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For Machine Gun Kelly and Fox, the devil might be in the details.
Citing the name of Kelly’s 2019 album Hotel Diablo, lawyers for the superstar last week quietly launched a legal battle to block the television network from securing a trademark on the term “Diablo” — the name of a character on Fox’s animated sitcom HouseBroken.
Fox Media LLC applied to register the term as a trademark for selling a wide range of goods “in connection with an animated, dog-like character.” That was clearly a reference to “Diablo,” an anthropomorphic terrier voiced by Tony Hale on the hit animated show, which rolled out its second season earlier this month.
But in a case filed on Tuesday (Dec. 13) at the federal trademark office, lawyers for Kelly’s company Lace Up LLC argued that Fox’s trademark was “confusingly similar in overall commercial” to the term “Hotel Diablo,” meaning consumers might be duped into thinking that Kelly was somehow involved in the Fox merch.
Kelly’s lawyers appear to have filed the case because their own application, seeking to register “Hotel Diablo” as a trademark, was suspended earlier this year due to the existence of the Fox “Diablo” application.
Released on July 5, 2019, Hotel Diablo wasn’t as big a hit as Kelly’s more recent chart-topping albums Tickets To My Downfall and Mainstream Sellout, but it still reached No. 5 on the Billboard 200 and eventually spent 20 weeks on the chart.
In December 2020, Kelly’s Lace Up LLC applied at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to secure a trademark registration on the album name — a maneuver commonly used by major artists that makes it easier to sue over fake merch, online scammers and other brand infringements. Kelly’s company already owns such a registration for his “MGK” logo, and is currently seeking similar protection for “Machine Gun Kelly” itself as well as the name of his famous “Rap Devil” diss track and many other terms he claims as trademarks.
But in February, the USPTO suspended Lace Up’s application on the grounds that it might be confusingly similar to Fox “Diablo” application, which had been filed six months earlier in June 2020.
So last week, Kelly’s lawyers filed the current case at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, a court-like body within the USPTO where rival trademark owners can battle over who has better rights to a disputed name. They say the star has “priority of use” and that Fox’s application must be denied.
“Because of the similarity between the DIABLO Mark and the HOTEL DIABLO Mark, and because the goods covered under the DIABLO Application are related to the goods sold under the HOTEL DIABLO Mark, consumers are likely to be confused, mistaken, or deceived into believing that Applicant’s goods originate with Opposer or are in some way associated with or connected, sponsored, or authorized by Opposer,” Kelly’s lawyers wrote.
The filing of the case will initiate a lawsuit-like proceeding, in which Fox will have a chance to respond to defend its “Diablo” trademark and the board will ultimately issue a ruling. But many such disputes end with settlements, including with a simple agreement that the two brands can co-exist peacefully without confusing consumers.
An attorney for Kelly’s company and a rep for Fox did not immediately return a request for comment.
Mariah Carey‘s holiday classic, “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” is the gift that keeps on giving for its writers and label. In 2021, the master recording of Carey’s version of her song, co-written with Walter Afanasieff, generated 1.747 million song consumption units in the U.S., according to Luminate. Of that, 48,000 were from track downloads, 200 million came from on-demand audio streams, 52.5 million came from video on-demand streams and 24 million from programmed streams.
Combined, those plays and downloads generated $1.36 million for Carey and her label, Sony Music, Billboard estimates.
Meanwhile, the song’s publishing, including mechanicals for the track from the physical sales of five Carey albums it appears on brought in another $378,000 last year.
However, the U.S. only accounted for 51% of download sales and 30.7% of on-demand streaming, so when you look at the song globally and take into account a total of 94,000 song downloads and 823 million streams, Billboard estimates that in 2021 the Carey master recording version of the song brought in almost $4.5 million, while its publishing royalties generated another $1.66 million. Combined, that comes to $6.16 million in global revenue and publishing royalties.
Of the master recording revenue, Billboard estimates Carey’s royalties at $1.55 million, which would leave Sony with $2.95 million.
As for publishing, she is one of two songwriters credited on the song —Afanasieff being the other — so if they each wrote 50%, that means that Carey’s share of the publishing would be $830,000. If she owns her publishing, after a 10% administration fee her take home pay would be $747,000. If she has a 75/25 co-publishing deal, her share would be just over $622,000; and if she doesn’t own the publishing on that song, her publishing royalties would be about $415,000.
This estimate excludes cover versions of the song and the revenue from whatever financial arrangements were struck for Christmas TV specials and soundtracks from those television shows.
According to Songview, the joint ASCAP and BMI song database system, the publishers for Carey’s holiday staple are Beyondidoliztion and Universal Music Corp, both administered by Universal Music Corp., which probably means Universal Music Publishing Group; Sony/ATV Tunes Inc. and Tavla Vista Music, both administered by Sony Music Publishing; and Higpnosis SFH I Ltd, administered by Kobalt.
Since the business of Christmas music is growing so fast – it occupies five of the top 10 places on the Billboard Hot 100 this week – we are re-presenting some of our stories from Christmas past. This piece, about Jimmy Iovine’s “Pro tips for producing a hit Christmas album,” originally ran in 2019
As Christmas music compilations go, only two have stood the test of time: The first, 1963’s A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector, featured songs performed by the “Wall of Sound” producer’s stable of artists, including The Crystals, The Ronettes and Darlene Love. The second, A Very Special Christmas, is the 1987 collection of holiday tunes executive-produced by Jimmy Iovine before he went on to co-found and run Interscope Records; found with Dr. Dre (and then sell for $3 billion) Beats Electronics; and serve as the architect for Apple Music. The album was an extremely personal endeavor for Iovine — a tribute to his father, Vincent “Jimmy” Iovine, who loved Christmas and died in 1985 at the age of 63. In 2014, Iovine told Billboard that making the project “was the purest thing I’ve ever done.”
