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UNITED STATES TAX COURT - TRIAL

ESTATE (OF MICHAEL J. JACKSON DECEASED)

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EXECUTORS: JOHN G. BRANCA. AND JOHN MCCLAIN

COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE (IRS)

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February 9th 2017

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Presiding Judge Mark V. Holmes

Jacksons estate is represented by Avram Salkin, Charles Paul Rettig, Steven Richard Toscher, R
obert S. Horwitz, Edward M. Robbins Jr., Sharyn M. Fisk and Lacey E. Strachan of Hochman Sa

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lkin Rettig Toscher & Perez PC, Paul Gordon Hoffman, Jeryll S. Cohen and Loretta Siciliano of
Hoffman Sabban & Watenmaker and Howard L. Weitzman of Kinsella Weitzman Iser Kump &
Aldisert LLP. ae
The
IRS is represented by its attorneys Donna F. Herbert, Malone Camp, Sebastian Voth, Jordan Mus
en and Laura Mullin.
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--------------------------------------------
JOHN DOELP
A&R at Sony Entertainment
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Judge Holmes: JOHN DOELP sworn.

Court Clerk: You may be seated. And if you'll please state your name and address for the
record.

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A. Sure. My name is John Doelp, John McLaughlin Doelp. My address is ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

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Court Clerk: Thank you.

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Mr. Weitzman: Do I go on?

Judge Holmes: Mr. Weltzman, go ahead.

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Mr. Weitzman: We're ready? Your Honor, thank you.
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DIRECT EXAMINATION
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Mr. Weitzman:
Q. Mr. Doelp, have you ever testified before?

A. I have not.
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Q. Where are you employed?

A. I'm employed to .... at Sony Music Entertainment.

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Q. And how long have you worked at Sony Music?

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A. Thirty-two years.

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Q. And in what capacity leading up to your position today?

A. I've worked in A &R, which is what I do today. I've worked in marketing. I've worked in
finance .... yeah, the ARs.

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Q. What is A &R?

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A. A &R stands for artist-in-repertoire. And basically, the responsibility of an A&R person is
the talent person. His responsibility or her responsibility is to identify possible artists to sign,

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sign those artists, and then actually make the records, work with the artists, whether it's finding
songs for them, working with them as songwriters, working with the producers to produce the
records, and ultimately through the release by the company.
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Q. And so during the time you worked in A&R, are there any artists whose names I might be
familiar with? So that's, you know, obviously, a pretty narrow group.
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A. Yeah.
(Laughter in court room )
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Mr. Weitzman:
Q. Any names I might be familiar with that you worked with?

A. Yeah. I've worked with .... my biggest success is Celine Dion. I've worked with her since the
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beginning, since .... for 25 years, and I'm her executive producer.
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Q. Still today?
w.

A. Yeah, just started a new record right now, been working with her since .... again, since she
started singing in English.
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Judge Holmes: Just one second. What's a producer do, exactly?

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A. In the words of Kenny Edmonds "Babyface", a great producer is someone you don't hear their
work, okay? But what a producer's responsibility for is to take an artist from walking in the
studio and actually overseeing the recording process, so whether it's helping to make sure the
songs are right; or helping to make sure .... you know, having the arrangements done .... string

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arrangements, the band arrangements; working with the engineers to make sure the sounds are
right that are going in .... for the record overseeing .... basically overseeing the entire making of a
recording .... of a song, and ultimately overseeing the mixing to make sure that the mixing's
appropriate, always working with the artists to make sure that what's going into those recordings

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is the best representation from the artist.

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Judge Holmes: All right, Mr. Weltzman.

Mr. Weitzman: Thank you, Your Honor. ae

Mr. Weitzman:
Q. So does that include maintaining .... this is my word, and there may be another word you all
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use .... quality control of the product?

A. Absolutely, because again, you're working with the artist so you want .... the artist is
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certainly going to want the best that they can create and you're standing next to them to help
them to make the best they can create.

Q. And is there an impact, as you've observed, working with these artist in making sure the very
best of the material is what's included in a release?
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A. Always.

Q. And what's the consideration?

w.

A. Well, I mean, the process is a gut process. So you go with what you're .... what you feel is
right for that artist. Whether it's the song, the direction of the production, the production of the
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arrangements, you just have an instinct. And again the artist is the person that you really need to
please, because if the artist isn't pleased then it's not right. So you're always working with them
to make sure that the decisions are the right ones, that the artist says, that's it. That's the right

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sound, 894 that's the right instrument, that's the right whatever, the right mix. So your quality is
based on what the vision of the artist is.

