Recordings by Guns N' Roses lost in 2008 fire

[jarmo]

Recordings by Elton John, Nirvana and Thousands More Lost in Fire

A New York Times investigation has revealed that decades of Universal Music Group treasures burned in 2008.

By Niraj Chokshi

June 11, 2019

Eleven years ago this month, a fire ripped through a part of Universal Studios Hollywood.

At the time, the company said that the blaze had destroyed the theme park’s “King Kong” attraction and a video vault that contained only copies of old works.

But, according to an article published on Tuesday by The New York Times Magazine, the fire also tore through an archive housing treasured audio recordings, amounting to what the piece described as “the biggest disaster in the history of the music business.”
What happened?

The fire started in the early hours of June 1, 2008.

Overnight, maintenance workers had used blowtorches to repair the roof of a building on the set of New England Street, a group of colonial-style buildings used in scenes for movies and television shows. The workers followed protocol and waited for the shingles they worked on to cool, but the fire broke out soon after they left, just before 5 a.m.

The flames eventually reached Building 6197, known as the video vault, which housed videotapes, film reels and, crucially, a library of master sound recordings owned by Universal Music Group.

Hundreds of firefighters responded to the fire. After trying to douse it with foam retardant and water from a nearby lake, emergency personnel decided to dismantle the warehouse containing the vault to more easily put out the fire.

What was lost?

Almost all of the master recordings stored in the vault were destroyed in the fire, including those produced by some of the most famous musicians since the 1940s.

In a confidential report in 2009, Universal Music Group estimated the loss at about 500,000 song titles.

The lost works most likely included masters in the Decca Records collection by Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald and Judy Garland. The fire probably also claimed some of Chuck Berry’s greatest recordings, produced for Chess Records, as well as the masters of some of Aretha Franklin’s first appearances on record.

Almost of all of Buddy Holly’s masters were lost, as were most of John Coltrane’s masters in the Impulse Records collection. The fire also claimed numerous hit singles, likely including Bill Haley and His Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock,” Etta James’s “At Last” and the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie.”

The list of artists affected spans decades of popular music. It includes recordings by Ray Charles, B.B. King, the Four Tops, Joan Baez, Neil Diamond, Sonny and Cher, Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Al Green, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Buffett, the Eagles, Aerosmith, Rufus and Chaka Khan, Barry White, Patti LaBelle, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Police, Sting, Steve Earle, R.E.M., Janet Jackson, Guns N’ Roses, Mary J. Blige, No Doubt, Nine Inch Nails, Snoop Dogg, Nirvana, Beck, Sheryl Crow, Tupac Shakur, Eminem, 50 Cent and the Roots.
What are master recordings, and why do they matter?

A master recording is the one-of-a-kind original recording of a piece of music. It’s the source from which other vinyl records, CDs, MP3s and all other recordings are made.

According to the article, documents show that the vault contained masters dating back decades, including multitrack recordings on which individual instruments remained isolated from one another. There were also session masters, including recordings that had never been commercially released. The recordings within the vault came from to some of the most important record labels of all time.

Audiophiles and audio professionals view such recordings with special regard.

“A master is the truest capture of a piece of recorded music,” Adam Block, the former president of Legacy Recordings, Sony Music Entertainment’s catalog arm, told the magazine. “Sonically, masters can be stunning in their capturing of an event in time. Every copy thereafter is a sonic step away.”

Why are we only finding about this now?

At the time, the fire made news around the world, and the vault featured heavily in that coverage. But most articles focused only on the video recordings in the archive and, even then, news outlets largely characterized the disaster as a crisis averted.

Jody Rosen, the writer of the article, described the successful effort to play down the scope of the loss as a “triumph of crisis management” that involved officials working for Universal Music Group on both coasts. Those efforts were undoubtedly aimed at minimizing public embarrassment, but some suggest the company was also particularly worried about a backlash from artists and artist estates whose master recordings had been destroyed.

The real extent of the loss was laid out in litigation and company documents obtained by Mr. Rosen, a contributing writer for the magazine.
How bad is the loss?

Mr. Rosen described the loss as historic, and even Universal Music Group itself — privately — viewed what happened in bleak terms: “Lost in the fire was, undoubtedly, a huge musical heritage,” reads one 2009 internal assessment.

Record companies have had a troubled history with such recordings and have been known to trash them in bulk. Decades ago, employees of CBS Records reportedly took power saws to multitrack masters to sell the reels as scrap metal. In the 1970s, RCA destroyed masters by Elvis Presley in a broader purge.

Because of that history, industry professionals have long questioned how committed the major music labels are to preserving what they see as priceless artifacts.

Today, most commercial recordings from the past century and beyond are controlled by only three giant record companies: Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and, of course, Universal Music Group.