Stacked with the most popular artists of the time — many who remain popular and relevant to this day, including Madonna, Whitney Houston, Run-D.M.C., Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Sting, John Mellencamp, Chrissie Hynde and U2 — A Very Special Christmas, an A&M Records release, went on to sell some 4.7 million copies (when its RIAA double-platinum certification and post-1991 Nielsen Music numbers are combined). It also spawned nine more volumes — Iovine was only minimally involved in the second — that have raised over $100 million for the Special Olympics.
Given the initial album’s success — the lion’s share of its tracks continue to be holiday season staples on radio and streaming — Billboard Pro asked Iovine for his do’s and don’ts of producing a hit Christmas album. In the process, he talked about some of his all-time favorite Christmas songs (see carousel) and why they will always be part of his holiday-music playlists.
Do Use Top Talent “If you don’t want to make disposable Christmas music, don’t start with disposable artists. You’ve got to work with artists that are going to last,” says Iovine. “When I play Christmas music, I play Spector’s album, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Dean Martin, Nat “King” Cole — the people that will be around forever.”
Don’t Do It for the Money “I made that album from my stomach and my heart. I didn’t give a shit what we did with the money. I just knew we were going to give it away. And no one — not A&M, not a publisher, none of the artists, not me — made a dime from that record. That’s why $100 million has gone to the Special Olympics.”
Do Be Original “If you are doing a Christmas album, you’ve got to come at it in a unique way. If you are going to take on Phil Spector producing Darlene Love singing “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” you’ve got to go with a male [singer], because you can’t touch it otherwise.” Hence, U2’s exuberant cover on A Very Special Christmas, which captures the longing of the original without copying it, thanks to Bono’s soaring vocals. Iovine says the song was recorded backstage in Scotland before one of the band’s shows “in a giant room with real echo — ‘our version’” of Spector’s famed Wall of Sound.
Don’t Fear the Corny “Some parts of Christmas are corny — and that’s cool. Over the top is good at Christmastime.”
Do an Album — Even If It’s a Compilation “A Very Special Christmas had a feeling behind it and an idea. There was supposed to be joy and a tug at your heart at the same time. It wasn’t made like, ‘Here’s 10 Christmas songs.’ It was made like one artist’s album.”
Don’t Underestimate the Importance of Sequencing “Today no one sequences anything, but when I was making albums, sequencing was almost as important as the songs. A Very Special Christmas is put together like that. The sequencing took forever. I pictured myself at dinner or at a Christmas party, and I would just play a song and ask myself, “Am I bored?” That’s why I opened the album with The Pointer Sisters. They came in and just killed ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.’ And then I went from there. What song comes next is very, very important. What makes a great DJ is he or she gets bored before you do and knows what to play next. That’s what’s missing in a lot of streaming today.”
Since the business of Christmas music is growing so fast – it occupies five of the top 10 places on the Billboard Hot 100 this week – we are re-presenting some of our stories from Christmas past. This piece, the touring success of Trans-Siberian Orchestra, originally ran in 2019. Since then, TSO’s touring success has continued. In 2019, the group’s 109-date tour sold 1,016,000 tickets for a $66.8 million gross. In 2021, it sold 767,000 tickets to 98 shows for $54.6 million. And, this year, as of the end of November, TSO sold 223,000 tickets to 27 shows for $15.6 million.
To date, TSO has grossed $683.2 million and sold 13.5 million tickets.
The Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, which is located in an industrial park down the street from the Cresline Plastic Pipe Company, looks from the outside like any other 8,000-capacity arena. Next week, the Council Bluffs Kennel Dog Show will take place there, followed by a charity bubble-soccer face-off between firefighters and cops from the state and neighboring Nebraska. But every year for three weeks or so in late October and early November, Trans-Siberian Orchestra management turns the venue into a high-tech assembly line and launch pad for the act’s perennial tour.
In one room, storage buckets hold portions of the stage; in a larger space stocked with forklifts and work benches, carpenters weld those portions together. A large mixing board sits inexplicably in one of the arena’s bathrooms, and in separate rehearsal suites, two iterations of the 18-piece orchestra — one that will play dates east of this central U.S. location and one that will head west — go over, and over, this year’s set.
In the main arena space, two rehearsal stages are set end to end. On a Thursday night, one stage sits dormant while the East group runs through its nearly two-and-a-half-hour set, complete with dozens of fiery explosions, webs of crisscrossing green and red lasers, floating video screens, dueling long-haired metal guitarists and elaborate classical and progressive-rock songs engineered from, among many other things, Beethoven riffs, Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” At one point, a 24-foot metallic contraption on the side of the stage spews out tiny lightning bolts timed to lead guitarist Joel Hoekstra’s solos. It is the show’s latest upgrade: a double-Tesla coil. “Well,” says Al Pitrelli, 57, the tour’s musical director and lead guitarist for the West group, as he stands near the soundboard. “That doesn’t suck.”
For years, the two orchestras played slightly different arrangements of the same songs — the deviations so fine that they were apparent only to the musicians — but that proved unnecessarily complicated for such a large undertaking, especially for the backup drummer who had to learn both versions. Now, both follow the same script and sheet music, more or less. “Each band has a different personality,” says longtime drummer Jeff Plate. “So there are some spots that have a different vibe.”
Trans-Siberian-Orchestra
Jason McEachern
Not that there’s any kind of East-West rivarly. About 85 percent of the crew worked on the previous TSO tour, as have most of the musicians. “We have an expanded family out here,” says Plate of the group that has gathered in Council Bluffs — not surprising for a group that has spent years celebrating the Christmas holidays on the road. Although most of the cast, crew and musicians return home when the tour breaks briefly for Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, on work days they bond over meals catered by topline servers, many customized according to family holiday traditions. For good measure, Pitrelli years ago taught the catering department’s head chef the recipe for his grandmother’s “Sunday sauce.” The musicians spend hours after every evening concert — there are usually two performances a day — greeting fans. “I wouldn’t know what to do without it, honestly,” says Joel Hoekstra, who has toured with the orchestra for 10 years and also plays with Cher and Whitesnake.
