penny for the 2 days work, so the moral here is always have a legal agreement before you start collaborating, especially with known assholes.

In reply to BG's comment on David Byrne Does Paul Simon ("The World's Biggest Prick" According To Some Dude In Los Lobos) at April 19, 2008 3:41 AM
Score = 1