Ireland's Mr. Song: The Full Hot Press Interview with Brendan Graham

Not all our top songwriters are members of bands or part of the singer-songwriter community. Some are happy to serve as song providers for other artists, and let the performers and musicians do their jobs, while they supply the extraordinary raw materials.

Two of Brendan Graham’s songs have won Eurovision: one performed by Charlie McGettigan and Paul Harrington (‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Kids’); the other by Eimear Quinn. His tracks have been included on records all across the globe, and sold in the tens of millions. In Britain, one of his Eurovision winners, ‘The Voice’, was added to the GCSE music syllabus.

Meanwhile, ‘You Raise Me Up’ – co-written with Rolf Lovland – has become the “go-to” song for an extraordinary multitude of special occasions, including the Super Bowl and 9/11 commemorative events. Notably, US singing legend Johnny Mathis has included a version on his forthcoming album The Great New American Songbook, a remarkable accolade for a tune with no American creative involvement. Alongside two of Graham’s other songs, ‘You Raise Me Up’ was recently performed at Dublin Castle on Culture Night. And let’s not forget that he has scored considerable literary success with his Famine trilogy, courtesy of a deal with Harper Collins.

The man from Tipperary has also fought long and difficult battles on behalf of his fellow songwriters, not least as one of the first chairs of IMRO (the Irish Music Rights Organisation). However, he has scored many victories through his relentless pursuit of those who won’t give songwriters and composers their due – and he’s still battle-ready.

Jackie Hayden: The Internet has brought many new challenges for songwriters, not least in terms of getting paid for the use of their work. Do they need to be more pro-active?

Brendan Graham: I’ve been gone from IMRO for many years, but even before I got involved, I was always curious about royalty payments. I had come out of industry into songwriting, so I had that business side. I’d get a cheque and wonder what it was for, and why was I getting it now. And the information was always sparse.

You were involved in the setting up of IASC (Irish Association of Songwriters and Composers) and IMRO. What impact did they have?

We were real change-makers. I’m not saying that change isn’t there now, but I meet with Victor Finn, CEO of IMRO, about every six months, and I always have things to discuss with him, often based on personal experience. So I believe that the collection societies need to be driven by the members, because it’s our livelihood and the livelihoods of the songwriters coming after us, and we owe it to them to effect change.

And is that happening?

Well, the very successful songwriters have accountants and lawyers and so on, yet some of the really successful people that I talk to and work with, their knowledge of copyright and issues around copyright is minimal. And I’ve said it to them, “You owe it to yourself and to the general body of writers. You’re in a position to see and to understand what’s going on and to effect change.” It’s not happening enough. We’ve all been too passive.

If you could wave a magic wand, what are the main changes you’d make?

The changes I’d make relate to the digital world. Writers need to get involved by getting on boards, and then to be really active and vocal, and to ask what may appear to be the silly question. Sometimes creative people don’t like asking questions about income and money, as if such questions taint them. But the digital world is a total morass.

Can you give me an example?

I got a royalty statement a while back from BMI in the USA. (Broadcast Music Inc. one of the USA’s three performing rights organisations – JH.) It showed that in one quarter, I had 11 million YouTube plays – and my royalties for that came to about $200! That can’t be right. Every time I go online to look for anything, there’s a music video. I could go on to look at something in Uzbekistan, and there’s an ad playing before I get what I want. So music is used as the seductress, to attract people in. I’ve nothing against Google, YouTube, or anybody else making money, but it’s being totally abused.

In what way?

In a number of ways. The royalty being paid is just pitiful. There are non-disclosure agreements between the Internet providers and the music industry that we don’t know about, even though they involve our work. We don’t know if the mega record companies are taking a big lump sum from the bottom line and divvying it up. So if there’s no transparency, we don’t know what deals are being done on our behalf.

What else?

There’s the whole notion of what’s called The Safe Harbour, whereby anyone can put up anything using anybody’s music and claim, “I own nothing so please don’t sue me.” I’ve seen my songs used all over the internet, with hundreds of millions of hits, without my permission and without payment. I don’t believe that these usages can’t be measured and controlled and paid for. Equally, I don’t agree that the deals between the music industry and the internet companies should be non-disclosure. They are acting as our agents, so we have a right to know. But we don’t know what money is going to the record labels, or how they decide to distribute it to the music publishers and so on. And if anyone says it’s all done at arm’s length, it is in my eye!

