LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Rocker Steven Tyler on Thursday bowed out of his job as a judge on top-rated television singing contest 'American Idol' for the coming season, saying he wants to dedicate himself to his band, Aerosmith.
Tyler's departure comes as his fellow judge, Jennifer Lopez, also weighs whether to return to the program that once reigned supreme atop U.S. TV ratings but has seen its audience shrink in recent years. Third panelist Randy Jackson seems a likely bet to return this fall for the program's 12th season as either a judge or in a mentoring role.
'I strayed from my first love, Aerosmith, and I'm back,' the band's lead singer said in a statement.
'I've decided it's time for me to let go of my mistress 'American Idol' before she boils my rabbit,' Tyler added, in a reference to the thriller movie, 'Fatal Attraction.' 'I got two fists in the air, and I'm kicking the door open with my band.'
Tyler, 64, and Aerosmith had amassed numerous hits like 'Walk This Way' and 'I Don't Want To Miss a Thing' since gaining fame in the 1970s, but the group had reached a lull a few years back when the singer decided to join 'American Idol' as a judge.
The addition of Tyler and Lopez to the judging panel in the season that began in January 2011 sparked great interest in the Fox TV network's hit show.
But the most recent season that ended in May had the lowest-rated finale in 11 years with just 21.5 million Americans tuning in to watch Phillip Phillips win the title and recording contract that comes with it. More than 30 million viewers watched the show's finale in its heyday in 2006 and 2007.
Mark Darnell, president of alternative entertainment for Fox, called Tyler 'a terrific judge, a true friend, and great mentor' on the show.
'We are very sad that Steven has chosen to focus more on his music, but we always knew when we hired a rock 'n roll legend, he would go back to music,' Darnell said in a statement.
Indeed, Tyler's return to performing seemed foremost on his mind in March when Aerosmith announced it would go on a North American tour that began June 16, and release their first album in eight years, 'Music From Another Dimension,' on November 6.
The flamboyant rocker's departure leaves a big hole on the 'American Idol' judges panel as he has been a fan favorite. He helped create one of this past season's dramatic moments when young Jessica Sanchez was voted off by fans, then saved from elimination after Tyler and fellow judge Jackson stormed the stage in her defense. Sanchez went on to the finals.
Still in doubt is the fate of Lopez, another music superstar, who just this morning on NBC's 'Today' show seemed still undecided about her next move.
'It's been on my mind a lot, as you can imagine,' she said. 'You know, I signed on to 'American Idol' to do one year, and ... I wound up doing the two years. And now it's like, 'OK, do we continue on this journey?''
(Additional reporting by Courtney Garcia; Editing by Jan Paschal)
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Thursday, July 12, 2012
Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber highest paid young celebrities
Bieber, who brought in an estimated $55 million, was the only male among the top five earners, who included Rihanna at No. 3 with $53 million, followed by Lady Gaga and Katy Perry.
'We are seeing a convergence of these talented women who know how to work the system,' said Dorothy Pomerantz, the Los Angeles bureau chief for Forbes.
'The things they have in common, obviously they write great hits, are strong personalities. That really helps them from a publicity point of view. They connect with their fans,' she added.
Kristen Stewart, who was the highest paid actress last year with an estimated $34.5 million in earnings, captured the No. 7 spot and was the only actress in the top 10.
Stewart, a lead player in the 'The Twilight Saga' films, also had a hit with 'Snow White and the Huntsman' and is considered one of Hollywood's up-and-coming stars.
Her co-star in the 'Twilight' films and real-life boyfriend, Robert Pattinson, came in at No. 10 with earnings of $26.5 million.
''Twilight' has done wonderful things for these kids' bank accounts,' said Pomerantz, adding that they are now making $12 million per film in the franchise. 'What will be telling is how they do post-'Twilight.''
To compile the list Forbes analyzed album and concert sales, movies earnings, profit participation, advertising work and endorsements between May 2011 and May 2012. Managers, lawyers, agents and other insiders were also consulted.
The full list can be found at http://tinyurl.com/6sdbeoy.
(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; Editing by Christine Kearney and Steve Orlofsky)
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Rolling Stones celebrate 50th, hint about tour
As part of the festivities guitarist Ronnie Wood told Reuters in an exclusive interview that the Stones are set to reveal their plans for future live gigs this week.
'What we do is live in hope and hopefully this week we'll unfold some plans,' Wood said, adding that the band had recently spent a number of days rehearsing in a studio in New York and that getting together was like 'being back at school'.
Richards said this week that the Stones have met up for 'a couple of rehearsals', but would not go so far as to say when the quartet comprising himself, Jagger, Charlie Watts and Wood would be performing in public again.
