FRAMESHIFT Project Mastermind Says SEBASTIAN BACH Was Properly Credited On New CD

Henning Pauly, the mastermind behind the FRAMESHIFT progressive rock project, has responded to former SKID ROW singer Sebastian Bach's accusations that Bach wasn't properly credited for his contributions to the recently issued "Frameshift — An Absence of Empathy" CD.

In a May 2 posting on his official web site, Bach claimed that hired to be the vocalist and co-writer for the "Frameshift" record — which he refers to as "the first-ever complete solo studio project I have ever released" — last November. "Originally, Henning's plan was to fly to my house to collaborate on all the lyrics and melodies for the record with me," Bach wrote. "I was totally into doing this, but I had a European tour already booked for December and I would not even be in the country until the last week of December. Henning was determined to start recording the vocals the first week of January, so I said to him, 'Come up with whatever ideas you can on your end, and whatever lyrics and melodies do not work for me, we can re-write when I get to California.' Henning agreed, and was completely fine with this. We were both totally excited, and were on our way. He collaborated with two talented, cool guys named Matt Cash (an elementary school teacher by day, musician by night) and Adam Evers. They came up with some incredible stuff.

"Henning's native tongue is German and although he speaks great English, he does not have a command of the language sufficient to write a whole CD of English lyrics by himself.

"I was very happy with what they came up with without me even being there. Out of 12 songs on the CD, five were 100 percent completely ready to record by me, lyrics and melodies that I could, and did, put 100 percent of my heart and soul into, without reservation. It would take SKID ROW two years to come up with five songs we could all agree on for a record. Henning, Matt and Adam accomplished this in about three weeks. Seven of the songs, however, needed to be re-written. I needed to change most of the phrasing, and re-write a lot of the lyrics and melodies in order for me to deliver the vocals with the conviction, passion, power, and emotion you have come to expect from me over the last 17 years or so. Henning and I came up with the final versions of the lyrics and melodies that ended up on the CD, and we busted our asses to come up with a CD we could both be proud of."

"Unfortunately, the CD has been intentionally released, without my approval, with incorrect songwriting credits. The last version I saw of the packaging, before the CD was available in stores, was this panel. All of the songwriting credits you see here were agreed to by Henning Pauly, myself, Shawn Gordon, and my attorney. The panel, created by Henning Pauly and sent to me for my approval by Shawn Gordon, contains the correct songwriting credits. Don't get me wrong — Henning is a brilliant musician who definitely wrote all the music and a lot of the lyrics and melodies on the record. He did NOT, however, write ALL the lyrics and melodies on the WHOLE record. All I am due by law is credit where credit is due. Under the songwriting credits it says 'All Songs Published Under Hendog Publishing.' Any musician who has been doing this for any significant amount of time can read these credits, and see that the publishing administrators credit would not be for just the one co-writer. This is incorrect. If someone co-writes a song, which is clearly indicated on the packaging, those individuals who helped write the song each get publishing royalties. The way this reads, is that Hendog Publishing (Henning Pauly) gets ALL the publishing for the whole record. This is incorrect. If someone agrees to a publishing agreement before recording a CD, that is a different situation. This actually was the case with the first SKID ROW album. Although what we signed then was by all standards an unequitable arrangement, the difference between that situation and 'Frameshift 2' is that I knew of the first SKID ROW album publishing arrangement before I recorded the first SKID ROW album."

Speaking exclusively to BLABBERMOUTH.NET on Wednesday (May 4),Henning Pauly gave his side of the story behind Sebastian's involvement with the making of the "Frameshift" album and explained the circumstances that led to the current dispute over songwriting credit.

With regards to Bach's claim that he was hired to be the vocalist and co-writer for the "Frameshift" record, Pauly said: "[Sebastian] has posted on his web site [in regards to the new 'Frameshift' album], 'the first-ever complete solo studio project I have ever released.' It is not — and I make this very clear — a Sebastian Bach solo album. It is a Henning Pauly project, entitled 'Frameshift', I pick different vocalists for different albums, and they do get paid handsomely, they do get a percentage, they get featured in the best way possible, they get a say, if it is something I would approve of in the writing process, if they make themselves available for this, but it is not, under any circumstances, his album. That is, I think, one of the biggest mistakes that Sebastian has made in assuming that — meaning, also some of the things he pointed at in terms of approval of mixes, approval of artwork... It is my CD and not his solo project. And he was hired for [it].

