Frank Ocean, Don Henley and Okkervil River; three artists you usually don’t hear in the same breath. Now all that has changed. Some words have been exchanged and it would appear that The Eagles’ Don Henley is sick of not being compensated for the use of his songs.
A few years ago Frank Ocean was nearly sued by Henley over the song “American Wedding” which was a part of his mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra. The song included a sample of arguably the most well known Eagles song, “Hotel California”. When this was brought to Ocean’s attention, he took to Tumblr to voice his opinion saying, “Ain’t this guy rich as fuck? Why sue the new guy? I didn’t make a dime off that song. I released it for free. If anything I’m paying homage.”
Henley then spoke about the incident in a recent interview accusing Mr. Ocean of stealing. Don Henley went on to say, “Mr Ocean doesn’t seem to understand US copyright law. Anyone who knows anything should know you cannot take a master track of a recording and write another song over the top of it. You just can’t do that. You can call it a tribute or whatever you want to call it, but it’s against the law.”
Okkervil River appear to be the latest target in Henley’s crosshairs, being forced to remove a cover of “The End of the Innocence” from their website, but then released it as a part of their free mixtape Golden Opportunites 3. In this cover, Okkervil River actually altered the lyrics of the original song and Don Henley had this to say: “You can’t re-write the lyrics to somebody else’s songs and record it and put it on the internet. I’m sorry, but it wasn’t an improvement. We were not impressed. So we simply had our legal team tell them to take it down and they got all huffy about it.”
Will Sheff of Okervill River took to the group’s Twitter to vent his frustrations.
I would be honored if Don Henley took one of my songs and re-wrote the lyrics and recorded it. That's how folk music works. Love you Don.
— Okkervil River (@okkervilriver) June 4, 2014
(Honestly I think copyright law is garbage that damages the culture. Some of the best art is built around (loving) theft & defacement.)
— Okkervil River (@okkervilriver) June 4, 2014
Artists should be allowed to pass ideas back & forth. It should less about if "stole" something, more abt if you made it original. 2 cents.
— Okkervil River (@okkervilriver) June 4, 2014
So much great painting/writing/folk/rap/blues creatively plagiarizes from others. Artists get this. Lawyers dwell on small details & don't.
— Okkervil River (@okkervilriver) June 4, 2014