'We're playing around with the idea and had a couple of rehearsals - we've got together and it feels so good,' Richards told Britain's publicly funded broadcaster the BBC.
The 65-year-old Wood, who joined the Stones in 1975 to replace Mick Taylor, also refused to rule out the possibility of a return appearance by Bill Wyman -- bass guitarist for the band from 1962 until 1993.
'I saw him last week and he was in top form, rocking,' Wood said. 'We also did a rehearsal with him a few weeks ago. It's like he'd never been away.'
The exhibition of photos at London's Somerset House and the accompanying book track the rise of a group of fresh-faced British boys who played their first gig at Oxford Street's Marquee Club in 1962, became the scourge of the establishment in the 1960s, the titans of 70s music and finally the elder statesmen of rock and roll in the 21st century.
'There was no sort of master plan,' Richards says on the band's official website rollingstones.com. 'We were flying by the seat of our pants. That is what amazes me, that the whole thing was improvised.'
The relationship at the heart of the Stones' success remains the working friendship of singer Jagger and Richards, whose long musical partnership goes back to the days when they roomed with the late guitarist and former Stones founding member Brian Jones, hustling gigs wherever they could find them.
'You have to put yourself back into that time,' Jagger says on rollingstones.com. 'Popular music wasn't talked about on any kind of intellectual level. There was no such term as 'popular culture.' None of those things existed.'
RIFT AND RECONCILIATION
But the Jagger/Richards partnership has also had its chillier moments.
Earlier this year, Richards apologized to Jagger for derogatory comments he made about the lead singer in his 2010 memoir 'Life', which caused a rift within the band.
In comments reported by Rolling Stone magazine, the two agreed it was time to settle their differences, leaving fans keen for another world tour breathing a sigh of relief.
'I got very involved with the business side of the Stones, mainly because I felt no one else was interested, but it's plain now from the book that Keith felt excluded, which is a pity,' Jagger was quoted as saying. 'Time I reckon to move on.'
Richards added: 'Mick's right. He and I have had conversations over the last year of a kind we have not had for an extremely long time and that has been incredibly important to me.'
Some industry sources had put a tour delay down to the argument, but Rolling Stone said it may be more closely linked to concerns over Richards' health.
'The quality of the guitarist's performances declined after he suffered a head injury on vacation in Fiji in April 2006, midway through the Bigger Bang tour,' the magazine said.
A Bigger Bang, the Stones' last tour, played to 4.5 million people in 32 countries over two years before it finished in London in 2007.
'The Rolling Stones: 50' picture book also hit the shelves on Thursday to correspond with the golden anniversary and were showcased at a Champagne-fuelled London party on Thursday attended by the Stones and other celebrities.
The new book features 700 illustrations, 300 of them in color and many taken from the archive of the Daily Mirror tabloid, which contains the largest newspaper collection of Rolling Stones photography.
'This is our story of 50 fantastic years,' Jagger, Richards, guitarist/bass player Wood and drummer Watts said in a joint statement.
'We started out as a blues band playing the clubs and more recently we've filled the largest stadiums in the world with the kind of show that none of us could have imagined all those years ago.'
The photographic autobiography, which also features words from the band, includes images taken by Philip Townsend, the photographer for the band's first ever shoot.
The 352-page hardback edition published by Thames & Hudson in Britain, will retail at 29.95 pounds ($48).
The Stones have said they also plan to release a documentary film in November chronicling their history.
The last studio album by the group was in 2005. They have released two live albums, 'Hampton Coliseum (Live 1981)' and 'L.A. Friday (Live 1975),' so far this year.
Richards said on rollingstones.com that he is grateful for the hallowed place that he and the band have carved into the hearts of their fans and in rock history, but was still striving to improve, half a century into his career.
'If you say I'm great, thank you very much, but I know what I am. I could be better, man, you know?'
(Reporting By Josie Cox, writing by Paul Casciato, editing by Steve Addison)
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Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Chris Brown's "Fortune" tops Billboard album chart
'Fortune' sold 134,000 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan, a considerably lower debut than the singer's previous album 'F.A.M.E.,' which also reached No. 1 with 270,000 copies in its debut week last year.
Brown's was the only new album in the top 10 this week.
A surprise entry from pop star Katy Perry took the No. 2 slot on the album chart. Her 'Teenage Dream' record, released almost two years ago in August 2010, notched 80,000 unit sales last week, fueled by her new movie 'Katy Perry: Part Of Me' and Amazon.com's offer of the album for 99 cents on July 3.
The Amazon.com offer, which saw several albums priced at 99 cents for one day only, also pushed Gotye's 'Making Mirrors,' Fun.'s 'Some Nights' and the Black Keys' 'El Camino' albums back into the top 10 of the Billboard 200, at No. 6, No. 7 and No. 10 respectively.