Is this an area governments should be tackling, or is it stupid to think that governments will do anything?

The answer is yes to both questions! We haven’t got the lobbying power that the giant global internet providers have, and there’s massive lobbying going on. And the big stick gets used: it’s jobs, jobs, jobs! If you extrapolated that thinking into life in general, we’d get nowhere. But I’m not hopeful of change.

TD Willie Penrose lobbied recently to get more Irish music on radio, but that campaign seems to have wilted.

I was very supportive of that campaign, and Johnny Duhan’s efforts too. But while I think it would be a good thing, it’s not the most pressing matter facing Irish songwriters. Yes, we need to get our work played, but we also need to get paid. We work in a global market.

Is it naive to expect governments to show much interest in music, or the arts, when there aren’t many votes in it?

Well, I’m not sure if that’s true. Go back to Charlie Haughey’s time, and people like Michael D Higgins when he was a government minister. Michael D’s always been passionate about the arts. When I was chairman of IMRO, he came and spoke to us and was instrumental in enabling IMRO to become our main collection agency for songwriters. When the idea of having our own society was first mooted, we were all members of the London-based PRS (Performing Rights Society), which treated us like an outpost of the British Empire! They had a view that we would not be able to manage our own affairs, but they also represented British music publishers who got rights in Ireland, as a bonus to deals they were signing. That would not be the case were Ireland to be separate territory. So it was a slow process. Initially they let us set up as a collection society, but not a membership society.

What was the PRS attitude to these moves?

At one meeting in Dublin, the then chairman of PRS, Donald Mitchell, queried the viability of us having our own membership society by asking, “Where in Ireland would we find 12 wise heads to constitute an IMRO Board?” That was the first time I’d heard that view expressed, although we suspected it was a view they held anyway. Back then, whenever PRS meetings in London were discussing ‘Ireland’, we were kept outside the door! They even claimed that Irish members did not want to leave the PRS, but we challenged them to put that to a vote.

What role did Michael D actually play back then?

I went to Paris to meet with Jean-Loup Tournier of SACEM (France’s collection agency – JH), who had little time for the PRS or Britain in general. We were quite friendly, so I told him , “You lot let us down before during The Year of The French, when you didn’t come. But we need you now and you have to deliver this time.” I said every little tinpot country in the world has its own society, and we’re a country enjoying considerable music success, and we don’t. When he agreed to help us, I invited Michael D, who was then our Minister for Arts and Culture, to meet Tournier privately in Dublin. They both agreed Ireland should have its own sovereign collection agency. That changed the game. The Taoiseach got involved, as did the competitions authority. I chaired a members’ meeting in Kilmainham Gaol – think of the symbolism! Eventually we had a vote and something like 96% voted for our own society. PRS felt we weren’t up to running our own business and I see some similarities with the current Brexit discussions, in which Ireland is being treated in the same way.

Do you think Brexit will be good or bad for Irish songwriters?

I don’t think it’ll make any difference. It wouldn’t be high on my list of things to worry about. Songs don’t have borders.

Yet in spite of all these changes, songwriters are being conned out of their money?

I don’t think that’s too strong a word to use actually. Recently I saw that BMI has for the first time collected over a billion dollars – and that’s just one agency and relates only to performing rights. Add that to what ASCAP collect, and PRS, SACEM, and GEMA, and you’re into billions and billions. And we the songwriters only get a tiny peek through a very narrow slat in the door at what happens to that money. The longer I live, the more I see chunks of our money – earned by the creators – being given out to others, including local translators. Of course, it takes a lot of time and effort to go after these things. When you do, the first reaction you meet is to deny everything. In some cases, people initially have to fight their own society. But not many writers have the tenacity or the knowledge to do that.

Why is that?

It’s so hard for a songwriter to get his or her work out there and earn any money at all, that they may not have the energy for it. But I believe that without the guy sitting down with his guitar or at his piano creating songs, there would no industry. Sometimes we songwriters forget that and undervalue ourselves. I found a similar situation with Harper Collins when I was doing the book deal for my first novel, The Whitest Flower. I felt they thought they were doing me a big favour, but I told them, “You don’t have a business without writers, and I don’t have a business with you, so to me we’re on an equal footing, and we both need each other.” In the music industry, an attitude has been cultivated that was reflected in a conversation I had with a songwriter who got a track into a film. When he told me about it, I said, “I hope you got a good deal.” And he said, “Well I had to take what was on offer or they’d get somebody else.” I said, “But they didn’t come to you because you were second best.”

