Don Henley Claims 'Arrogant' Frank Ocean, Okkervil River Stole Songs; Rolling Stone, 6/4/14

Kory Grow, Rolling Stone; Don Henley Claims 'Arrogant' Frank Ocean, Okkervil River Stole Songs:

"In addition to condemning Ocean, Henley explained why he prevented Okkervil River from recording his solo song "The End of Innocence" and releasing it online for free. Although that group's frontman, Will Sheff, had previously claimed Henley had objected over money issues, the Eagle told the Telegraph it was because the group had changed his lyrics.

"They don't understand the law either," Henley said. "You can't rewrite the lyrics to somebody else's songs and record it and put it on the Internet. I'm sorry, but it wasn't an improvement. We were not impressed. So we simply had our legal team tell them to take it down and they got all huffy about it." Furthermore, Henley wondered how they would feel if he turned the tables on them and recorded an Okkervil River song with his own lyrics. "Maybe they wouldn't care, but I care," he said. "We work really, really hard on our material. We spend months writing it and years recording it. You don't go into a museum and paint a moustache on somebody else's painting. Nobody would think of doing that." He summed things up by saying, "If you respect somebody, you ask their permission to diddle around with their work – you don't just go and do it."

United States copyright law allows anyone to record a cover of any song without asking permission, so long as the musician does not alter the original. Henley told the Telegraph he was perfectly fine with that aspect of the law, but "that's not what Mr. Ocean nor Okkervil River did.""