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Q. And as an AR person, are those also your responsibilities?

A. Oh, very much so, because again, you're one step .... sometimes one step removed,

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sometimes closer. Like again, with Celine Dion, Celine doesn't go in the studio and do a vocal
without me in the studio with her. So we always make sure that when we end that session, we
have every line, everything that we need that she says, we've got a great vocal. We've got exactly

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what the emotion and the message that I want to say in this song is there. So that's part of our
process is to make sure those elements are all there.

Q. And when you say "that I want to say," you mean that the artist wants to say?
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A. Yeah.
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Q. And, by the way, any other artist besides Celine that you work with closely?
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A. I .... well I signed John Legend. I don't work with John now, but I signed him originally.

Q. All right. Did you ever work with Michael Jackson?

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A. I worked with Michael more from a distance when I was running marketing and sales for
Epic.
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Q. All right, just stop.

w.

A. Yeah.
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Q. So .... now if we just put the A&R aside, what did you do with respect to marketing when
you were at Sony, or while at Sony?

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A. Well, I was overseeing the marketing department, so I was responsible to make sure that all
marketing campaigns that were created for every artist, for every release were the right
marketing campaign, executed properly, again consistent with the artist. I had a dedicated person

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that worked directly with Michael on those marketing campaigns, and that was during his ....
during History, the History release.

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Q. That would be in the mid-90s?

A. Yeah.

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Q. Did you meet and work with Michael at all during that time period?
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A. I met with him only a few times. I never worked with him directly, no.
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Q. Okay. And then you also said you, at some point in your career with Sony, were in financing.

A. I was. When I first started ....

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Q. What does that mean, because to me that's, you know, adding and subtracting. I'm sure it's
more with the label.

A. Well, when I first went to work for what was CBS Records at the time I wanted to be in the
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A&R department but those jobs are very hard to get. And I figured if I could get inside of that
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company, of CBS Records, I could figure out my way through the company, because I had been a
producer prior to that and I had been producing, I'm a musician, so I had made records for a long
time, in many different ways whether it was a producer or engineer or an actual player. I'm, you
know, a bass player. But I also had just finished my Masters degree at Columbia University. And
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part of my course load there was finance and accounting and so I .... and I've always been good
with numbers, so I figured if I could get in the door, again, there was a financial analyst job that
was available, which I got.
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Q. Where ....

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A. So I started as a financial analyst, and I analyzed the labels.

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Q. I know we never discussed this before, but I'm just going to give it a shot. Before you were
at Sony or CBS Sony, were you with any other music company?

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A. No. I worked for myself.

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Q. Did you go there out of school .... out of Columbia?

A. I was .... I probably started at CBS Records about six months after I left .... after I finished at
Columbia.
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Q. Okay.
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A. And actually, my graduation date is after that because I had to do a dissertation and it took
me a couple years to do that. So I was finished with my course work for about six months and
then I started working at CBS Records and I finished my dissertation two years later maybe.
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Q. And was Michael Jackson an artist at CBS Records when you started there?

A. Yes.
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Q. And who was the head of CBS Records, or CBS Music, at that time?

A. It was Walter .... Walter Yetnikoff.

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Q. Did you have occasion to work with Walter?

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A. I had an artist that Walter really loved. Her name was Basia, and she was from the UK, so
whenever Basia was in town Walter always wanted to meet her, so I would take should Basia
down to 898 Walter's office, but I .... that was the extent of my working with Walter.

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Q. Got it. So did you, besides Celine and besides Basia, did you work with other artist in the
A&R .... let me just try it again. Did you work with other artist as an A &R person?

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A. Mm-hmm. Another artist, Frankie J, we had a big hit with .... I can't remember the name of
the song. It was probably in 2002, 2003, something around there.

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Q. When was the first time you worked with Michael Jackson, other than during the History
period?

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A. That was the first time. ae
Q. Okay. And what's the next time you worked with him?
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A. It was .... well, I didn't work with him after that. I worked on his recordings when Michael
passed away.
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Q. All right. So when Michael passed away, were you asked by Sony to become involved, let
me just say, with that situation? And what were you asked to do?

A. Well, at the time, it was a couple of weeks after Michael passed away, and the senior
executives at Sony came and asked me if I would get involved in, first of all, trying to
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determine .... we knew that This is It was becoming potentially a movie. And so we wanted to
find out if there was a soundtrack that we could create for that, you know, for the movie because
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certainly that would be great for .... great income for us if we could create something that would
be, you know, the music from that film. So that was really the .... sort of the first thing that they
wanted me to do. And then at that time, they also said, you know, we also need to start looking to
find out, are there any songs that that exist that are unreleased songs.
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Q. And that's sometime during the middle, or late summer of 2009?