Niraj Chokshi is a general assignment reporter based in New York. Before joining The Times in 2016, he covered state governments for The Washington Post. He has also worked at The Atlantic, National Journal and The Recorder, in San Francisco. @nirajc

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/us/master-recordings-universal-fire.html




/jarmo

[The Wight Gunner]

And here https://loudwire.com/report-nirvana-guns-n-roses-nine-inch-nails-master-recordings-lost-2008-fire/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=newsletter_5288477

[axlvai]

This is the worst... 

Edit to add... and what was lost?? Can we get that info?

[jarmo]

Universal Music Group Archivist: Vault Fire Damage 'Surprisingly Overstated,' But Any Loss Is 'Painful for Us'

6/17/2019 by Steve Knopper

"Many of the masters that were highlighted [in the report] as destroyed, we actually have in our archives," says UMG archivist Patrick Kraus.

For much of last week, Universal Music Group archivist Patrick Kraus sent members of his team into the ten vaults the company keeps around the world to verify the location and condition of its more than 3.5 million assets, from original session recordings to photographs. The world's biggest music company has been in crisis mode since the New York Times Magazine ran "The Day the Music Burned," reporting that a 2008 Hollywood, California, fire destroyed up to 500,000 master recordings, including historical originals by Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Aretha Franklin, Elton John, Guns N' Roses, Snoop Dogg, the Roots and many others.

The Times story brought unprecedented attention to a little-known part of the recording business -- storing and preserving masters, the "first-generation tapes," in Kraus' words, used as sources for vinyl, CD and digital releases. The Times described them as "the irreplaceable primary source of a piece of recorded music," which is why they're vital for ambitious reissue projects and indispensable for historians. They could also now be the subject of litigation: Prominent artists are considering filing lawsuits against Universal based on the destruction of their masters.

Kraus, UMG's senior VP of recording studios and archive management, didn't work at Universal at the time of the fire, but he spent part of last week reassuring panicked artists and responding to outraged music fans – and he explained to Billboard why the Times story "overstated" the losses. "Mind you, we've had two days!" he says. (Universal has allocated additional resources to Kraus' tem and established an email address for artists to communicate with the company about this issue: archives@umusic.com.) Kraus, who started in music selling records at Licorice Pizza in LA, worked in Warner Music Group's archives operation for 17 years before coming to Universal in 2015.

Universal won't say how many archival assets were lost in the fire at Universal Studios backlot, which at the time of the fire, Universal Music Group rented from NBC Universal. "There are constraints preventing us from publicly addressing some of the details," the company said in a statement. But Kraus, who spoke with frustration and wonky passion, discussed what he could about the extent of the damage and how the the label now archives the recordings it owns.

The Times story says the fire far worse than was reported at the time. Is that assessment fair?

Based on what we know, to me [the article] was surprisingly overstated. The article painted a picture of an archive being a place where every asset is a master – which isn't always true. In fact, it's never true. The things we collect range from reference cassettes, reference reels of tape, CD-Rs, production masters, multi-track tapes, flat-mix masters, EQ'ed production masters – it runs a gamut of items, formats and purposes.

How many of the millions of UMG archival "assets" are considered masters? And how many are early-generation copies? And how important is that difference?

It's not always as simple as just saying, "Oh, we're going to do a reissue, give me the master tape." We look at everything we have. Sometimes the master source is not the best source to work from. Sometimes it's a "protection copy," because it's been played less, for example. It's a nuanced world we live in.

Can you characterize what was in fact lost in the 2008 fire?

There is no dispute that the fire caused serious loss, and we never said otherwise. Any loss of any asset, master or otherwise, is painful for us. What was lost? There are many things that were in these archives -- master tapes, protection copies, boxes of paperwork, etc.

The story suggests that masters for many major catalogs, from Chuck Berry to Aretha Franklin, were destroyed. Is that true?

The extent of the losses was overstated. Many of the masters that were highlighted as destroyed, we actually have in our archives -- the Impulse [Records]/[John] Coltrane stuff, Muddy Waters, [jazz pianist] Ahmad Jamal, [gospel label] Nashboro Records, Chess Records, to name a few. Those are some of the things we've gone through. Just in the last two days, we've found those examples in the archives.

What can you tell me about Building 6197, the facility where Universal stored its archival material on the Universal Studios lot back then, and how much damage was done in the fire?

All I know about that lot is what I saw as a visitor on the tour, to tell you the truth.

When did you go as a visitor?

I'm talking about the Universal Studios tour. When I lived in Burbank, in my Warner days, my kids were little, so we would go to the Nickelodeon Splash zone on a regular basis.

Do you think Universal and other labels learned anything from the fire about how to protect archival assets?

Well, you know, it's 11 years ago, right? Anytime you have a fire -- any time you lose an asset -- it's a terrible event. We know we have to put these assets into secure facilities that have fire protection and we have to work quickly to preserve some of this stuff digitally to make sure it's around for the ages. Beyond that, I don't know that I could say we learned anything specifically from this particular event.

