British label Independiente and the US arm of Domino have launched a lawsuit against Universal's Interscope-Geffen-A&M division, claiming that one of their artists, Guns N Roses, used samples taken from two songs by rather fine German musician Ulrich Schnauss, who is represented by the two indies, without permission. Portions of Schnauss' 'Wherever You Are' and 'A Strangely Isolate Place' reportedly appear on GNR's 'Riad N The Bedouins', a track on last year's 'Chinese Democracy' album.
Independiente and Domino are seeking $1 million in damages in relation to the infringements, which, unlike most lawsuits of this type, would not significant raise the overall cost of the entire album.
In what could be seen as an admission of albeit unknowing guilt, GNR manager and Ticketmaster boss Irving Azoff responded to the lawsuit thus: "The band believed when the record came out and still believes that there are no unauthorised samples on the track. The snippets of 'ambient noise' in question were provided by a member of the album's production team who has assured us that these few seconds of sound were obtained legitimately. Artists these days can't read the minds of those they collaborate with and therefore are unfortunately vulnerable to claims like this one. While the band resents the implication that they would ever use another artist's work improperly and are assessing possible counterclaims, they are confident this situation will be satisfactorily resolved".
However, the plaintiffs' lawyer was keen to stress that even if Azoff, Axl and co were unaware of the infringement, that's no excuse. He told Rolling Stone: "The band and the record company are ultimately responsible for copyright infringement. I can tell you that there is no paper trail authorising the use of these songs and nobody from the plaintiff's side authorised the use of this song".
As previously reported, 'Chinese Democracy' took seventeen years to make and is rumoured to have cost over $13 million to record. However, despite a great deal of hype around its eventual release, including a pre-release stream on MySpace which saw the website serving 25 track plays per second at its peak, the album received poor reviews and suffered from relatively low sales worldwide.