The tour — which is slated to hit 66 cities in seven weeks for a total of 109 shows — kicked off on Wednesday. The West orchestra plays its first show in Council Bluffs, while the East contingent debuts in Green Bay, Wis., ushering in the 20th year of an unlikely live-music concept that, despite such a compact itinerary, consistently ranks among the top live outings of the year. According to Billboard Boxscore data, to date, TSO has grossed $546.1 million and sold 11.5 million tickets over 1,484 shows. It is one of only 32 acts in the history of the database to gross more than $500 million as a solo headliner — the orchestras do not co-headline with other acts or even use openers — and one of only 15 solo headliners to sell in excess of 10 million tickets. And for an act that is not a radio staple — even during the holidays — TSO has charted nine albums on the Billboard 200, four of them reaching the top 10; sold 10.1 million albums and 4.9 million downloads; and generated 273.5 million on-demand audio and 177.5 million on-demand video streams, according to Nielsen Music.
Green Bay Press Gazette reviewer Kendra Meinert describes the East orchestra’s opening night as “a little like a family reunion” making a “warm and welcome return.” Noting that the concertgoers in her row included “two teens, a Harley rider and senior citizens talking about their bus trip to Branson, Missouri,” she writes: “That’s how you get to be a top-grossing touring act year after year by touring only for a few weeks.” A loyal fanbase is also a big part of TSO’s perennial success: Management says that 60 percent of this year’s ticket-holders are repeat customers.
In April 2017, Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s extended family was rocked — and the future of the family business suddenly put in doubt — when the orchestra’s founder Paul O’Neill, a driving, dreaming perfectionist who had once played guitar in a touring production of Jesus Christ Superstar and later worked as a promoter and a manager for AC/DC and Def Leppard, died unexpectedly at the age of 61 from a reaction to prescription medicine he was taking. O’Neill’s family made the decision that the show would go on, and when the touring company hit the road again that November, it quickly dispelled any doubts that Trans-SIberian Orchestra had lost its luster without its creator and chief cheerleader at the helm. In 2017 and 2018, TSO went on to score the two biggest Boxscore grosses of its history: $50.2 million and $56.7 million, respectively. (The latter figure also reflects, in part, the highest ticket prices of the act’s history.) The orchestra also finished at No. 20 on Billboard‘s Money Makers ranking of the top-earning acts of 2018, with $18.5 million in collective sales, streaming, publishing and touring income.
Based on ticketing trends for the act, Billboard estimates that TSO’s 2019 box office could approach $60 million this year, thanks, in part, to the decision to revisit in its entirety the orchestra’s debut album, Christmas Eve and Other Stories — and that continued success has the organization already thinking how to top itself next year.
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In the early ‘90s, O’Neill began to plot a holiday-themed live spectacle that combined progressive rock, heavy metal and classical music with elaborate stage productions. He had been producing a struggling Tarpon Springs, Fla., metal and prog rock band called Savatage when its label, Atlantic Records, encouraged him to pursue his idea of a holiday-themed rock opera with a Pink Floyd-style light show. The Queens, N.Y., native mined Savatage for talent, including Pitrelli, who has played with Alice Cooper, Blue Oyster Cult and Megadeth and auditioned after O’Neill rejected what the axman calls “great guitar players all over the planet.” O’Neill asked Pitrelli to play excerpts from Mozart’s Symphony No. 24, and when the guitarist transposed the complex piece into a different key on the spot, he hired him.
Together, O’Neill, Pitrelli and Savatage composer Jon Oliva — who remains a constant presence at TSO rehearsals, clapping and snapping from a chair beneath the stage and bantering with the musicians about key changes and fantasy football — worked out arrangements for original compositions like “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24.” The instrumental became the heart of Christmas Eve and Other Stories, which told the story of an angel who responds to a father’s prayer to see his daughter for the first time in years. Released in 1996, the album eventually went triple-platinum.
In 1999, O’Neill took his vision on the road, and in 2004, Trans-Siberian Orchestra became the 19th highest-grossing tour of the year, according to Boxscore. It would finish among the top 25 for eight of the next 14 years.
Success did not satisfy O’Neill. “Paul wanted more and more and more,” Plate says of TSO’s shaggy-haired, bearded founder, who wore a leather jacket and sunglasses pretty much everywhere. “He would be almost unrealistic and so adamant.” O’Neill pushed everybody, from musicians to pyro wizards, and during rehearsals could be found “running around the floor” like a rock ‘n’ roll Bob Fosse, Plate adds, “stopping the song in the middle because somebody’s not in the right spot or the singer didn’t have the right inflection on a certain word or the lighting cue was off.” Although he died more than two years ago, managers and musicians still speak of O’Neill in the present tense.
O’Neill’s brand of ambition did not come cheap then — and doesn’t now. Although touring and production director Elliot Saltzman declines to reveal the cost of putting two touring companies — consisting of 120 people and 20 trucks each — on the road (a practice O’Neill initiated in 2000 to meet demand for bookings), he does allow that he budgets $1 million for pyrotechnics alone. (“It’s like being in Iwo Jima [onstage],” Pitrelli says. “But it works.”) “Our startup costs are more than The Rolling Stones — and we have to recoup in seven weeks,” Saltzman says of the double-tour, which runs through Dec. 30 this year.