"Now, I know the experience of the people I've worked with, such as James LaBrie [DREAM THEATER], Michael Sadler [SAGA] and Sebastian Bach. I know he's got a big track record, so I wanted some input on some things. Not necessarily as co-writes, but I said, 'The music's all done, I would like to meet with you,' and at least for like three or four hours in an afternoon go through the material and see if anything jumps out at him, he can sing me a melody and we'll talk about it and maybe use it. So I wanted to go at the material completely unbiased and say, 'What do you hear? Let's maybe use some of it.'

"In two months, which was up to December, up to the second week of December, he could not find one afternoon where I could fly out to New Jersey and sit down with him that I finally said, 'That's OK. If you don't want to be involved in that way, or if you don't have time, then I will sit down with Matt and Adam and write everything, and we'll have it when you get here.' So I was open to this — it just never happened. And then we sat down and we wrote everything. He came in and said, 'Well, some things don't really go, I don't like this, I don't like this.' They were primarily little [things like], 'I don't like this word,' 'This phrase could be better.' And on several of them, I did agree. I said, for example, in the first song called 'Human Grain', he said, 'This doesn't work for me.' And I said, you know what? That line was always kind of iffy for me, so let's change it. And together we wrote something else. On one song, which is song number eight, 'Outcast', he said, 'I don't really like the chorus, it's not something I would like to sing,' so I said, 'OK, you know what, dude? Totally cool. Let's trash it.' We completely threw away the whole chorus and we sat in the studio together and developed something, which is why he got co-writes on those songs. On other songs, he basically — and this was my major problem in the studio with him — he stood behind the microphone and said, 'I don't like these lyrics.' And I said, 'I just don't like them, they don't speak to me.' So he basically changed the line around, oftentimes into something I was not happy with, and said, 'I sing it this way or I don't sing it.' Now, I have responsibilities to the people who financed the whole thing and the album needed to get done. I tried my best to be diplomatic about it and reason with him, but if Sebastian says, 'I don't do it,' he doesn't do it. So I had no other choice than to say, 'OK' — for me, making a step down in how good the lyrics were and let him change it. But those changes, even though they might have been made, were things like the sentence 'Unfaithful blood covers my bed,' he changed into 'Blood of the unfaithful,' which legally does not warrant a co-write.

"Basically, I think the idea for being mentioned as a co-writer, first of all, is to be… Before you get into it to agree upon it, 'OK, you're gonna get co-writes on this,' and also to really contribute something to the song that changes the meaning of it. So if you have a verse, which is about the fight between good and evil and you make it into something about babysitting, to be drastic about it. Which hasn't happened. Another thing about melodies, for example… In 'In An Empty Room', he did a major, beautiful vocal performance in the end, and took the melody and ad-libbed on it. An ad-lib does not constitute a co-write. He took the idea and went with it. I have said in several threads online that it can possibly be compared to an actor being on a set saying, 'I'd like my costume to be a little more like this, and I'd like to add one or two words to what I'm doing and maybe give it a French accent instead or a British accent.' Which happens all the time in the movie industry, but you don't see those actors being credited for a co-write on the screenplay. And this what happened: It was a finished piece of work that he came into to sing, he changed some things — sometimes with my approval, sometimes without — and then, after it being finished, he came back and said, 'I want co-writes on seven songs.'"

