I have recently put this performance by the reincarnated Hatfield onto my walkman and have been listening to it as I walk through Hackney’s lovely parks, so I thought I would write a few lines about it and put it onto the site this week.
I actually posted this recording onto the site shortly after the philmillerthelegacy.com started up but within a couple of days I heard through the grapevine that Richard Sinclair and Alex Maguire had been planning to bring this performance out as a CD and were somewhat miffed that I had given it away for free (but not as a download). I knew from Phil that he had given a superior recording of it to Richard but as it had been recorded so long ago and no CD had appeared in the following 13 or so years, I had had no qualms about putting it into the public realm. Naturally I removed it from the site on the spot. It had only been on it a day or two.
So you can imagine how surprised I was, some 20+ years after the original performances, when I became aware of the CD Box Set of this recording, plus some demos that had been taken from Aymeric’s site, were on sale for £70 a pop from Richard and Alex via a company in Japan.
You would have thought they would have let me know. After all, Phil was playing on all the material and would have therefore been entitled to the performance rights payment this Box set would have generated, as would Pip. Before Phil died he had written a will bequeathing me all his intellectual property. Pip, unlike Phil, had no prior warning of his impending death and had probably not made similar provision for his heirs but was still morally, if not legally, intitled to his share.
Naturally I contacted Richard about this and was told by him that I and Pip’s heirs would of course receive free copies of the box set and 50% (25% each) of the money that had been handed over on the signing of the contract. He asked for my and the mother of Pip’s children’s bank accounts which I sent him.
It will not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Richard’s exaggerated sense of entitlement to hear that was the last I heard from Richard! (although his buddy Carlberg has gone to great lengths to tell me how broke Richard is. (As if that was something new!)
Anyway I hope you, and especially those of you who didn’t part with £70, will enjoy this free download.
HERM
The original Hatfield & The North line up of Phil Miller, Richard Sinclair and Pip Pyle with Alex Maguire repacing Dave Stewart on keyboards playing two consecutive gigs on the 1st and 2nd October 2005 in Club Citta, Tokyo.
First day 1st October
Second day 2nd October
Phil Miller – guitar
Richard Sinclair – bass
Alex Maguire – keyboards
Pip Pyle – drums
Thanks Herm for keeping the music alive! The original recordings that Phil and Richard made in Tokyo were misplaced somewhere along the way, and thought to be lost forever. When Shin Katayama, the event’s original promoter, discovered he still had 2-channel unmixed soundboard recordings—probably the live feeds given to the performers onstage—everyone was thrilled they had been discovered. Shin prepared the recordings, paid to have them released them on Vivid recordings, and promoted the release as a “Japan only” release. Richard’s involvement was little more than giving his approval. No hurt feelings were intended, only surprise and excitement that the concerts were no longer lost to the winds.
– “Buddy” Carlberg 😀