You don't want to know the number of intra-band disputes I've gotten involved in, usually as a court witness. Some of these have been given a great deal of publicity, like the disputes between Morrissey and the Smiths' bass player and drummer who felt their contribution to The Smiths was equal to Morrissey's. (A witless judge agreed, due at least in part to her dislike of Morrissey's sometimes prickly personality.) Even worse was how the musicians in the Dead Kennedys' were able to convince another witless judge to deprive Jello Biafra of the fruits of all his work-- a real tragedy. The cases I've been involved with which were eventually settled aren't allowed to be discussed publicly, like when O'Reilly and Fox paid $6.5 million dollars to Andrea Macris for their criminal behavior towards her.
As you may have heard, Violent Femmes bassist Brian Ritchie is suing singer Gordon Gano for various abuses, from allegedly being derprived by Gano of credits due him to being supplied with allegedly fishy accounting records, something very common in the music business, I might add. But the charge that most caught my eye was that Ritchie was furious over Gano's grant of permission to Wendy's to use "Blister in the Sun" for a commercial. How do you feel about bands' songs being used in commercials? Here they performing their biggest song live in London in 1984:
And here's the Wendy's commercial:
