With the extinction of the music business, for all practical purposes, it's time to look fondly back at some of the more unsavory aspects of that era. I have no love for the giant conglomerates that eventually swallowed up all cultural outlets in the last quarter of the twentieth century. To be fair, earlier than that there was a mixture of mobbed up hooligans like Parkway and Kings Records mixed with enlightened entrepreneurs such as Atlantic and Electra. Beyond that, at the extreme ends of both criminality and super fandom, there were the bootleggers.
I'm not talking about Chinese of Thai pirates, simply reproducing copywritten material without paying the artist, although many of the legitimate corporations have found ways to do that as well. Bootlegging refers to that small but very influential group of enthusiasts who crawled amongst the wreckage of the rock world (mostly), taping live concerts on the sly or stealing unreleased studio material. It was theft, plain and simple, but it also changed the course of rock history in a way that will never be acknowledged in the formal histories of this now-dead industry.
The best book on the subject that I have come across so far is 'Bootleg; The Secret History of the Other Recording Industry' by Clinton Heylin. Written in 1996, it came out at the right time, when the bootleg industry itself was at its prime, and CDs of good quality material regularly fetched at least $25 a pop. It contains pop culture, individual stories so bizarre as to be beyond belief (but are true), and a rundown of some of the big names and labels. It is a good enough read that twenty years after the fact, I still vividly remember large sections of it, although I can't find my copy since moving all my books.
The modern bootleg industry really began because the kids in America and Europe (Japan, too, maybe more so) became besotted with rock in the 1960s, and in particular bought in completely to the cult of personality. In fact, looking at the giant superstars of the era 1967 until 1975 will give you a run down on the majority of bootlegged titles, although any best-selling artist to the present day has had unauthorized material released. And that was the point; anyone could RELEASE a, say, Beatles or Bob Dylan album if you could get a vinyl or CD pressed and distributed.
Add to the fact that most of the retail outlets for music from 1955 until 1995, when Wal Mart came in and dealt the death blow to the music industry by undercutting prices while only carrying the top ten or so albums and killing independent record store in the process, were strange little mom & pop stores, even if mom & poop also sold bongs and glow-in-the-dark posters. These ratty little stores, hundreds of which I gladly roamed among the dusty crates looking for something new and different, were possibly open to carrying merchandise that might be of, shall we say, cloudy providence? Not all did, and in some big cities there were stores that seemed to carry nothing but boots during the eighties, highlighting the hit-and-miss distribution of these fly-by-night organizations. The bootleggers were disorganized crime, and they served an important function in music history.
There were also a ton of pressing plants by the late 1960s, and it wasn't unusual for some of the more mobbed up record companies to press too many copies without paying royalties to the artist; witness MGM doing that to Frank Zappa in the late 1960s and MCA doing the same (this time called cutouts) to big acts like Elton John and the Who in the 1980s. Add to the fact that the really gigantic acts of 1969 - specifically Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones - were slowing down their releases from two albums and a couple of singles a year to a measly one single/maybe one separate single, creating a want for product. As a final touch, there was product to be had.
The first three boots demonstrate the formats that would be followed. Bob Dylan's 'Great White Wonder' is usually attributed as the first real, widely available boot, and was even reviewed in a few music publications. It is a hodge-podge of good sounding cuts from a variety of sources, from early radio broadcasts to selections from the Basement tapes. The criteria, a fine one indeed, was choosing unreleased material with the best sound quality. In fact, it was a much more satisfying album than, say, 'Nashville Skyline'.
The Beatles tried to rush record an album just a few months after finishing the grueling 'White Album', compounding the error by having a film crew available to record every argument. George was pissed because they weren't recording enough of his songs (a legitimate complaint) and John was shooting smack with Yoko, barely there some times. Paul and Ringo tried to keep things upbeat, but it was a losing battle. They eventually finished an album by moving into the basement of their office on Saville Road, released one excellent single from the sessions, and then scrapped the rest. The project went through at least three producers and who knows how many engineers and tape operators, so some of the material was bound to be leaked, various alternative material from the same sessions. It was, and it sold huge numbers.
The Rolling Stones went on an American tour in 1969 for the first time in years; it was THE media event, despite ending with the Altamont tragedy. They did release a live album shortly after, an abbreviated version of their standard set, but the bootleggers got there first and did a reasonable job of capturing the live sound. I still prefer 'Get Yer Ya Yas Out', but there are plenty of fans who swear by 'Live'r Than You'll Ever Be'. So the format would be diverse collection of top quality outtakes, exhaustive examination of a specific session, and live recording, the last being the most common.