When O’Neill was alive, he would demand more pyro, lasers and special effects for each successive tour, while Saltzman, Adam Lind and Kenny Kaplan, who oversee the band as partners of Castle Management, played the budget scolds. Since his death, the trio has reversed roles. “Now we have to push a little,” Lind says. Ten years ago, Pitrelli might have attended rehearsal and thought, “It’s pretty good.” Now he “looks for stuff to fix.” Adds the guitarist: “He was my big brother. I’m keeping myself on my toes now. In the back of my mind, I hear Paul always pushing me, but I’ve learned to do it myself.”
At one point, walking through the arena, Saltzman, Lind and Kaplan encounter pyro specialist Doug Adams, who promises imminent Cryo-Jet fog-machine functionality. Pitrelli says Adams frequently tells him, “Wait till you see what I designed this year!” and, anticipating being barbecued onstage, thinks to himself, “Oh, kill me.” Adds Saltzman, who also manages Joan Jett and consults with other tours: “We have fire coming out of everything. We’ve got a lot of mad scientists here.” Kaplan, though, says the managers are experienced enough to know when a piece requires just 15 explosions rather than, say, the pyro team’s preferred 30. “They’re just thinking ‘big is big,’ but we’re trying to measure where it’s spent best,” he says.
Trans-Siberian-Orchestra
Jason McEachern
TSO’s first tour in 1999 played seven shows in five cities and drew 12,000 concertgoers. By 2004, its itinerary had expanded to 100 shows — often two a day — that attracted 1 million ticket-holders. (From 2010 through 2012, TSO took its only non-holiday album, 2000’s Beethoven’s Last Night, on the road in the spring and reps say the orchestra is considering similar tours in the future.) The shows are family-friendly and celebrity attendees include Eddie Van Halen, Kid Rock, the New York Mets’ Noah Syndergaard and The Band Perry, who once drove from Nashville to Knoxville to see the show, parents and grandparents in tow.
When the news broke of O’Neill’s death, the organization was stunned. O’Neill’s imagination and drive to innovate had kept TSO evolving for 20 years. “Paul always had a knack for being one step beyond what anybody could envision,” says Hoekstra. “He would whip everybody into a frenzy.”
“He would come into our dressing room and talk about dreams and mystical ideas and fantasies,” recalls Mee Eun Kim, a keyboardist since 2000. “By the time he leaves the room” — there’s the present tense again — “the girls would all whisper to each other: ‘That’s never going to happen.’” But, Mee Eun adds, “After our first arena show, we looked at each other like, ‘Oh my God, he did it.’ From then on, any time he said anything crazy, we said, ‘OK, Paul!’”
With O’Neill gone, the doubts arrived. “There was a moment when I was like, ‘Oh, what’s going to happen?’” says Mee Eun. Plate and Hoekstra called each other to discuss what a future without the Trans-SIberian Orchestra would look like. They did not have to wonder for very long. O’Neill’s wife, Desiree, and his daughter, Ireland — who, as a young girl, used to shadow her father during rehearsals — quickly decided the show would continue. They declined to comment for this story, and while Lind calls the first tour after O’Neill’s death “very difficult,” he adds, “Paul talked long before his passing of TSO outlasting us all.”
For Trans-Siberian Orchestra to remain relevant to future generations, new music will almost certainly have to be composed for coming tours. Conceivably Oliva and Pitrelli, who were there at the beginning, could carry the torch at least part of the way, and Saltzman, Lind and Kaplan say are always thinking ahead — but right now, they have a tour to do. “That kind of decision comes a little later,” says Kaplan. “We get through this one, then we look at how this played out, what we liked about it, how it will change, what we learned along the way.”
The O’Neill family’s decision to revisit Christmas Eve and Other Stories for this year’s tour has ratcheted up the emotional quotient again for the musicians who date back to the early days of TSO. Pitrelli, whose shoulder-length mane is streaked with gray, says he has a hard time “keeping it straight” while playing songs from the album.
There’s another reason performing TSO’s first album and its story of a father praying for the safe return of his child resonates with the guitarist. Pitrelli’s oldest son, Jesse, is a Coast Guard sniper and his youngest, Zach, a nuclear-submarine engineer “somewhere under the Indian Ocean.” “When I recorded these [songs] for Paul back then, I was in a different head,” Pitrelli adds. “Listening to these songs at this point in my life, I’ve become the older character. I can’t help inserting my name into that story: Where are my boys now? I miss them.”
O’Neill used to tell the musicians and crew the music should last not decades but for centuries, and, for their part, they are determined to fulfill that prophecy. “I’m fairly positive he’s watching it, going, ‘You’re doing good, guy, keep going’” Pitrelli says. “He used to tell me every tour: ‘Just get me through January.’ I’m gonna get him through another January.”
Additional reporting by Eric Frankenberg.
AJ Capital Partners, the new owners of revered Nashville music venue Exit/In, have named a new talent buyer for the iconic entertainment hub and plan to re-open the shuttered venue as early as this Spring after it temporarily closed in late November.
Though there had been local speculation and concern that AJ Capital would turn to a large promoter such as Live Nation to book the 51-year old independent venue, the new owners are utilizing an in-house team with Dan Merker serving as Exit/In’s lead talent buyer. Merker, who oversees talent buying for all AJ Capital properties, has previously worked at Outback Presents, HUKA Entertainment and Tortuga Music Festival.
“We are honored to carry on the legacy of this iconic venue and raise the bar for both the fan and artist experience,” Merker said in a statement to Billboard. ‘We look forward to announcing 2023 shows soon and as the calendar will reflect, restoring Exit/In as a welcoming place for artists that span all genres and everyone within our community.”