Justin Bieber's 'Believe' held steady at No. 3, Maroon 5's 'Overexposed' notched No. 4, and Linkin Park's 'Living Things' fell from the top spot last week to No. 5.
(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte and M.D. Golan)
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EU copyright law plan angers Radiohead, Pink Floyd
The Commission announced a draft law on Wednesday designed to make sure that the firms collecting music royalties on the behalf of artists also hand them over to the performers, composers and producers involved in making a piece of music.
'We are deeply disappointed by your choice to defend the interests of a minority of managers and stakeholders,' said a letter signed by Pink Floyd's Nick Mason, Radiohead's Ed O'Brien, British singer Sandie Shaw, producer CJ Bolland and the director of Younison, an artists' lobby, Kelvin Smits.
By the Commission's own assessment, collection societies -- up to 250 of which operate in Europe -- keep 'substantial amounts of money' on their books, pending distribution.
In an impact assessment made ahead of Wednesday's announcement, the Commission said that in 2010 major societies owed 3.6 billion euros ($4.41 billion) in royalties to the creators.
Artists say that figure is in fact much higher and that societies have no incentive to pay up quickly, because of the returns they can make on the money in their hands.
Some 5-10 percent of payments are kept for as long as three years after they were collected, the Commission said.
The draft law, which will need approval from the European Parliament and the EU's 27 member countries, says societies have 12 months after the financial year in which a song was played to pay royalties.
And funds whose royalty-owner remains unidentified could be kept by the collecting society after five years.
'You have broken your promises and encourage the management of collecting societies to keep the fruits of our creativity,' read the artists' letter to the Commission.
'You stole our hopes.'
The artists say the five-year grace period will only encourage the collecting societies to keep the money they owe, and reduces the incentive to find the rights-holder.
'You thus legitimize one of the most problematic forms of embezzlement adopted by some collecting societies in Europe,' their letter reads.
Societies say they try to pay rights-holders as quickly as they can and that many already pay their members much quicker than the draft law demands.
PRS in Britain makes payments every three months, said Veronique Desbrosses, the secretary-general of GESAC, which represents 33 collecting societies in the European Union.
'And sometimes it's difficult to find the rights-holders because they are all over the world,' she added.
The law also aims to tackle piracy by expanding the amount of music which can be played by online companies like Apple's iTunes that need licenses from the societies before they can offer their services.
To date, iTunes is the only online mainstream music vendor available in all 27 EU member states, the Commission report says. ($1 = 0.8160 euros)
(Editing by Rex Merrifield and Mark Heinrich)
Gilberto Gil, South Africa's "Voice" premiere Viramundo
Teaming up with South African folk star Vusi Mahlasela also on guitar, Gil's 'Viramundo' concert offered a sneak preview of an upcoming documentary on his road trip rich in cross-cultural collaboration.
South African Paul Hanmer was on piano, along with Brazilians Gustavo Di Dalva on drums and guitarist Sergio Chiavazzoli, for the nearly two-hour set in Miles Davis Hall, which was backed by a Swiss orchestra, the Lausanne Sinfonietta.
'We are Africans in Brazil, especially when it comes to music. We are very African already in Brazil,' Gil told Reuters in an interview in the chalet of festival founder Claude Nobs hours before the show.
'What we sing about, our subjects, we have lots of things in common like the apartheid situation, hunger, poverty, submission, humiliation and exploitation - all of that. The black slaves in Brazil went through the same thing that tribes had to go through when they worked in the gold mines in South Africa.'
'Ba Kae', 'Lamento Sertanejo' and 'Raca Humana' were among the tracks performed by the duo, who opened for American chanteuse Melody Gardot.
Gil arrived a few days early in Switzerland for his 10th appearance at one of Europe's most prestigious music festivals.
Last weekend in a Swiss studio, he recorded 10 songs for the soundtrack of 'Viramundo - a Journey with Gilberto Gil,' which follows him on a musical tour of the southern hemisphere, via Brazil, South Africa and Australia, while examining racial issues.
The 95-minute film, now due to be released early in 2013 in Switzerland, France and Belgium, is directed by Pierre-Yves Borgeaud, whose award-winning documentary 'Return to Goree' features Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour.
'I was completing some recording requirements that we had from the film's soundtrack. Definitely I think that the producer has the intention to release probably a soundtrack of the film,' Gil said.
Referring to the anti-apartheid activist Mahlasela, known as 'The Voice', he said: 'Vusi is an outstanding performer and songwriter, a very interesting musical personality in Africa.'
On stage, Mahlasela, a strapping man in an African shirt, towered over the slight, grey-haired Gil, who turned 70 last month.