Bootlegs made the news in the early 1970s as rock's profits soared; they were seen as a real threat, but in reality they only appealed to the buyer, usually male, who had everything anyway and was moving into fanaticism. Other sources of raw material were discovered, especially radio shows. Since many bands, including the really big acts like Led Zeppelin, didn't release live albums, there was always a demand. As the industry became more sophisticate, the marketing and packaging began to move away from plain paper covers with stamps towards full fledged art work and even liner notes.
Colored vinyl and limited editions were popular, and they generally sold out except on the more marginal acts. Some of the artists doing the covers, especially William Stout, became famous in their own right. The FBI investigated, seizures were made, but the artists and record companies looked bad prosecuting too vigorously. In truth, these albums sold in the tens of thousands, while the sanctioned work was often selling in the millions.
The only contemporary industries that could be compared to bootlegging would be the porn industry and the drug trade. Like porn, the covers were no indication of the contents and gave little indication or guarantee of quality. You could be purchasing an unlistenable live performance or a vinyl pressing that would disintegrate after a spin or two. I know, I bought both on more than one occasion. Like the drug trade, it was illegal and underground, yet it was very popular with the identical age group. I would have loved to see a diagram of the overlap between the two markets; it must have been significant.
Certain acts became very popular in the bootleg market, and usually with a reason. Bob Dylan was releasing a string of mostly substandard albums, yet the boots were always superior material. The Beatle market was just crazy; most of the boots were marginal, as there were few decent live records and fewer outtakes, but there is no fanatic like a Beatle fanatic. The Rolling Stones still toured regularly and had a huge stockpile of unreleased material that was often of exceptional quality due to the speed at which they worked in the studio, unlike the Beatles carefully layered craftsmanship.
Dead rocks stars are always big business; both Jimi Hendrix and the Doors became staples of the shelves, with Jimi's multitudinous unreleased material being spread like manure in a farm field. Pink Floyd had some important unreleased studio work and a number of excellent radio shows, especially 'The Man & the Journey' from Dutch radio and the BBC material. Led Zeppelin were like the Beatles, and live shows were especially popular, no matter how poorly recorded. Groups like the Kinks and the Who had many unreleased or hard-to-get studio recordings floating around from the late 1960s, a prefect supply of material for the boots.
The industry eventually accepted the boots, as long as they kept a respectful distance from the legitimate releases. The artist themselves could be supportive; Pete Townshend was rumored to have leaked tapes to help fund a Meher Baba clinic. The Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers actually encouraged tapers, figuring the only way to beat them was to kill the demand. They were right, although you could still find boots of both.
The record companies eventually figured out that by keeping tabs on the artists being bootlegged, they had a solid indication of at least cult status. And eventually the corporations figured out the money that could be made by raiding the vaults themselves, releasing items previous bootlegged. It seems to have started when Colombia was bought by Sony; it may have been that the Japanese had a better appreciation of archival material. Soon Miles Davis, Bruce Springstead, and then even Bob Dylan himself was opening up a floodgate of previously unreleased material that hasn't stopped in over thirty years.
As technology moved into the digital age, illegal records jumped at the chance not only to reissue everything but to improve the sound quality and packaging. CDs were still made in bulk, supposedly somewhere in the European Union, although anyone with a CD-R - back when that was still a somewhat rare thing - could make exact copies. The big labels, such as Swinging Pig and Black Cat, still forged on, but mom & pop bootleggers no longer needed vinyl pressing plants to get product out. Boots proliferated in the 1990s.
It was two steps forward and one step back, however; bootleg VHS material started to show up, and the quality was usually awful. VHS images deteriorated dramatically with every generation, and the signal could not handle the hot reds or blues frequently used in stage lighting. Unless you were lucky to get a (usually Japanese) laser disc transfer, say of the Beatles at the Budukon or 'Let It Be', good luck. It took a decade for DVD to catch up, and quality improved dramatically.
Video cameras themselves had issues; everything before Beta-SP professional format would look muddy (except German TV, with 'Beat Club' being remarkably clear) and film had the tricky issue of magazines with limited time, usually around 11 minutes, causing coverage gaps. Older archival material did start showing up, such as Led Zeppelin's Albert Hall concert from 1970 or nearly any of the acts from the same year's Isle of Wight festival. The acts themselves were now in a rush to release anything left over, and groups such as the Byrds and the Who did amazing reissues of archival material. Even the Beatles, once George Harrison needed the money enough to co-operate, did a six CD/ten hour film history.