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A. It was .... yeah, late summer, early fall.

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Q. By the way, did you know Tommy Mottola?

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A. I did.

Q. And did you work under Tommy after Walter left?

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A. I did.

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Q. Do you remember when Tommy left .... Tommy Mottola left CBS?

A. I do. But it was .... left Sony.

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Q. I mean, left Sony, right. Do you remember approximately, not the date, but the year?

A. I've got to say I don't.

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Q. Okay.

A. It must have been 2000 .... 2003, 2004, I think it was.

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Q. It was after a pretty public dispute he had with Michael Jackson.

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A. Yeah.
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Q. Did you ever hear the following quote attributed to Tommy Mottola? Quote .... this is after
Michael died .... "There are dozens and dozens of songs that did not end up on his albums.
People will be hearing a lot of that unreleased material for the first time ever. There's just some
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genius and brilliance in there. The releases could go on for years and years, even more than
Elvis. When a music star of Jackson's stature dies, labels typically comb through their archives to
pull out anything they can release. Let's say 12 or 13 songs end up on the album. Michael could

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have possibly recorded 15, 20, or 30 songs." Did you ever hear that quote before I read it to you?

A. I don't remember it, no.

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Q. Given your experience, do you think that that quote is accurate?

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A. No.

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Q. Why not?

A. Well, part of .... again, what I was asked to do by Sony was try to identify what songs are
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there. First off, the one thing that the way the deal structure with .... between Sony and Michael
was that after Thriller, we no longer owned the masters, and that's ....
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Q. Michael owned his own masters.

A. Michael owned his own masters, yeah. That's very unusual in our business at that time. To
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revert masters was .... it just didn't happen. We paid a lot of money to sign an artist, so we would
always own the masters. In Michael's case, because Thriller was so big .... and again, I was
certainly not involved in any of the negotiations because I wasn't with the company .... there was
a decision to give Michael his masters back, as well as the ongoing deal was a license deal. So
we no longer had his masters.
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Q. All right. So when you say "masters," can you define masters for us?
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A. Yeah. The masters are .... there's basically two .... when you talk about masters, there's two
explanations. There is the multi-track masters, and they're this .... the tapes that are used back
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then, that would be the final tapes that had all the parts for the songs on them, would be on the
multi-track masters. And then there would be the delivered two- track master, which was the
stereo mix, the stereo songs that you listen to. So in this case, again, we had Off the Wall and
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Thriller, were our records at the time. Anything after that was not ours. So we never had any
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tapes or anything that was in relation to .... and again, Sony never had anything in relation to
those recordings because all Michael had to do with the deal was deliver his masters .... his
master two-track final album.

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Q. Okay. So can I .... we actually had Matt Forger was in here yesterday and testified. You
know Matt, correct?

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A. Yeah.

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Q. And also Karen Langford had testified a little bit about these tracks, but I'm going to ask you
for all of us except the Judge .... he gets it .... but for all of us, exactly what the multi-track
concept means .... what that means.

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A. Mm-hmm. ae
Q. What are multi-tracks? How does it work?
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A. For the most part, if you think about it, just let me give you a little history lesson, if that's
okay. The early recordings, when you think about the wax cylinder, and then the metal cylinders,
and then into actually cutting 78s, they were mono, so there was only .... when you listen to it, it
was just one source, one speaker, you're hearing one thing coming at you in terms of the music.
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When .... at some point, I don't know when this happened, but someone was able to create two
sides of a recording, so that would be stereo, so you have a left side and you would have a right
side. Now those .... the information in those two, I call them tracks, would be different. And the
way it was different, you heard, like, you listen to some old Beatles records. You'd hear John and
Paul vocally on one side and then you'd hear the drums and the guitars on the other side, so that
was a complete split on the stereo mix. And through time, people created the way that you could
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start to kind of place where those sounds would go in a stereo mix. So if you think about a arc
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like this, you could place a sound in that arc wherever you want to place it in the stereo
spectrum. But again, I go back to each side could have completely different information. Okay.
So that's two-track. So you think of that as one track is .... it could be a vocal, the other track
could be a guitar. So they could be different, or they could be melded together. Les Paul was
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actually the first one that created the idea of multi-track recording, and he created a .... I think a
three-track, and then a four- track where now you can separate things even further. So you could
take a guitar on one track, drums on the other track, and then put the vocal on the other track, and
then you can mix it down. So basically you decide that you want a little more guitar or a little
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more piano or whatever on the different tracks, and you have that sound that you want from that
mix using those individual tracks.

