EMI had high expectations with wet backsthe song with which the Campillo brothers dealt with the issue of illegal immigration. It was to release the single and it automatically reached the number one of the 40 Principales on December 1, 1990, taking the position from Roxette con It must have been love. The leadership, however, lasted until the 8th, when they were surpassed by The trap con Come closer and kiss me. Tam Tam Go! toured Latin America for the first time: Mexico, Chile, Peru… Without making a lot of fuss, wet backs slang. Nacho tells that in Spain it was not understood very well due to the low immigration that the country received at that time. But, despite that, the song worked.
“At that time, EMI shared its rights with a publisher from the PRISA Group which was first called Nuesa and then Nova”. Nacho Campillo lists the steps that had to be followed to be in the first place of the most listened to. To sound in Los 40 Principales there were two styles of payments: “one, ceding the editorial rights; the publisher signed and we signed, but we refused, so the publisher ceded its 20% to Nova”. Then, as Nacho and Javier attest, they were paid in kind or in money (one million pesetas): “The companies paid money and, since they were multinationals, they did it in a package where we were all.” The in-kind transaction consisted of a series of free performances: “The company paid for the entire concert, including the musicians. That was a kind of bargaining chip for the group to be number one (what was called the Red Disc)”. But they knew this much later, not when they signed the publishing contract. “I remember that in songs like Welcome (Miguel Ríos), 20% or 25% is from Nova, from PRISA. Yes, it was the quota for being number one, ”said the journalist Joaquin Guzman in an interview with Nacho Campillo in Rockola FM in 2014. Guzmán had worked at PRISA for more than ten years as an announcer for M80 Radio. “When someone signed with a publisher, I warned them: ‘Be careful what you sign’”.
Going over the numbers wet backs with vocalist and songwriter, the figures indicate that Nova had 20%, EMI 30% and Tam Tam Go! 50% to be divided between Nacho (30%), Javier (12.5%) and Rafa (12.5%). “At that time it was something super established,” says Campillo. “The record company told us that this was the case. We, from the beginning, were very quarrelsome. We read the contracts, but we didn’t have much idea. Over time we were looking at new contracts and we compared. And of course! They were putting some tremendous sticks on us ”. As for the live shows, that 50% also went to the radio and to the publisher.
Take Nacho Campillo accounts. Recognizes that they lost a lot of money in the case of 50% of the rights of wet backs and he calculates that it could have been quite a few million pesetas (Javier prefers not to do it so as not to get angry). “I was aware of all this with my first solo album”, resumes Nacho. “I began to review contracts and I thought that this had to be changed. Then MCA signed me, which was from Universal. They offered me to do the editorial with them and I said no, that I would do it myself. Mountain Calao Songs with Isabel and from then on we began to put my entire repertoire there, but not that of Tam Tam Go!, because EMI already had it for life. The Tam Tam Go! from the first period they are already irrecoverable, unless we get into a big lawsuit to recover the rights ”.
A round business
In 2016, BMG acquired Nova’s music catalogs from PRISA Radio. Comparing the information in the SGAE database, Sony Music Publishing Spain SL and BMG Forty Spain appear as publishers, so the editorial rights of wet backs are today owned by Sony Music. “We continue the same,” says Nacho. “We have spoken with the lawyers to recover them; They have broken a lot of things: scores, for example, have not existed and they have lost master’s degrees. Right now, those leonine contracts for life have been declared illegal and those editorial contracts are made for 10 or 5 years. “They are not yet illegal,” Javier now points out. “You have to file a lawsuit for someone to declare them illegal. There are clauses that are unconstitutional. We are suing. We have a lawyer who is seeing if we can keep all the editorial rights. We’ve been a year or so. But more groups are going to go, not just us”.
there are clauses [en los contratos editoriales] that they are unconstitutional. We are suing. We have a lawyer who is looking at whether we can keep all the editorial rights.”
Paco Martín sold Twins to DRO in 1989 for 150 million pesetas (forgiving the last 50). But, curiously, the DRO Group passed into the hands of Warner Music International in 1993. This series of purchases made Spanish shuffle, edited by Twins, belonged to Warner. EMI, on the other hand, disappeared in 2011 and its Tam Tam Go! (Spanish romance, wet backs y life and color) was taken over by Parlophone Label Group, under Warner’s tutelage since 2013.
The Argentine Facundo Domínguez, known as DJ Kun, launched in the year 2000 an adaptation of wet backs – under the title of There is no money (Crossing the river)– within it I gave away titled Crazy Atorrante with GASA, a label that Warner acquired in 1993 for being within the DRO Group together with Twins and DRO “After the de Bad times (Low Blows) in Latin Name (1998), he was determined to have another Spanish adaptation for Crazy Atorrante (2000) but that could connect with Spanish-speaking America, hence this theme with the theme of wet backs [espaldas mojadas] at the border”, says DJ Kun by email to this medium. “I already had notions –of preteenager– when I had to go up (but by plane) to San Antonio from Mexico with my parents to regularize my status as an Argentine immigrant in Mexico. It was natural to incorporate the mariachi so that Warner Mexico would react and publish me outside of Spain”.
Nacho Campillo reveals that for this “version” Tam Tam Go! he received his corresponding 50% of the royalties. DJ Kun, according to Campillo estimates, 10% for appearing as an interpreter, but the Argentine artist throws up other data: “When contacting Warner Chappell, the merger with EMI Music Publishing was brewing, hence they made it easier to assign the rights as an adaptation with a unusual 60% for Tam Tam Go! and 40% for me”. “He signed the contract for his record with the publisher for 60% -40%. Of wet backs he only took 10%”, stresses Javier, supporting the data provided by his brother Nacho.
DJ Kun reveals that the company demanded that the song could not have the original title of Wet backs. Facundo insisted with the title of Crossing the river, but finally stayed There is no money. “Nobody was able to put me in contact with them [Tam Tam Go!]; I was also interested in having Nacho sing it, but someone saw the opportunity to reunite the band and sign a very profitable tour [una gira muy rentable]. I repeated this phenomenon on two more occasions with Golpes Bajos and with Radio Futura and its Hot school, until I left DRO East/West because I got tired of them demanding more versions from me to get their groups back”. Continuing with the matter of rights, DJ Kun states that from the phonographic royalties contract (7%), “The company has never had the rights to digitize or broadcast by streaming This disc”, and that, until today, DRO East/West, from this second album, did not present any payment: “they always made excuses for not paying, and today they do not include me in their digital database to collect royalties. He has licensed the single to a record label of possible Mexican drug traffickers and they do not respond to any calls.
In 2022, 32 years after its premiere on radio-formula, wet backs was recorded again by Tam Tam Go!, this time accompanied by Mikel Izalinside the disk After 30, edited by Mitik Records, whose director is Aurelio Morata, bassist of Los Rebeldes and in charge of Jaime Urrutia’s career. With the new version of wet backs, the phonographic rights are for us and Mitik. But we’ve recorded the song a few times.” One of them, the one they played on September 20, 2008 at the Teatro Romano in Mérida for the live show that Warner would eventually publish in 2009 as bolero set on fire.
The summary of this story is that Warner owns Tam Tam Go! the records (phonographic catalogue) and Sony the songs (the editorial part). “Given the current times and the lack of information we had, we signed what we thought was best. In the past, I would never have signed it”, concludes Nacho Campillo. Javier, supporting Nacho’s words, also closes with a similar phrase, letting it fall that, faced with a blunt refusal, they might not have been able to work and, of course, it would not have sounded wet backs on the radio.