It was the age of the box set and the special edition, but as internet bandwidth started improving in the new millennium, boots started showing up everywhere, often packed in RAR files if you wanted to go beyond the lossy mp3 format. Suddenly the material was free except for the cost of CDs and DVDs and the monthly fee for your web connection. But this same technological shift killed dead the remaining mom & pop record and CD stores, only leaving the big box retailers or the occasional retro music store. Too bad; I spent a large part of my youth combing through those places and I miss them dearly.
By 2010, the writing was on the wall; the days of the physical music industry was coming to an end. There was a rush by everybody to empty all closets and get anything of value out while a buck could still be made. Even Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, the two true holdouts, started cashing in, and while most of the Zeppelin special editions were weak in anything truly new, Floyd shocked the industry by dumping literally everything onto the market in 2016 with the 'Early Years' box set, including a significant amount of material never circulated on bootlegs before. Truly, it was End Times.
Glebbeck wrote the definitive book on Jimi, 'Electric Gypsy', and had day-to-day knowledge of Hendrix. He found around 1995, while searching for new bootlegs - he had released radio recording from Denmark and Sweden, all copyright free according to international law - tapes from Woodburn Abbey in 1968 that included a short set by Taste, Gallagher's first band. He asked if I wanted a copy. It was the earliest live material by Taste so I said yes please, but then he was sent an avalanche of legal threats by the Hendrix estate and Caesar ended all correspondence. It took until 2015 for me to hear that show on the long-delayed taste box set.
Shortly after that, I befriended the local CD store owner and found out that he was supplementing dwindling sales by selling bootlegs in the mail. One he knew that I had a large collection, we established a trading partnership. I wouldn't take money, but I would take trade; it was partly out of ethics (not wanting to make a profit from something illegal) and partly out of fear of the law. He was selling CDs at $25 a pop, a practice that continued for years until he saw the writing on the wall and closed the store. I acquired more Bob Dylan and Prince bootlegs than I ever wanted, but I was helping a friend.
Special mention should be made of two artists who seemed to handle both bootleggers and the increasingly digital industry, Frank Zappa and King Crimson, lead by the inscrutable Robert Fripp. Both artists were willing to sue any company that tried to take advantage of them and both were sober enough not to fall into the trappings of stardom and bad contracts, at least in the long run. Both have released an avalanche of material dating back decades, both have seized their own distribution of both digital and physical media, and both own all the master tapes. Unfortunately, the outcomes of both artists were not the same.
Zappa was one of the first to set up his own truly independent record company after a few false starts trying it with majors like Warner Brothers and Columbia, both of whom he successfully sued. He set up Barfo Swill, his distribution company, back around 1980, and released enough product to choke a horse. After his death, his wife and four children ran the company, but upon Gail Zappa's death, it was discovered that the cost of climate control for Zappa's truly massive media archive hadn't been properly paid. Since then, the heirs have been in an unfortunately litigation situation that doesn't appear to have a quick resolution.
King Crimson started their distribution after nasty legal battles in the early 1990s. Fripp now distains copyright as practiced by the rest of the industry, yet he managed to sign a development deal with Microsoft at one point, since they admired his business model so much. Owning all the master tapes, session reels, and tons of live concerts, a steady stream of high quality product, often including mammoth box sets with industry standard remixing by Steven Wilson, have poured forth while the band still tours successfully. Other bands, mostly progressive rock acts like Yes and Jethro Tull, have followed the Crimson example.
The internet killed the record and CD store just as it killed the industry, along with limited corporate retailers only carrying the most popular product. You can still find anything you want on-line, and usually can hear it for free on YouTube or other services, but it's not the same as roaming the isles in search of a new discovery or holding the physical product in your hands. Yet the material that the bootleggers exposed to a willing audience of buyers has shaped what the record companies and artists, sometimes against their own wishes, have released over the last thirty years. And bootlegs are now very collectable, especially the older vinyl copies, rather perversely. In fact, I've even read of a resurgence of new vinyl bootlegs on the market now!
Going to a concert nowadays, one can't help but notice all the phones recording every moment on stage. The bootleggers are dead, the music industry is on life support, yet we have become a culture of bootleggers. It isn't real if we don't have a photo or video clip of the event nowadays, it seems. What was once illicit, in the shadows, is now the new normal. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
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