How much have you changed the archiving process since you started at UMG four years ago? How do you store masters and other assets today?

We have a mix of our own facilities around the world, and partner facilities, and that partner in many cases is Iron Mountain. We're pretty deliberate about geographic separation. We have things on the West Coast, in the center of the country, on the East Coast, in and around London, in the U.K., and various local vaults around the territories we operate in around the world.

The story quotes a source describing Iron Mountain, where Universal stores many of its master recordings in Boyers, Pennsylvania, as a "Raiders of the Lost Ark"-style warehouse that contains rows and rows of objects that are hard to identify. Is that true?

That was grossly overstated. Iron Mountain has been a great partner for us in terms of not only storage but also helping us to understand what we have better. Things are marked and we have databases that contain as much data as we've been able to capture around those assets.

How much of an issue is finding an identifying recordings?

It's my sense that, across the board, music archiving has improved greatly over the last 20-plus years. I have not run across situations where it's wildly out of control and "Raiders of the Lost Ark"-like.

The Times story paints a pretty dark picture about how masters have been cared for over the years.

There are lots of tales of terrible things that have happened to archival assets across the entertainment industry over the decades, and people love to tell them. They're probably all true. But we're not fighting a battle against the elements here on a daily basis. There are some real threats that we deal with all the time, like decaying physical carriers and tapes. Where do you find a wax-cylinder player that does justice to the content? Same with analog tape.

After the article, some artists have publicly said that they believe their masters have been destroyed, including Krist Novoselic of Nirvana and Irving Azoff, who spoke on behalf of Steely Dan, which he manages. Can you respond?

Every artist who's reached out to us with concerns, we're working closely with them and/or their representatives to give them insight into the status of all of the assets we hold.

Could any good come from this in terms of people paying some attention to this issue more broadly?

It's a good opportunity for us to say, "Look, we're not a bunch of bean counters who don't give a shit about these assets." We actually literally spend most of our waking moments devising strategies for how to best take care of this stuff. There's an endless list of stunning artifacts that we have that we treasure and that we work hard to preserve. And being able to talk about that is always a good thing.

https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8516256/umg-archivist-interview-universal-fire-masters-tapes-litigation




/jarmo

[PermissionToLand]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w211KOQ5BMI

[jarmo]

Here Are Hundreds More Artists Whose Tapes Were Destroyed in the UMG Fire

By Jody Rosen

June 25, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/magazine/universal-music-fire-bands-list-umg.html


Among the artists listed is GN'R.



/jarmo

[coolman78SLASH]

Here Are Hundreds More Artists Whose Tapes Were Destroyed in the UMG Fire

By Jody Rosen

June 25, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/magazine/universal-music-fire-bands-list-umg.html


Among the artists listed is GN'R.

And Duff...

/jarmo

[allwaystired]

Here Are Hundreds More Artists Whose Tapes Were Destroyed in the UMG Fire

By Jody Rosen

June 25, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/magazine/universal-music-fire-bands-list-umg.html


Among the artists listed is GN'R.

And Duff...

/jarmo

That's quite likely to be Duff's unreleased second album I'd think.....

Do we know exactly what's been lost yet?

[jarmo]

Universal Music Updates Staff on Fire Damage in Internal Memo (Read)
By Jem Aswad   

Ahead of an expected motion to dismiss the lawsuit filed last month by several artists over damage in the 2008 fire that destroyed hundreds of thousands of master recordings, according to the New York Times, the company’s chief archivist, Pat Kraus, issued a memo to the staff that has been obtained by Variety.

While the company has acknowledged severe damage to its archive from the fire — and sources close to the situation acknowledge that the company’s management at the time was not completely forthcoming about the extent of the damage — it has disputed the author’s characterization of the destruction caused to the company’s archives.

Supporting that argument, the memo states that “our team has been working around the clock, fielding requests from approximately 275 artists and representatives.  To date we’ve reviewed 26,663 individual assets covering 30 artists.

“Of those assets, we believe we’ve identified 424 that could be missing or lost due to the fire, with audio assets accounting for 349 of them.  Our data suggests that 22 of those could be ‘original masters’ which are associated with 5 artists.  For each of those lost masters, we have located high-quality alternate sources in the form of safety copies or duplicate masters.”

----

Full story: https://variety.com/2019/biz/news/universal-music-fire-damage-update-masters-archivist-internal-memo-read-1203270621/





/jarmo

[(t)]

Sounds like NY Times may have exaggerated a little bit.

[poorlakers]

Sounds like NY Times may have exaggerated a little bit.

That surely does not happen? Nothing but the truth all the times!

[axlvai]

What gnr material was lost?