After moving their headquarters from Chicago to Nashville in 2020, AJ Capital Partners in July 2021 acquired the beloved Exit/In, located at 2208 Elliston Place, as well as the adjacent Hurry Back bar, for $6.45 million from Anthony Rentals (representing property owners the Nash and Anthony families). AJ Capital says they plan to continue Hurry Back as a restaurant/bar concept. A representative for the Nash and Anthony families declined to speak for this story. AJ Capital Partners officially take over operations of Exit/In on Jan. 1, 2023.
In addition to the Graduate Hotel chain, AJ Capital owns and developed the buildings that house two current music industry entities: Live Nation’s Nashville office in the Nashville Warehouse Co., and newly opened Nashville headquarters for the Academy of Country Music, both in Nashville’s Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood.
AJ Capital Partners also owns the Memphis, Tennessee venue Minglewood Hall. Other venues in AJ Capital Partners’ portfolio include New Orleans’ Joy Theater, The Senate in Columbia, S.C., Houston’s White Oak Music Hall, and Iron City in Birmingham, Ala. AJ Capital also has plans for a 4,500-capacity music venue in Nashville’s Wedgewood-Houston area.
“The Exit/In has been Nashville’s music forum for 51 years, under the stewardship of more than two dozen operators over that time,” Tim Ryan, Principal focused on live music venues, boutique hotels and other experiential real estate, AJ Capital Partners, told Billboard via a statement. “Ultimately, the venue’s history, legacy and soul belong to Nashville. As the next stewards in line, we’re committed to doing whatever is necessary to restore her to good health and set the stage for another legendary half-century and beyond. AJ’s track record of restoring and reviving historic spaces speaks for itself, both here in Nashville and across our portfolio.”
After AJ Capital takes over the venue’s operations on Jan. 1, 2023, it plans to renovate the Exit/In’s bathrooms and green room. Updates will also include refreshing of the building’s west-facing outer wall, which previously showcased a mural featuring artists who have performed at Exit/In. The mural has since been painted over.
Since opening in 1971 with a performance by Jimmy Buffett, the bare-bones, 500-person capacity Exit/In has been one of the city’s most enduring and popular venues, and a mainstay of Nashville’s rock music scene, hosting a diverse slate of artists, including Billy Joel, Etta James, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Linda Ronstadt, Muddy Waters, Jason and the Scorchers, R.E.M and more. On the back cover of The Police’s Zenyatta Mondatta, Sting is seen wearing an Exit/In shirt. Episodes of the CMT series Western Beat with Billy Block — which grew out of Block’s Western Beat Roots Revival — were taped at Exit/In beginning in 2000.
In 2021, AJ Capital filed a request to designate the Exit/In as a historical landmark, and historic overlays were approved for a section of the property.
The switchover in ownership has not been without controversy as the most recent operator, Chris Cobb, had been passionately opposed to the change. Cobb, whose name had grown synonymous with the venue, has been an integral part of Exit/In for 18 years. In 2012, he partnered with Josh Billue to oversee Exit/In, and became its sole operator since 2019 until the last show under his watch on Nov. 23.
In February, as Exit/In went on the block, Chris Cobb and his wife Telisha, partnered with Grubb Properties’ Live Venues Recovery Fund, an entity that helps club operators become owners, to try to buy the property. The Cobbs also launched a GoFundMe campaign that reached its initial $200,000 goal, ultimately raising more than $271,000, but were unsuccessful in buying the club. Cobb pledged to donate the money raised to the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) and to Music Venue Alliance (MVAN). Cobb was unavailable for comment by press time.
In April 2021 Cobb also filed trademark applications for the name “Exit/In Nashville’s Music Forum,” as well as “Exit/In Nashville Music Forum Fifty Years and Counting 50,” which were subsequently opposed by AJ Capital in October of this year. The opposition filing from AJ Capital contended that according to license agreements, tenants were granted a limited license to use the name Exit/In on the leased premises only, and that the landlord “at all times shall retain sole and exclusive ownership and right to the name Exit/In subject only to the limited license granted herein.”
There is no word on when the patent office will hand down its decision.
The Exit/In has long served as the anchor for the geographic area dubbed The Rock Block, which over the decades has included The End, Elliston Place Soda Shop, Obie’s Pizza and The Gold Rush. The Rock Block was commemorated with a historical marker in 2020.
Ned Horton, whose The Horton Group operated Exit/In from 1998 through 2001, says, “Real estate in Nashville has been going through the roof, home neighborhoods are changing and in rapid fashion. So to be beholden to a landlord in running a business does have its limitations from time to time. AJ controls its destiny by owning the building and the land. But it does seem like the new owners are well-intentioned and have the capital to do somethings that others maybe couldn’t in the past.”
Rick Whetsel, who operated Exit/In from 2003-2006, says, “It’s really exciting to have an owner with deep pockets. As caretakers or stewards of Exit/In, we’ve always kind of financed things out of our own pockets. Taking care of upgrades and fixing various things, we tended to kind of put off repairs or kick things down the road a bit. It’s nice that someone has the money and capital they have to take care of the building and put it on the path to a good future. The Exit/In is such an important part of not just the music industry, but the city of Nashville. There’s such a sense of history and you can feel that energy when you are in there.”
“Change is not always a bad thing,” Whetsel added. “Financial security is a wonderful thing. It’s nice to know that the place will be here and able to operate as a venue for a long time. The stewardship of Exit/In, they realize it is a big deal. You have to go out there and build bridges and become part of the community and they are. It’s amazing the work that myself, Chris Cobb, Josh Billue, and others in the past couple of decades have been able to do, to get the Exit/In on the right path. The Exit/In has always been here and it needs to stay here.”
Since the business of Christmas music is growing so fast – it occupies five of the top 10 places on the Billboard Hot 100 this week – we are re-presenting some of our stories from Christmas past. This piece, about how two former Billboard staffers produced the holiday hit “Christmas Rappin’” for then-up-and-coming rapper Kurtis Blow, originally ran in 2019. Since then, in 2020, Robert Ford passed away.
