"So things will start to move now?" Jake asked.
"That was the hard part," Pauline said. "The rest of the negotiations will practically fly by."
Jake should have known that practically flying by was a relative term that meant something very different to the lawyer mind than it did to the professional musician mind. At the next session Pauline, acting in accordance with an unwritten set of rules that governed such negotiations, countered National's blink with a blink of her own. She allowed that the band would be willing to accept twenty-five percent royalties on going retail album rate plus one dollar. This led to another two sessions of back and forth arguing before National upped their offer to thirteen percent on a four dollar and fifty cent retail rate.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Jake said. "We're back where we started!"
"This does seem entirely counterproductive," Bill agreed.
"Patience," Pauline said. "We're moving forward. Trust me on this."
As it turned out, she was right. The two sides concentrated fully on the royalty rate and the album rate it would be based upon and stopped talking about anything else. The offers went back and forth, slowly but surely closing in towards the middle. Finally, on April 17, 1985, they declared agreement on eighteen percent royalties at going retail rate — which currently stood at eight dollars per album and one dollar per single. After thirty-seven sessions, after 260 hours of negotiation, they had reached their first agreement. Now there were only sixty or seventy other points that needed to be hashed out.
The tedium dragged on, with each new issue starting the whole process anew. Ridiculous offers would be placed on the table by both sides and hours beyond counting would be spent waiting for someone to blink first. As Pauline had told them though, once the precedent was set, most of the time it was National that blinked first. Album production costs and promotion costs, which had been one hundred percent recoupable under the old contract, were slowly whittled down to only fifty percent recoupable. The ten percent breakage fee and the twenty-five percent packaging fee were completely eliminated, though not without a vicious fight.
National absolutely refused to budge, however, on the issues of fifty percent for tour costs and fifty percent for video costs. The band would have to continue paying for half of everything. The band did win some non-monetary concessions on these issues, however. After much bickering and many wasted sessions, they got National to agree to allowing them much greater input in both the tour production and the video production. The way the wording turned out in the end Intemperance would have creative control over both with veto power being reserved by National and by the band itself. So, in other words, if both parties did not agree on the content of a video or how the tours would be presented, either could kill it. On the issue of "entertainment costs" for the band on tour, National would not budge on the one hundred percent recoupable rate. The band finally agreed to this with the stipulation that "entertainment costs" for the crew would be only fifty percent recoupable and "entertainment costs" for National management — namely Greg and his three hundred dollar a day cocaine habit — would be fully paid for by National itself. They reluctantly agreed to this and then moved on to the subject of tour revenue and merchandising revenue, eventually agreeing to share fifty percent of this income with the band.
These were all issues that were agreed to in a relatively timely and civilized manner, which meant that all of this was hammered out by mid-May. From there, they started working on the points that were really sticklers.
The first of these points had to do with endorsements. Throughout the first two albums National had been raking in a considerable amount of endorsement fees by forcing the band to play instruments onstage and in the studio that had been supplied by companies they had contracts with. The band had been given no choice in any of this (with the exception of Matt's stubborn insistence on playing his Strat onstage) and had been given none of the revenue. They wanted to change that. National didn't want this to change. For more than five sessions they went over this particular subject before finally coming to an agreement that the band would play whatever instruments they wished onstage as long as they provided them on their own. They would be free to collect whatever endorsement fees they could garner from whatever company they could garner them from. In the studio, however, National insisted upon retaining their rights to the endorsement fees and choice of instruments. They absolutely refused to give up any of these rights or any of the money. Reluctantly, and after much infighting among themselves, the band agreed to this and it went into the contract.
That was only the warm-up for the contention points. The next had to do with creative license and how it would be decided which songs would appear on Intemperance albums. It was here that Frowley and his crew truly tried to screw Intemperance to the best of their abilities. They tried inserting language that would allow National to choose what songs would be on the albums, to reject any song they didn't like, to demand new songs if the submissions weren't deemed acceptable, to force the band to accept songs from other songwriters or to do covers of existing songs. They thought that since Pauline was new to this entertainment contract thing and was a bumpkin to boot, that she wouldn't notice the language. She did. She caught and rejected each effort to slip something in and eventually, after more than eight sessions of negotiation, managed to convince them that the entire process would be for nothing if the band weren't given the majority of the control over what would be put on their albums. They ended up with language very similar to that of the video and tour clauses. The band would be given creative control over the content of their albums, deciding which songs would be eventually appear there, in what order, what the name of the album would be, and what the artwork of the album cover would consist of. National would retain veto power over any song the band proposed to put on the album but they would give up the right to sue for breach of contract if they rejected too many songs. It was early July by the time this issue was worked out.
That brought them to the final major issue, that of band discipline. This was something that Pauline and Jake thought could be worked out in half a session or so. As it turned out, National did not want to give up the chokehold they had by effectively making each band member an equal and retaining employer powers over the entire group. For the longest time they refused to budge on this issue.
"Intemperance will remain our employees and discipline will be our responsibility," Casting insisted. "We can't have the band itself deciding who goes and who stays. If someone needs to be talked to or even removed, we will be the one who make that decision."
"The band works best the way they were before signing with you," Pauline countered. "I cannot even begin to tell you how much you've hurt their productivity by removing the ability of Matt to keep control over the other members."
"Matt is a sadistic, drug-addicted tyrant," Casting shot back. "He's prone to irrational fits of rage and even violence. You saw what happened at the Grammy Awards, didn't you? We are the ones who need to keep this band under control, not him."
"And you are the ones who turned Darren and Coop into fucking heroin addicts!" Matt yelled back, barely restraining those violent tendencies of which they spoke. "Right now they're in their condo, oblivious to everything that's going on in this room because of that white powder you pushed on them. It's doubtful that they will ever be productive again under your rules."