Jello Biafra Quotes

Every time Paul and Gene use my makeup, they have to pay me a royalty check. I think they changed the makeup so they didn't have to pay me.

The band cannot sign to another label or even put out its own material unless they are released from their agreement, which never happens.

Anyway, Cat Stevens is never going to make much money out of us.

You just have to find a lawyer that won't let you sign certain things - and I mean the fine print, because I was gone from Phil Spector and signed with Gamble and Huff in Philadelphia, and Phil bought my record contract back from them.

Every time we buy a CD or download a song, the artist is paid for their work. You might not know that this isn't the case when a musician's work is played on the radio.

Not sure how I can be 'terminated' from a band that I founded, fronted and co-wrote many of their biggest hits. But that's something for the lawyers to figure out.

People will steal ideas and put them into songs.

After being replaced in Styx, everyone around me encouraged me to try and stop them legally. I just couldn't. It would have been like suing myself and I held out hope they'd ask me back. They toured under the STYX name for a year and a half before I initiated legal action. I didn't sue for money or use of the name. I simply wanted back in the band.

As an artist, your only way to battle your label if you have a discrepancy is to go to court. I don't understand why you can't both agree if you have an accounting problem to have a third party to assess the situation.

I wouldn't even say the internet is a gift and a curse for hip-hop. All types of music are bootlegged, including movies which are bootlegged.

I have very mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I’m concerned that the rampant downloading of my copyright-protected material over the Internet is severely eating into my album sales and having a decidedly adverse effect on my career. On the other hand, I can get all the Metallica songs I want for FREE! WOW!

This is the city that taught me how to write all of these cool songs. Yeah, you guys definitely need a royalty.

The day that music is taken for free by the majority is the day that the phrase "sell out" doesn't exist any more.

It may be a brief interruption - just a few seconds - but what if someone sitting near you is trying to make a decent bootleg? Did you ever think of that? Now all those street-corner copies are permanently defiled by your so-called 'emergency.' Don't be so damn selfish.

I think that there's always an assumption, when a band goes on hiatus or stops playing, that there's some acrimony brewing under the surface.

I think record companies are criminals.

My life's goal is to find a happy medium for sampling to be not only legal but for the right parties to benefit from it. There have to be sampling laws. The survival of hiphop is based on that.

Free downloads is something that I like to do its just not as publicised and it is the future of music.

In theory, when you're working with a record label, you're just borrowing their money. And that's basically how the record industry works, right? It's like, you borrow $100,000 from a record label, so you don't make any money until you make back that money for them. In theory, they have you held hostage, so you've got to do every little stupid thing that they want you to do.

The internet is a great thing but the worst thing that it brought to the music business was piracy and it's made making stuff available really difficult.

Sharing music is not a crime. It shouldn't be. There should be a deeper meaning to making music than just selling downloads.

I hate it when people just downright copy. I hate it.

The Sicilian Defence was our attempt at quickly fulfilling our contractual obligation after I Robot, Pyramid and Eve had been delivered. The album was rejected by Arista, not surprisingly, and we then renegotiated our deal for the future and the next album, The Turn of a Friendly Card. The Sicilian Defence album was never released and never will be, if I have anything to do with it. I have not heard it since it was finished. I hope the tapes no longer exist.

I don't think that the real enemy of the music industry is illegal downloading; I think the real enemy of the music industry is radio.

I don't pretend to be an expert on intellectual property law, but I do know one thing. If a music industry executive claims I should agree with their agenda because it will make me more money, I put my hand on my walletand check it after they leave, just to make sure nothing's missing.