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Well, over time, of course, the idea of breaking it .... a piece of tape down into separate tracks
became more sophisticated and then you started to move from a .... from 4-track, to 8-track, to
16- track, to 24-track. There was actually a 32-track machine, Michael actually had one of the

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few 32-track machines, and then it eventually got to 48-track digital. So again, if you think
about a two-inch tape and you stripe it with equal tracks 24 times, okay. So when you're doing
your recording you'll say, okay, I want to separate the entire drum set, so I'll separate, you know,
Track 1 could be the kick drum, Track 2 could be the snare drum, Track 7 could be the guitar,

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Track 8 could be the bass. So you basically break it down. You take the recording and you break
it down. And also what that allows you to do is that you can record at different times. So you
could have the drums and the bass go in and create the rhythm section, and then have the vocalist

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or the guitar player come in at a different time and add to those recordings, again on different
tracks, and it's all isolated. And it also allows you in the studio .... you don't have the sounds
from the drum going into the vocal mic, so it gives you very distinct sounds. Every track, when
you pull them up on a mixing console, all you hear is that instrument, so you hear just the kick
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drum, you hear just the guitar. So the idea is that it provides an incredible amount of flexibility
for an artist to .... again, to record different instruments at different times. Maybe they couldn't
get the guitar player they wanted at the time that they were doing the rhythm tracks so .... but
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they could still use that guitar player. He just comes in at a different time and does their
recordings. So you have these, again, it just kept growing and growing and growing as to the
number of tracks. It got to the point where some people would take two 24-track machines and
combine them using a sync between the two machines to allow them to have the additional
tracks. And now what it's moved into is with Pro Tools, you have infinity amount of tracks.
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Judge Holmes: With what tool?

A. It's called Pro Tools.

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Mr. Weitzman:

Q. What are Pro Tools?

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Judge Holmes: Oh, Pro Tools.

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A. Pro Tools. A Pro Tools is a .... it's a product that .... it mimics the multi-tracking but in a
digital environment. So it basically .... you're limited to the size of your hard drive, how many
tracks you want.

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Mr. Weitzman:

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Q. And what's a mixing board?

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A. So after you've created these .... all these tracks, you now have to put them together in a way
that you're going to mix it down to a stereo mix because at the end of the day when we listen to
music, we're not listening to a kick drum, we're not listening to a snare drum. We're listening to
the combination of all those pieces coming together. So the mixing console allows you to break

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down every single track and decide how much of a sound you want in that recording. And it also
allows you to put different types of special effects on it, whether it's an echo or a reverb, or
something that just, again, provide some additional distinctions. So when you have your 24
tracks, ultimately you've got to mix it down to two tracks which is your stereo mix, and that's
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what we make .... we press as records and now that's our digital files and that's what you listen
to. You listen to, you know, again a digital ....
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Q. And you can lay vocals on a track or make vocal sounds on a track or whatever.

A. Absolutely.
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Q. And then from the mixing board you can move around the timing or the placement or the
volume?
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Mr. Musen: Objection. Leading.

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Judge Holmes: Sustained.

w.

Judge Holmes: Helpful, but leading.

A. But with ....

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Judge Holmes: There is no question. He has to ask a question.

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A. Oh, okay.

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Mr. Weitzman:
Q. What functions do a mixing board provide to the various sounds that are recorded that are to
be used on the end result of a recorded song?

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A. When you look at a mixing console, you know, you see a lot in magazines and these massive
pieces of equipment. And if you think about it from the standpoint that those massive pieces of

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equipment have 60 channels, 100 channels, okay. And a channel is one spot that you can bring up
.... you bring the volume up on a track. Every single one of those channels has equalization, has a
send button that you can send it to a special effects and bring it back with a different sound. So
if you wanted to put voc, or put a reverb or echo on a certain sound you could send it out of that
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channel, bring it through the special effects and right back into the mix. So every single one of
those things .... every channel is the same. They all have the same stuff. So what the mixing
board does is that when you bring in .... you've recorded .... usually you record a sound what's
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called flat because you don't want it to be .... have any effects on it. You want it to sound exactly
like it did when you recorded it. So you .... so that gives you the most flexibility in doing
something with it later. So let's say you record a snare drum a certain way and it has a sound.
And as you're putting the record together you realize that that snare drum should be - - have a
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little bit tighter sound or a little deeper sound, or the .... you can take the bottom end off of it by
using the EQ, and it cuts through the mix more. The kick drum that you recorded .... again, you
recorded it flat but you realize for it to really cut through the mix you want to have more of a
front end on it, more of an attack when the mallet hits the skin, so you can do that with EQ. 910
So the mixing console allows you to color the sounds a little bit, or a lot if you want, and then it
provides you the vehicle for bringing all that information together so that now you can listen to a
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stereo mix.
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Q. All right. So now let's get back to Michael Jackson for a moment. When you began .... by the
way, is the artist involved in this process as well?
w.

