What did it actually mean, contractually, to be 'fired' from Deep Purple or Rainbow?
I've been thinking about the extraordinary number of people who were apparently 'fired' from Deep Purple and particularly Rainbow, and wondering what that actually meant in contractual and business terms.
Roger Glover is an interesting example. In 1973, Blackmore made his departure from Deep Purple effectively conditional on Glover going. Management chose Blackmore, and Glover was out of a hugely successful band he'd helped build.
Fast forward a few years and there's an almost surreal reversal. Peter Goalby has recently described his brief period as Rainbow's singer before Graham Bonnet. Blackmore invited him to America, he was subsequently put on Rainbow's payroll, and he believed he'd joined the band. But Goalby says Blackmore gave him virtually no indication of what he wanted musically. After an unsuccessful late-night session, Roger Glover took Goalby aside the following morning and told him: 'You're fired' Blackmore apparently didn't even speak to him.
So, Glover goes from being the person Blackmore effectively has removed from one band to being the person delegated to fire somebody from Blackmore's next band.
It made me wonder what ‘fired’ actually meant. Who had the legal authority to do it? Were the musicians employees, contracted individually to management/a band company, partners, royalty participants, or some combination of these? If somebody was contracted for an album or tour and Blackmore simply decided he didn't want them anymore, what happened to that contract?
More broadly, I find the power dynamics interesting. Bands often seem to start as loose associations of friends or musicians, when discussing contracts and ownership probably feels ridiculous. Then success arrives, companies and management become involved, one member becomes more commercially powerful than another, and at some point 'we're in a band together' seems to turn into something much more hierarchical.
Does anyone know of interviews, books, legal cases or original documents that shed light on how the Deep Purple/Rainbow arrangements actually worked? I'm less interested in whether Blackmore was difficult than in where the power to hire and fire actually came from