Carl Marsh speaks to Daniele Davoli, founder member of Italian pop/house colossi Black Box – if we wrote in tabloidese we’d call them something like “Ride On Time hitmakers” – about events old and new, including latest release Dreamlanders: a home listening-friendly rework of their debut album.
It’s been 30 years since Black Box released debut album Dreamland, but we’re here to talk about Dreamlanders, a full reworking which celebrates that album and timespan. Was it always your plan to do this, or has lockdown been the main motivation?
It was, like you say, 30 years since Dreamland, and fans kept asking. You should be doing something, blah blah blah. And then lockdown had given us a bit more time on our hands. We could have done new stuff, but this is a one-off opportunity as I can’t do a 30-year celebration in five or 10 years – so we decided to do that.
Also, we thought that people now consume and listen to music in a completely different way because you don’t go to clubs anymore. Even if you like hardcore beats and all that when you’re sitting on your sofa, there’s only so much you can jump on it [laughs]. And, obviously, we are 30 years older, and we think and perceive music differently. We have calmed down, basically.
I noticed that, with Dreamlanders, you’d finally got clearance to use Loleatta Holloway’s vocal on Ride On Time, and credited its original producer, Dan Hartman. That has been a challenging journey for you guys, hasn’t it?
Well the thing is, we got scammed in the first place, realistically. When we made Ride On Time, we just pressed 1000 copies, and everyone wanted a licence – we didn’t have experience, but the record company had. So they said, “we need to clear this, of course,” and within two weeks, we had the deal done. BMG went and made a deal – they agreed with it, paid the advance, sent the papers and draft to discuss it, but forgot to check if the documents were sent back. BMG at the time was a big conglomerate, and they had like 20 people in the legal department. And they forget!
So we release the record, and we don’t get a number one, but we’re [about] to go on Top Of The Pops. Half an hour before going on stage, we get a phone call from the BBC director saying, “you can’t go on as the Americans are threatening to sue us!” The guy from BMG who was there says, “I’m the boss of BMG, and I guarantee that we have the clearance – we’ve got the licence.”
And then, the following Monday, they realised they didn’t have the clearance – they had all the negotiation, but they didn’t have the papers back. That’s where the real troubles arrived.
Just because the clearance papers had not been sent back from Salsoul Records?
They woke up to the awful truth, right? They got scammed, basically. They start negotiating, and [Salsoul] asked for a fortune. Eventually they finally lowered their requests, and asked us to re-record it and release that version.
BMG said “legally, we can prove we acted in bona fide – we have all the back and forth faxes, and we paid the advance.” Salsoul was told they could only sue us for the small number of records we sold, because the majority of records we’re selling now are the re-recorded ones. So, a year later, they got clearance. In fact, the American album has the Loleatta Holloway version on it, unlike the European albums, which has the re-vocal version on them [sung by Heather Small, pre-M People]. BMG paid what we had recouped on our royalties – we got a bit upset about it because they could have done better.
Then, five years later, the license expired; I tried to contact Salsoul Records and they asked us for half a million dollars! We thought, you know what, forget about it. We’ll carry on as we’re doing. We are happy ever after.
But we’re here now with you having the rights again, and Loleatta Holloway died in 2011. You didn’t pay $500,000, did you?
Five or six years ago, a friend – the guy that signed us at RCA back in the day – called and said he’d just joined BMG. They were acquiring catalogues, and funnily enough they had bought the catalogue of Salsoul. He was wondering, as we obviously had a big sample out of it, if we’d got clearance from Salsoul.
I said, “no, they asked for half a million dollars years ago, and we decided not to get involved”; he said, “well if you want it, we own it now, and can do a reasonable deal.” Within two weeks, we signed a deal, paid what they wanted, and that was it. So now we’ve got clearance, we can use the sample, can credit it, finally, and we can say the truth and do whatever we like!
Black Box’s Dreamlanders is out now via Groove Groove Melo. Info: www.blackboxhouse.eu
words CARL MARSH