So artists are still being fed that line of dependency.

Yes. I’ve seen some of the contracts for those TV talent shows. These are dark age contracts – the deals are shocking, but they play on the artist’s need to get that break. I thought those kind of contracts were gone!

Presumably it’s that same attitude to artists that allows the so-called black box theory to operate. Is it just a theory or is it a reality?

It’s a reality. How does it work in favour of the big music industry companies to the detriment of songwriters?

(Pause) You’ll find in many publishing contracts, a section where it says that monies that cannot be specifically identified by title become non-distributable – and the term “black box” is used. I’ve seen this in contracts. This is not talked about much, because I don’t think many songwriters know about it and it’s become accepted. But with everything being digitised now, I don’t accept that every view on YouTube, or every play of music, cannot be identified. I just don’t accept it. I know the figure is in the gazillions, and somebody is counting it and somebody is getting paid, and they know what music is being used.

And what effect does the lack of transparency have?

Because of the lack of transparency of non-disclosure agreements, nobody knows what sums are paid over or for what songs. The whole thing is shrouded in a sort of secrecy behind many veils.

So your songs could be earning lots of money and you’re not getting any of it.

Well I earn and get paid, but there’s no doubt there are many, many opportunities for, shall we say, things to go astray. Part of the problem is that everything has exploded, and organisations now have to deal with multi-million multiplicities of information like never before. Another factor is that many companies are having to slim down their operations, so they may no longer have the real music industry people, who knew the songs in their catalogues inside out. Now you’re a cog in a very big wheel. I also think there’s a passive attitude, so that if you come looking for it they’ll find it, but if you don’t… In some cases it mightn’t be an active thing.

Can you give me an example?

I had situations where I had two songs on the same album and got paid for one, but didn’t get paid for the other. So this means having to go through many pages of a royalty statement, where you don’t have album titles, only catalogue numbers. It takes time.

If a publishing company receives a lump of money for the non-specific use of its catalogue, why not share that money, or the appropriate part of it, among the writers in the catalogue?

That’s a fair point.

So what stops them?

(Laughs) That’s a rhetorical question! What stops them? Self-interest, just like the banks have done, to hold onto the money, even if it’s not theirs. In the US, the big guys get the bulk of the money, and others whose work might be getting used get very little of the money. I’ve seen it with my own songs: some might be getting played, but I’m getting next to nothing, because it’s not happening in the top 100 venues, or with one of the top 100 grossing acts.

Why do American songwriters not join forces to attack that system?

I’ve always wondered about that. I’ve put it to American songwriters and even discussed the black box situation with them, but again they’re reluctant to take action, because they’re afraid that if they make too much noise, their songs won’t get on the albums. That happened to me. I was threatened in one particular case that my song wouldn’t be on the album unless I accepted certain terms. But I said, “Okay, don’t put it on the album”, and they did and I got the correct amount.

It gets back to my point that songwriters themselves must start asking questions and talking to each other and taking hard decisions. All the more so, when you see songwriters being leaned on to give away a share of their income just to get on the album.

Have you given in to that pressure?

Even when I was struggling I never gave in, because I felt that if I did it once, I’d be stuck with it.

Would you campaign to have the Artists’ Exemption reinstated?

Well it is still.

Yes, but not as it was.

That’s true. What it was was exceptionally generous, and we all benefited from it when we needed it. Song income can go up and down, so you can be reliant on it if you’re not doing gigs and other stuff. You can have a hit this year, and that’s it. It’s a very uneven life, but then so are many others. These days work in general can be very uneven, what with short-term contracts, minimum hours, and other factors. In a way, I don’t see why we as songwriters should be any different from the rest of the population. But I would like to see an averaging out of income over a number of years that would be fairer, rather than just being assessed on a year-by-year basis.

Looking back over your successes, is there one moment that stands out above all others?

(Long pause) One that jumps out was when Josh Groban sang ‘You Raise Me Up’ at half-time during the Super Bowl, and watching it on television and seeing the tears streaming down the faces of those mighty, fine athletes. I also fondly remember when it was sung as part of the commemoration for the Columbia space shuttle tragedy. It was very moving.