One groundbreaking Christmas hit didn’t just make the Billboard charts — it was produced by two former employees. In 1979, J.B. Moore and Robert Ford left the magazine to produce “Christmas Rappin’ ” for an up-and-coming rapper named Kurtis Blow. Released on Mercury Records, the single went gold, and Blow became the first rapper to sign a major-label deal.
At Billboard, Moore was an ad salesman who sometimes wrote music reviews, and Ford was a production manager who also wrote a column about R&B. They both knew that hip-hop represented the future of music — Public Enemy’s Chuck D has cited a 1978 article by Ford as one of the first mentions of the genre in a national publication. Even so, they didn’t get any interest from A&R executives in New York, so they took “Chrismas Rappin’ ” to Chicago-based Mercury Records, where John Stainze, a recent transfer from the label’s U.K. office to its West Coast operations, convinced Mercury that the song would recoup its costs (about $6,000, remembers Moore) in the United Kingdom alone.
“Christmas Rappin’ ” — a song “ ’bout a red-suited dude with a friendly attitude” — wasn’t originally intended to be a Christmas tune. Moore, who wrote the lyrics, decided to give it a holiday theme because labels like songs they can sell every December. “Christmas Rappin’ ” turned out to be one: It peaked at No. 53 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart in 1995 and at No. 35 on Hot Rap Songs in 1999.
“It took Mercury forever to realize how big it was,” says Moore, who with Ford went on to produce Blow’s landmark “The Breaks” and work with the R&B group Full Force. “I’m sitting here staring at my gold record that should be platinum.”
This article originally appeared in the Dec. 21 issue of Billboard.
Since the business of Christmas music is growing so fast – it occupies five of the top 10 places on the Billboard Hot 100 this week – we are re-presenting some of our stories from Christmas past. This piece, about how Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” came to be considered a holiday song, originally ran in 2019. The story of the song is recounted in the recent documentary Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song.
Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” with its ambiguous, imagistic lyrics about sex and spirituality, was once described by Jeff Buckley, perhaps the song’s most famous interpreter, as “the hallelujah of the orgasm.” So how did an a cappella version by Pentatonix get to No. 21 on the Billboard Holiday 100 in 2018 — after peaking on that chart at No. 2 in 2016?
It’s just the latest twist in the ongoing story of what may be the world’s least likely standard, which originally appeared on Cohen’s 1984 album, Various Positions. The song only became iconic two decades ago, after John Cale’s version was used on the Shrek soundtrack and Buckley’s version appeared in a video VH1 made in tribute to Sept. 11 rescue workers. Around that time, it also began to be used in religious services, its Old Testament imagery and chanted one-word chorus offering a solemnity that seemed to fit weddings, funerals and various occasions in between.
Written by Cohen — a Jewish Buddhist — the song was first associated with Christmas in 2010, when Britain’s Got Talent sensation Susan Boyle included it on her 2010 holiday album, The Gift, which hit No. 1 on both the Billboard 200 and on the Official U.K. Albums Chart. In 2015, violinist-singer Lindsey Stirling released a version that reached No. 81 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 21 on the Holiday 100 the following year; that same year, German superstar Helene Fischer included the song on her hit album Weihnachten.
Since 2016, however, the most popular version of “Hallelujah” on streaming services by far has been Pentatonix’s, which has been streamed 346 million times in the United States, according to Nielsen Music. “When people hear it,” the group’s Scott Hoying told Billboard in 2018 about the song’s staying power, “they feel something.”
Alan Light is the author of The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of “Hallelujah.”
This article originally appeared in the Dec. 21 issue of Billboard.
Millions of Twitter users asked Elon Musk to step down as head of Twitter in a poll on the platform that the billionaire had created and promised to abide by.
When the poll closed Monday, however, it wasn’t clear if there would be a new leader for the social media platform, which has grown more chaotic and confusing under Musk’s leadership with rapidly changing policies that are issued, then withdrawn or altered.
The billionaire Tesla CEO Musk had attended the World Cup final Sunday in Qatar, where he opened the poll. After it closed 12 hours later, there was no immediate announcement from Twitter or Musk, who may be midflight on his way back to the U.S. early Monday.
More than half of the 17.5 million respondents voted “yes” in answer to Musk’s Twitter poll asking whether he should step down as head of the company.
Musk has taken a number of unscientific polls on substantial issues facing the social media platform, including whether to reinstate journalists that he had suspended from Twitter, which was broadly criticized in and out of media circles.
The polls have only added to a growing sense of tumult on Twitter since Musk bought the company for $44 billion at the end of October, potentially leaving the future direction of the company in the hands of its users.
Among those users are people recently reinstated on the platform under Musk, people who had been banned for racist and toxic posts, or who had spread misinformation.
Since buying Twitter, Musk has presided over a dizzying series of changes that have unnerved advertisers and turned off users. He’s laid off half of the workforce, axed contract content moderators and disbanded a council of trust and safety advisors. He has dropped enforcement of COVID-19 misinformation rules and called for criminal charges against Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert helping lead the country’s COVID response.
Musk has clashed with some users on multiple fronts and on Sunday, he asked Twitter users to decide if he should remain in charge of the social media platform after acknowledging he made a mistake in launching new restrictions that banned the mention of rival social media websites on Twitter.
The results of the unscientific online survey regarding whether Musk should remain as top executive at Twitter, which lasted 12 hours, showed that 57.5% of those who voted wanted him to leave, while 42.5% wanted him to say.
The poll followed just the latest significant policy change since Musk acquired Twitter in October. Twitter had announced that users will no longer be able to link to Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and other platforms the company described as “prohibited.”
