
photo: Loma Vista Recordings
In February 2013, Swedish rock band Ghost began referring to themselves as Ghost B.C. in North America for legal reasons. Speaking with Loudwire, the band now explains that the legal precaution is no longer necessary. Here's what one of Ghost's 'Nameless Ghouls' had to say:
"The thing was there was never a lawsuit. It was basically, I have to just explain myself after I hang one institution out to dry here and that was not our real label, but the bigger umbrella version of our label. Unfortunately in the legal world in general, and it's not an anti-American thing, but especially in America where people are so conscious about not being sued, obviously all corporations are extremely conscious about not getting sued. So the big major label, specifically, had a policy that said that every artist they sign must own their own name. Obviously we don't have exclusive rights to our band name because it's a word so commonly used. There are so many brands that have the word "ghost" that I think it's almost un-ownable, in a way, unless it's more specific. So it was basically a demand from the label that we added something."
The Nameless Ghoul did, however, reveal that the B.C. is still present in some fine print:
"What we found least irritating was that if it was something short for something else. We added the B.C. 'Because of Copyright' or, obviously, 'Before Christ.' We wanted people to still focus on Ghost. Unfortunately that leaked over into the promotional side too just because they tagged everything 'Ghost B.C.' everyone started calling it that. While we told every promoter and every journalist that we spoke to, 'Don't write Ghost B.C. because that's not our name.' It's like saying, 'I'm going to go down to McDonalds LLC or McDonalds, Inc. and buy a burger.'
"So this time around, when we had a little bit of a flip within the company, we took the opportunity to raise the question and make it happen so that we don't have to write it out on the record. There's something extremely unromantic that's called metadata and within the metadata in all the regions that we need to, it's still B.C. It's there in the fine print, but for you and I and everybody else, we don't have to say that. So it's Ghost now, which I'm extremely happy about."
Ghost will release their new album, Meliora, on August 21.15 Comments
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