And going beyond ‘You Raise Me Up’?

Perhaps it was a different kind of moment, but it concerns my song ‘Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears.’ It’s about the girl Annie Moore, the first person through Ellis Island from a famine ship. When her true descendants were discovered they contacted me. They already knew the song and loved it. They found Annie had been buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave in Calvary Cemetery, in Queens in New York, and the family decided to erect a headstone there. They invited me over to be there. And I’m standing by the grave of this young woman I’d written a song about, as Ronan Tynan sang that song. It was totally emotional.

As an artist, what did you learn from that?

It brought home to be the idea of the journey of the song. It had started with me at home in my little room and my piano and writing paper, and you’re writing this song and you have no idea where it’ll go, or where it’ll take you once it goes out over the half-door of the house. There’s something magical about it – and you’ve no control over it. It’s like a gift, the circle of life coming right around.

We don’t do as well in Eurovision as we used to. Should we just accept that our time is past and let it go?

Oh Jackie, do we have to talk about this!

But is there anything that can be done?

If it isn’t relevant to us, we shouldn’t be entering it. It’s as simple as that. But if the national broadcaster thinks we should enter, then we should take it seriously. I don’t think the national broadcaster is taking it seriously.

Why?

I’ll tell you why. There are a few things about the system I totally disagree with. The whole notion that we have to have outside songwriters writing our songs is absolute rubbish. The song that was in last year was a disaster. It wasn’t even a Westlife b-side. There are loads of youngsters writing songs that are better than that. To re-establish some level of integrity, RTE should say it’s for Irish songwriters only, and if the songs are of a certain quality we’ll help you get them to the next level. I may have been one of the people who suggested the mentoring process a number of years ago. But that went off the rails. I had meant the mentors to be people who stood back and had no vested interest and would say, “That’s a great song up to there, now you need to do this or that with it.”

How did the mentoring process go off the rails?

The mentors became part of the songwriting process. So they had a vested interest. I also believe that the notion of a “Eurovision song” is a myth. The winner this year was a very good song. It was different. I don’t think my two winners were Eurovision songs. They were not written for Eurovision but as songs in their own right. I think we should go back to making it bigger, rather than it being in a corner of The Late Late Show. Some countries like Sweden have a massive competition for it. By doing that, RTE would be making a statement. Get the public back on board and interested again.

What drove RTE’s decision to allow non-Irish writers to enter?

I have no idea. The year I chaired the selection jury, I only agreed to do it on condition that the songs all came from Irish songwriters.

What about the theory that the public, while they’re very good at assessing a performance, are not really equipped to judge a song as such?

I like the system at the moment, where the voting is half a jury and the other half the public. Ultimately it’s the public who decide to like something and to buy it. If you left it to the music industry, you’d have all sorts of politics coming into it, big money and so on. So I don’t have a problem with the current judging system, but I think the Irish public should be more involved. I know there are financial constraints, but if we’re doing it at all, do it properly.

Would you enter next year?

No. Eurovision was hugely important to me financially. I was out of a job after being made redundant in 1993, and ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Kids’ won in 1994. There was also the honour of representing your country. It opened doors and lead on to other things, but you move on. What interests me now is combining songs and narrative. Entering Eurovision wouldn’t interest me.

What about the argument that it’s no longer a song competition anyway? There’s a huge emphasis on visuals.

There is a huge emphasis on the visuals, but ultimately over the last few years the best songs won. The song that won last year was very quiet in Portuguese and the singer just stood there and sang a beautiful song. If the song is right you don’t need penny-farthing bicycles.

And do you discount the notion of block voting?

I do. It’s another myth. The two years my songs won nobody talked about block voting. But there’s bound to be a certain ethnic connection between countries that are beside each other, and their acts are probably known to each other.

Do we use it as an excuse for not doing better?

Possibly. But for me it’s the song, the song, the song. It has to be right. Another thing I think is totally wrong is the tendency to pick the singer first and then look for a song to match, which means that writers are trying to strait-jacket their song to suit that particular singer. It doesn’t allow the freedom of expression to the work itself. Let’s get the song first and then get the right singer for it. Paul Harrington and Charlie McGettigan are always very generous in saying that they didn’t win, it was ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Kids’ that won, but they were totally the right artists for that song. Without them it wouldn’t have won.