Mike Stoodley on the financial issues that contributed to his departure from the Verlaines:

We'll tackle this as it was the reason Greg Cairns left the band after Ready to Fly, and why I knew then I would in time also leave. I think lots of people would be surprised at the extent that bands break up over money, but it doesn't get talked about much. This can get complicated, so I hope I get it about right. I believe there are 4 basic ways a band can make money - proceeds from live performances, royalties from "live" performances which come via APRA (eg radio, tv play), royalties from units sold which come from the record company, and publishing agreements. (We weren't big on merchandising.) Let's go through them.

We put any money made from gigs back into equipment and travel/accommodation, not our own pockets. I think maybe once in my 5½ years in the band we divvied up any gig money between ourselves. Touring NZ was a borderline money-making exercise - we could get reasonable guarantees from venues because we were an established band. I would guess that like a lot of FNun bands at the time, we were heavily dependant on getting University Orientation tours at the start of the year to get the bank balance up. Touring Australia or America was a huge money-losing exercise and would not have been possible without the help of firstly Flying Nun and then Slash.

1/ Royalties from APRA (Australasian Performing Rights Association) I think are calculated from radio and TV play lists and I've no idea what else. I think anyone who composes can register with APRA, every year they calculate who gets what and send a cheque out. Graeme is obviously registered and sure enough gets something now and again.

2/ Royalties from units sold. Well anyone who has had a record deal knows that you are basically in debt to the record company for the cost of the recording and production/promotion of the result, and you get something between 8-12% of the wholesale price of a record/CD. (My figures may be off, but you get the idea). And if the record company helps you with anything else, eg a tour, they have to recover those costs from sales before you get a sniff. So if you've clocked up thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in recording or touring, a band like the Verlaines is never going to sell enough units to cover that. So the record company licences the product to other labels, like FNun did with Homestead, and if they can recoup costs like that then the band might see something. I think every now and again we saw a few hundred dollars! FNun was not renowned for its paperwork, and unfortunately a lot of their bands probably believe to this day that they have been robbed of huge sums of money.

In my time in the band there was great debate as to whether the money from either APRA or the record company should go back into funding current band activities or be split up and sent out to all current and past members. Mostly we put it back into current activities on the grounds that a) we needed it to keep afloat b) those who were currently making the band happen were the reason any money came in at all and c) it became a nightmare to try and calculate who deserved how much.

3/ Publishing money. Well this is really what finished things off for myself and Greg. A songwriter signs a publishing deal with a publishing company and gets the publishing money. This seems to be a sort of holy grail for a songwriter, and I often heard things like "there's no money in gigging, it's all in publishing". Probably true, and I can vouch for the fact that we weren't going to get rich touring. What the songwriter does with publishing money is entirely at their discretion. In our context, that meant if Graeme signed a publishing deal, he got the payday and the rest of the band got nothing. At the time we're talking about here, Ready To Fly-era, he didn't have a deal, and none of us knew if he ever would or how much it might amount to. But he was very aware of it and actively looking for opportunities to get one, especially, and not surprisingly, in America where we all know the big $$ are. But he flatly refused to countenance the idea of sharing any future publishing money with the rest of the band, on the grounds that it was just compensation for a) his efforts over 10+ years b) bottom line, his creative vision and no one else's. Both are quite true and reasonable but I don't believe they are the whole story and this is where we differed.

Without a band there were no gigs, no career, and therefore no publishing for Graeme. The whole thing collapses, and you only have to look at the Chills rotating line-up and the impact on Martin's career to see this in action. The band was the means by which Graeme was to get his songs on the market and consequently secure a publishing deal, but we were to get no financial recognition in that success. (I talked to the Straitjacket Fits and the Bats; they both had arranged something like the songwriter got 50% and the remaining 50% was split between the rest of the band; Graeme wasn't having a bar of it. I'm sure this is a problem all bands have to solve one way or the other.)

This separation fundamentally changed the relationships in the band. While none of us were earning any money it wasn't a problem, we were on the same playing field - i.e. broke. There was a Verlaines "family" feel, and a culture of "let's make the most of it and ride this thing as far as we can, if it comes to nothing then we've made some great music and had fun and seen the world". Now it was something like "let's make the most of it and ride this thing as far as we can, and through our combined efforts Graeme has a good chance of making some decent money and the rest of us don't". We didn't have the same goals any more, Graeme had a genuine financial incentive to "succeed" but we didn't.

Worse, Graeme's refusal to recognise our contribution as musicians and band members made us feel like we were valueless sidekicks whose only role was to get on stage to promote something we would get nothing out of. We were supposed to fly a flag of musical virtue and togetherness while Graeme pocketed the dollars. Our reward was the rather variable and debatable joy of touring and recording. You could (and Graeme did) say "well, tough that's just the way it is, take it or leave," and leave it is pretty much what happened.

Greg effectively argued his way out of the band by saying, "Well if you won't include me in publishing money you can pay me an hourly rate for practicing and touring." This was never going to happen, as we didn't have any money, Graeme wasn't going to budge, so Greg was gone.

I also quit, telling Graeme there wasn't anything in it for me anymore. But I wasn't happy with the decision and went down town to the pub I figured Graeme would be at after anything traumatic, and sure enough there he was. I said something to the effect of this was a disappointing way to finish and I'd like to figure out some way of keeping it going. He agreed, but I can't remember what we discussed beyond that. Probably we had a beer and played pool. For me, it was a clear moment of delineation - now I was in the band for my own benefit and nothing else. I would take what I could, in the sense that I had some unfulfilled goals - I wanted to be involved in the next album as I thought it was a great set of songs, and I wanted to go back to America to record and tour. But I wasn't part of any Verlaines "family" any more. The sad thing is that from then on the enjoyment was as good as gone. As a sidekick, why would I do anything more than just play bass? Why would I put anything of myself into it? I had to balance that soul-destroying way of operating with what I wanted to get out of it. It's no way to be a musician and not something I'm particularly proud of.

I have no idea whether Graeme ever got anything for a publishing deal.

Nov 2005