That decision generated immediate blowback, including criticism from past defenders of Twitter’s new owner. Musk then promised that he would not make any more major policy changes to Twitter without an online survey of users, including who should lead the company.
The action to block competitors was Musk’s latest attempt to crack down on certain speech after he shut down a Twitter account last week that was tracking the flights of his private jet.
The banned platforms included mainstream websites such as Facebook and Instagram, and upstart rivals Mastodon, Tribel, Nostr, Post and former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social.
A growing number of Twitter users have left the platform under Musk, or created alternative counts on Mastodon, Tribel, Nostr or Post, and included those addresses in their Twitter profiles. Twitter gave no explanation for why the blacklist included some websites but not others such as Parler, TikTok or LinkedIn.
A test case was the prominent venture capitalist Paul Graham, who in the past has praised Musk but on Sunday told his 1.5 million Twitter followers that this was the “last straw” and to find him on Mastodon. His Twitter account was promptly suspended, and then restored, as Musk reversed the policy implemented just hours earlier.
Graham has not posted on Twitter since saying he would leave.
Policy decisions by Musk have divided users. He has advocated for free speech, but has suspended journalists and shut down a longstanding account that tracked the whereabouts of his jet, calling it a security risk.
But as he has changed policies, and then changed them again, created a sense of confusion on the platform about what is allowed, and what is not.
Musk permanently banned the @ElonJet account on Wednesday, then changed Twitter’s rules to prohibit the sharing of another person’s current location without their consent. He then took aim at journalists who were writing about the jet-tracking account, which can still be found on other social media sites, alleging that they were broadcasting “basically assassination coordinates.”
He used that to justify Twitter’s decision last week to suspend the accounts of numerous journalists who cover the social media platform and Musk, among them reporters working for The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Voice of America and other publications. Many of those accounts were restored following an online poll by Musk.
Then, over the weekend, The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz was suspended after requesting an interview with Musk in a tweet tagged to the Twitter owner.
Sally Buzbee, The Washington Post’s executive editor, called it an “arbitrary suspension of another Post journalist” that further undermined Musk’s promise to run Twitter as a platform dedicated to free speech.
“Again, the suspension occurred with no warning, process or explanation — this time as our reporter merely sought comment from Musk for a story,” Buzbee said. By midday Sunday, Lorenz’s account was restored, as was the tweet she thought had triggered her suspension.
Musk was questioned in court on Nov. 16 about how he splits his time among Tesla and his other companies, including SpaceX and Twitter. Musk had to testify in Delaware’s Court of Chancery over a shareholder’s challenge to Musk’s potentially $55 billion compensation plan as CEO of the electric car company.
Musk said he never intended to be CEO of Tesla, and that he didn’t want to be chief executive of any other companies either, preferring to see himself as an engineer. Musk also said he expected an organizational restructuring of Twitter to be completed in the next week or so. It’s been more than a month since he said that.
In public banter with Twitter followers Sunday, Musk expressed pessimism about the prospects for a new CEO, saying that person “must like pain a lot” to run a company that “has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy.”
“No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor,” Musk tweeted.
TOKYO — A new Japanese rock supergroup called The Last Rockstars is taking aim at the international market with a deal with Universal Music Group and a mission statement “to preserve the spirit of rock music.”
The group – drummer-pianist Yoshiki (X Japan), singer-songwriter Sugizo (Luna Sea, X Japan), vocalist Hyde (L’Arc-en-Ciel, Vamps) and guitarist-actor Miyavi — has signed a global distribution deal with Ingrooves, which is part of UMG’s Virgin Music Group. It begins with the quartet’s debut single, “The Last Rockstars (Paris Mix),” which is scheduled to be released on Dec. 23, a spokesperson for the group tells Billboard.
The Last Rockstars announced their formation in November in Tokyo. Speaking to Billboard, Yoshiki says the four artists discussed making a new band together before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We all wanted to aim at the international market, beyond Japan,” he says. “During the pandemic, we talked even more about it and decided to go for it because we all had the same dreams and goals.”
The Japanese artists bonded around the mission to “preserve the spirit of rock music,” Yoshiki says. “Hip-hop and pop have really taken over in recent decades,” he says. “[Rock is] there, but not standing out like it should be.”
While noting that contemporary groups such as Italy’s Maneskin are carrying the genre’s torch, Yoshiki says The Last Rockstars can also help stimulate the global rock scene — which is why they chose their provocative moniker to leave an impression. “I came up with it, and surprisingly the other members didn’t hesitate in choosing it,” Yoshiki says.
The Last Rockstars will make their live debut at a series of four shows in Tokyo from Jan. 26 to Jan. 30, before coming to the U.S. with two shows at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom (Feb. 3 and 4) and Los Angeles’ Hollywood Palladium (Feb. 10).
The individual members of The Last Rockstars have all cultivated strong followings outside of Japan, with each having played shows in North America. Yoshiki and Sugizo’s X Japan have performed at Coachella and Lollapalooza, while Hyde’s L’Arc-en-Ciel became the first Japanese band ever to headline Madison Square Garden in 2012. Miyavi, who as an actor appeared as a psychotic prison guard in Angelina Jolie’s drama “Unbroken,” has recorded in Nashville and toured internationally in at least 30 countries, including the U.S.
Hyde and Sugizo are signed to UMG for solo work. Miyavi is tied to Purple One Star and Yoshiki is currently unsigned for solo projects, a spokesperson for the group tells Billboard.
Yoshiki’s 2013 album Yoshiki Classical peaked at No. 21 on the Billboard Classical Albums Chart. Hyde saw his 2019 full-length album Anti top the Billboard Japan Download Albums Chart, with the songs “Who’s Gonna Save Us,” “After Light” and “Fake Divine” landing on the Billboard Japan Hot 100 at No. 17, No. 24 and No. 20, respectively. Subsequent 2020 singles “Believing In Myself” and “Let It Out” charted on the Billboard Japan Hot 100 at No. 43 and No. 50, respectively.