When asked about Sebastian's claim that a rough version of the CD booklet — which he says was "approved" by him — contained the "correct" songwriting credits, only to be replaced by the final version, which gave Bach credit for only two songs, Pauly said, "I can explain that. It was one or two weeks after the recording sessions. He writes me an e-mail with 'I want credit on these songs.' I wrote him a very, very long e-mail — maybe five pages — trying to get things out of the way so we can still be friends and work together again, because he asked me to produce and write his solo album, 'cause he was very excited about the music — we all are. That's still the point — the music is very strong. And I write him this very long e-mail pouring out my feelings, that he made me feel very sad and incompetent in the studio… basically, trying to get everything out in the open. Then I get him on the phone, and he wants to talk about credits. So I said, 'Well, Sebastian, if you had read my e-mail, I touched on some of the things.' And he said, oh he never read my e-mail. That was too much work for him and that stuff doesn't concern him. So I was very distraught about that because I thought that we would have a chance to remain friends and work together, if we just cleared some things. And then we got into an argument about the credit. I said he didn't do enough on these songs where he wanted credit to deserve it, and I want to give credit where credit is due, which is why he still gets credit on two songs. And then conversation went out of hand and that's as far as we got with the credits on that. I didn't wanna have this escalate, and I just said, 'Look, we need Sebastian to be happy, we would like Sebastian to be positive about this album in the press, he loves the music, I love the music, and frankly I don't really care about the credits — he can have them all. Although I believed that it was not fair. And so it ended up in the booklet with seven songs to his credit. But then he came back and said he wants publishing on all of them and he wants it under his publishing company. We said 'That's just not right.' We didn't understand this. Frankly, one reason, to be completely honest, why I just said, 'Give it to him, I can't deal with it,' it's because I was in a very bad place emotionally, two of my dogs had died, there were various things in my life going on where I just said, 'I don't wanna deal with problems like this, I'd rather be happy about it, so let's make him happy and maybe it makes me happy again.' And it ended up again in a rough cut of the booklet and then the situation through the next couple of weeks escalated to the point where we said 'We cannot give him everything he wants,' and they pushed us to the point where we said, 'Look, we will do what legally is… or what we think, at this point, are correct credits,' and those do appear in the booklet, which is two songs.

"I've said this numerous times… I might be wrong about this, I might be wrong about one or two of those songs that I didn't give him credit for, but it's not up to him or up to me to decide this. ASCAP has the people, and ASCAP can go look at the lyrics, I posted them on our web site, they can look at before and after versions, which I have — I have MP3s of Matt singing rough vocals when we wrote them — so it's all out in the open. Anyone can decide for themselves, and especially the people at ASCAP can rule about this. It's very simple. I'm not sayng it's all correct — it's up to the people at ASCAP, who pay out the performance royalties he's concerned about to decide what's right and wrong."

Regarding Sebastian's claim that the two songs that he was credited for in the final version of the CD do not include a credit to his publishing company, Pauly said, "I have the CD right here, and it says, 'All songs published under HP Publishing. Songs 1 and 8 also published under Get Off My Bach Productions Inc. (ASCAP)' So his publishing company is credited for those songs. And on the web it appears as if Sebastian got screwed, got no money from the label. Performance royalties, which he's interested in with publishing, is purely radio airplay. ASCAP does not collect mechanicals, which the label doesn't pay — we have a different deal with the label, and it's a very sweet deal, it's a very fair company. He's purely concerned about radio airplay which the label doesn’t pay. The label does not pay ASCAP royalties — ASCAP does, and they collect it from the radio stations. So that's what he's concerned about. The label did pay him a very nice sum of money to sing on it, which he got paid; the label is paying him a very nice percentage, which is, if I may say, better than any single bandmember would ever get. So for a vocalist he's getting paid very nicely on the CD sales and we're really looking at performance royalties of an album that will get almost no airplay whatsoever. But it's in the principle — I understand this — but literally we're talking about a few bucks here. I mean, not a few thousand, not a few hundred — a few dollars, which is what this is all about. But I understand it's about the principle and not about how much money it is."

Have you had any contact with Sebastian since he made the posting on his web site?

Henning Pauly: "No. When he asked me to write and produce his solo album, I was excited about this because I know he respects me as a musician, and we talked about it — where to go from there, how to do it, and we were getting into it — but this thing kind of put a damper on a lot of those things. But, I mean, if we could resolve it in some way, I would still be very open to work with him or write the music — whatever he would like to do, because I know he loves the music. And that is one message I wanna get out to the fans — I stand fully behind this album, he does [as well], and the discrepancies that we have really should have stayed behind closed doors. And I mean, no matter what is on the web, or whatever, the guy can sing, which is why he's on this. Make no mistake — he has a big name, but the one reason I picked him was because he can sing. James LaBrie asked me, 'Henning, for the new album' — and he heard some of the music — 'if you could pick from anyone in the world, no matter if he was affordable or alive or dead, who would you have sing the new album?' And I said, 'Well, James, very clearly Sebastian Bach, but that's never gonna happen, the guy's just way too big.' And James said, 'Well, let me give him a call.' And that's how the whole thing started. I mean, I love his vocals — there's no question about it."