'I not only sing the beauty of my country but also some of the disturbing things we saw, the brutality of the police playing with old corpses,' Mahlasela told the crowd after singing the track 'The Beauty of Our Land'.
'Our grandfathers of humanity, Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and another man who lived in South Africa, Mahatma Gandhi, planted a seed of reconciliation and taught us there is wisdom in forgiveness,' he said.
Peter Garrett, former frontman for Midnight Oil and now Australia's education minister, and indigenous singer Shellie Morris appear in film scenes shot in the Northern Territories.
'Aborigine is a local, ancient culture that was all of a sudden struck by the colonizers. They almost lost completely their identity and natural forms of relating to themselves and their environment,' Gil said.
'The whole long struggle they have been having to endure, and to survive is also very similar to the situation of South Africans and the situation of blacks and Indians in Brazil.'
Gil, celebrating 50 years in the music business, was culture minister under former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Seated in Nob's chalet in a village overlooking Montreux and Lake Geneva, he was surrounded by souvenirs collected by the Swiss founder of the festival, now in its 46th edition, which ends on Saturday.
A red, flowered kimono that belonged to the late Freddie Mercury was displayed behind him in a glass frame.
'I was first here in Montreux when Queen was recording their second album in 1978. They hired a studio in the mountains during the whole festival and were recording there,' Gil said. 'One night we both went to the same restaurant and shook hands.'
His European tour began in London followed by Brussels, and continues in France, Italy, Germany and Spain.
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Patricia Reaney)
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Sunday, July 8, 2012
Rihanna sues ex-accountants, says she lost millions
In a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court that surfaced on Thursday, the 24-year-old singer and her tour company, Tourihanna, is seeking an unspecified amount of compensatory damages and loss of earnings from accountancy firm Berdon LLP and former employees Michael Mitnick and Peter Gounis.
The suit, first filed late in Tuesday ahead of the July 4 U.S. holiday, claims the accounting firm caused 'significant financial losses' between 2005 and 2010 by charging 'exorbitant' commissions from Rihanna's 2010 'Last Girl on Earth Tour.' It also accuses Berdon of mishandling Rihanna's foreign and domestic taxes and failing to monitor unpaid song royalties.
'Between 2005 and 2010, Tourihanna suffered significant losses due to defendants' financial mismanagement and other acts and omissions,' the lawsuit said.
Ron Storch, a partner at Berdon, said the company could not comment on pending litigation. Mitnick and Gounis have since left the firm and could not be reached for comment.
Rihanna, whose real name is Robyn Fenty, has produced a string of worldwide hits including 'Umbrella' and 'We Found Love.' She is referred to in the suit as a financial novice who found fame at a young age and relied heavily on her accountants.
Her music management introduced her to Berdon in 2005 when she was a 16-year-old and 'a minor with a booming music career and no knowledge or understanding of financial matters whatsoever.'
The lawsuit said the accountants concealed facts regarding her finances and, in a deal Rihanna's lawyers called unusual, earned commissions based on a percentage of Rihanna's gross receipts that were 'exorbitant and expensive.'
In addition, the firm assumed control over the singer's affairs beyond the industry standard and failed to maximize her personal net worth and long term wealth, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit said several of the Barbados-born singer's national and international tours between 2005 and 2010 suffered losses compared with her last tour, 'Loud', that was a financial success after she parted ways with Berdon.
The lawsuit said Rihanna lost millions of dollars during 'The Last Girl On Earth' tour after the firm failed to reconcile costs versus revenues while still paying itself millions in fees.
It estimated that between 2007 and 2010, the accountants earned millions in commissions on tour gross receipts in an amount equaling 23 percent of total tour income, compared with 6 percent for Rihanna.
The firm did not do monthly planning reports and performed little record-keeping of Rihanna's personal and business expenses, including those for Tourihanna. For example, during 2008 and 2009, the accountants kept only 2 percent to 4 percent of all receipts for expenses charged on the singer's personal credit card, the suit said.
It also failed to uncover millions in unpaid royalties and problems with the way in which Universal Music Group (UMG) label Recordings was tracking song royalties. The suit did not mention Rihanna's direct label, Def Jam, also owned by UMG.
Accountants mishandled foreign and domestic taxes by withholding more funds than necessary, leading to 'a significant losses of tax benefits' and failed to file taxes on time, causing late penalties.
The singer further claims that, as a result, the IRS is now auditing her because Berdon mishandled tax returns between 2008 and 2010. The suit includes claims of breach of contract, negligence, breach of fiduciary duty and unjust enrichment.
(Reporting By Christine Kearney; editing by Bob Tourtellotte, M.D. Golan and Andre Grenon)
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