Fatboy Slim admitted the one advantage to being sued by The Clash was getting to meet his “heroes”.
Fatboy Slim got to meet his “heroes” as a direct result of being sued.
The Praise You hitmaker – whose real name is Norman Cook – was the subject of legal action from Paul Simonon of the Clash after his Beats International single Dub Be Good to Me sampled the baseline from the punk group’s Guns of Brixton.
While the superstar DJ insisted the rules of sampling weren’t clear at the time and he ended up having to give The Clash songwriting credits and an unspecified payment, he can still see a silver lining in the situation.
He told BANG Showbiz and other media: “This was really bizarre because The Clash were my favourite band in the world, still are. And to meet your heroes with a phone call saying, ‘I’m going to sue you and I want a very, very large amount of money out of you motherf***er.’ It’s like, ‘Oh, hi Paul.’…
“Nobody really knew what the laws were. But I settled it with Paul. I had this pow wow with him and we were fine. We came to a figure that suited both and I got to know Mick and Joe through it as well. So through the worst of introductions I got to meet my heroes.”
Fatboy Slim claimed Paul only took legal action due to his girlfriend at the time.
He said: “It was the early days of sampling and no one really knew what the rules were, we didn’t have lawyers who were specialists in sample clearance. So a lot of us had put records out with samples on and no one had ever said anything.
“There’s a little adage in the music business ‘with the hits come the writs’. So when Dub Be Good To Me was a really big hit Paul Simonon from The Clash, who I’d knew had heard the record before and was fine with it, but when it got to number one his girlfriend was like, ‘Did he give you any money for that?’ And he was like, ‘No, do you think he should?’
“We sorted it out. The thing was, his girlfriend worked out what she thought I owed him. She said, ‘It’s number one, you’re on Top of the Pops.’ I said, ‘You know that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s made hundreds of thousands of pounds.’ “
Fatboy Slim finds positive in Clash lawsuit