Miyavi’s had a smattering of singles on the Billboard Japan Hot 100, highlighted by his 2011 collaboration with rapper Kreva, “Strong,” which peaked at No. 15.
“I have enormous respect for each member,” Yoshiki says. “I’m really honored to be working with these three amazing rockers, and I think we can make some kind of miracle happen.”
In a bombshell recorded interview played in open court on Friday (Dec. 16), Kelsey Harris, Megan Thee Stallion‘s former friend and assistant, claimed several times that she saw Tory Lanez shoot the “Savage” rapper and then bribed her and Harris to keep quiet — contradicting her in-court testimony on Wednesday and Thursday.
Judge David Herriford allowed prosecutors to play the entire 80-minute recording in front of the jury on day five of the blockbuster trial, in which Lanez is charged, among other things, with shooting Megan in the foot on July 12, 2020. The interview — clips from which were previously played in court during Harris’ two-day stint on the witness stand — was conducted on Sept. 14, 2022, in the presence of Deputy District Attorneys Kathy Ta and Alexander Bott, senior investigator Jody Little and Harris’ husband Darien Smith, with Harris’ two attorneys present via phone.
In the recording, Harris could be heard telling prosecutors that an argument between Megan and Lanez that started during a get-together at Kylie Jenner’s house on the night of July 12, 2020, and escalated on the car ride home ended with Tory shooting at Megan five times from the passenger side window of the SUV being driven by Lanez’s security guard Jauquan Smith. “The way Tory was angling the gun was down … definitely in her direction,” recalled Harris, who also claimed Lanez threatened to “shoot” her prior to allegedly firing the gun at Megan later that night.
Harris — who befriended Megan in college before becoming her assistant in 2019 — went on to emotionally recount the immediate aftermath of the gunfire, describing how she “immediately” ran to Megan’s side to find “blood” on her friend. “So in my head, [Megan] had been shot,” she said.
According to Harris, Lanez then exited the vehicle and began walking towards Megan, at which point Harris said she put herself between them — leading Lanez to “physically assault” her with his hands. She then claimed that after leading Lanez back to the car to “distract” him from Megan, he “started pulling” her by her hair and neck. “That’s when I started fearing for my life,” she continued.
Harris, audibly crying at this point in the recording, then claimed that the violence de-escalated once Megan returned to the car. Once they got back in the vehicle and continued driving — with Megan’s bloody leg propped on her own — Harris said Megan then asked her to call Megan’s manager T. Farris. Harris additionally claimed that she sent a text message to Megan’s security guard Justin Edison that read, “Help. 911. Tory shot Meg,” as well as a Facebook message to her mother requesting help. “I was really hurt [emotionally],” Harris continued, adding, “I didn’t realize I had bruises [from the attack].”
Once police vehicles pulled over the car, Harris said Lanez quickly began bribing the two women. “Please y’all don’t say anything…. I’m about to sign a huge deal … I’ll give you guys $1 million each,” she claimed he told them. After police became involved — and Megan’s manager Farris arrived on the scene — Harris, Megan and Lanez were separated, with Megan going to the emergency room at Cedars-Sinai and Harris going to the police station, where photos of her with blood on her legs (shown in court on Wednesday) were taken.
Later on in the recording, Harris can be heard claiming that Lanez tried to bribe her again not long after the incident. After showing up at her hotel with Smith and another man, she said, Lanez apologized and asked Harris if she wanted to work for him, or for him to get her a lawyer. “[I didn’t know] if that was his way of trying to pay,” she added. She said that after telling Megan she had met with Lanez, the “WAP” rapper was critical, allegedly saying to Harris: “He’s just trying to play you.”
Harris’ interview with prosecutors in September was a far cry from her time on the stand. During her two days of court testimony, Harris acted evasive with prosecutors and defense attorneys and even recanted claims she made in September that Lanez had threatened to shoot her on July 12, stating that some of what she said wasn’t “accurate. There were some things I wasn’t truthful about to protect myself.” She did not go into greater detail about what she was protecting herself from, nor which parts of the interview were less than “100% truthful.”
During the September interview as well as her time in court, Harris stated that she has not seen Megan in person since the incident, noting that the last time they had contact was when Megan offered to pay for her housing in the aftermath of the incident. Harris also testified that Megan’s team cut off contact with her in the wake of the shooting. As she did in court, in the recording Harris could also be heard professing anger toward Megan, saying the rapper “never protected” her and even suggested that Harris took hush money from Lanez during an Instagram Live session. “I’m upset she didn’t clear my name,” she said.
On Tuesday, Megan testified that the fight that led up to the July 12 shooting derived in part from Lanez’s sexual relationships with both women as well as derogatory comments she made about the state of Lanez’s career. She claimed that after getting out of the car, “I started walking away and I hear Tory yell, ‘Dance, bi—!’” before being fired on by the singer. Though she initially denied to police officers that she’d been shot, in an Instagram post three days later (July 15, 2020) she confirmed that she’d been shot and had undergone surgery to remove the bullets. In an Instagram Live session on August 20, 2020, she named Lanez as her attacker.
Lanez currently faces three felony charges: assault with a semiautomatic firearm; carrying a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle; and discharging a firearm with gross negligence, the latter of which was added to the list of charges ahead of the trial last week. If convicted on all three counts, he faces 22 years in prison.
The trial resumes Monday (Dec. 19).
UPDATE: This article was updated Dec. 16 at 9:00 p.m. EST to include additional details about Harris’ interaction with Megan after meeting with Lanez as well as her feelings about the way Megan treated her in the aftermath of the shooting.