A. Absolutely.
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Q. Okay.

n.c
A. And then .... at different times, in different ways because every artist is different. And some
artist would prefer to have the producer and the engineer or the mixer mix to a certain point
before they actually come in the studio because it's a very .... it's a long process, so it could take
anywhere from a day to, you know, a week. So ....

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Q. Okay. And on these and various tracks are .... my word, you can tell me if there's a term of
art .... are there fragments or pieces or ....

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A. Yeah.

lJa
Q. .... what's on all those tracks, what are they called?
ae
A. Yeah, you could have on one track there's a spot where you wanted a certain guitar part, and
it might only come up every pre-chorus, or every verse, or every chorus, so the only pieces that
are there are just the pieces that you play to emphasize whatever that part is. Or it could be the
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background vocals .... you certainly don't have background vocals throughout an entire song, so
you just record the background vocals we you need them. Even the lead vocal .... you know, you
put the lead vocal where you need the lead vocal which is the .... certainly the verse and the
chorus and if there's a bridge, or a pre-chorus, so otherwise there might .... there won't be
anything. Like, if you bring up a vocal track, you probably won't hear anything for the first 30
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seconds of the song because there's nothing there. The vocalist didn't sing until the song was
established.

Q. In other words, the vocal is going to meld in at whatever point it's supposed to come in after
the introductory sound. Is that correct?
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Mr. Musen: Objection. Leading.

Judge Holmes: Oh, sustained. Sustained. Re- phrase.

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Mr. Weitzman:
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Q. When would the sound come in, generally, on these tracks, the vocals?

n.c
A. Well, this .... before you record, you've written the song. So you'll .... the vocal will come in
per the arrangement. And the arrangement might be that there is a .... you know, sometimes
there's a decision to start the song right with the .... the vocal at the front, usually not. Usually
there is some sort of beginning to it, that establishes something about the song before the vocal

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comes in. It varies certainly by song, but it comes down to how the song was written and then
how the song is arranged. That's when the vocal would come in.

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Q. So you're tasked, after Michael Jackson died, to look for what?

A. Well, first and foremost to look for a full vocal because if there was .... even part vocals have

lJa
no value to us. You know, Michael Jackson had to be the one that sang the song. So our task was
to try to find full vocals to any .... anywhere we could find a song that at least had a full vocal, in
terms of verse, chorus, bridge, if there was one, anything that would make .... that would give it
what the song was. So .... and again, a song is, for the most part, a verse, at least a verse and
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chorus.
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Judge Holmes: What is a bridge?

A. The bridge is .... it's sometimes referred to as the middle eight, and it's a old term. But it's ....
when I say middle eight it's usually something .... a musical excerpt in the middle of a song that
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changes the texture. It could be something lyrically that changes the definition of where the
lyrics are going. It could be a changeup of tempo, something that kind of breaks the song from
being too much of all the same. And it was originally called the middle eight because it would be
eight bars. So but a bridge .... not every song has a bridge, but very often the bridge adds to the
drama of the chorus coming back in at the end because a normal song structure is verse, chorus,
verse, chorus, bridge, chorus. And by putting the bridge there, it gives you a .... something
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different than just doing than just doing the same thing again with the verse to the chorus, so it
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kind of lifts .... and sometimes, you know, songwriters use .... there's certain .... many ways to
write songs. Sometime songwriters use minor chords and major chords to add to the drama of a
lyric or a melody, and very often you might have someone use a minor chord .... a minor chord
structure in the bridge so that when you get to that chorus at the end, which is a major, it
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provides the sense of relief or euphoria, or great emotion. It kind of lifts of the song.

Mr. Weitzman:
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Q. So would a completed song .... could a completed song just have a chorus?

n.c
A. No.

Q. Could a completed song just have a verse?

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A. No.

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Q. Could a completed song just have a bridge?

lJa
A. No.

Q. So when you say you're looking for .... and by the way, are bridges, choruses, and verse,
could they be part of a vocal?
ae
A. It would have to be vocal.
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Q. Okay. So what would a full vocal be .... what .... can you .... is there a way .... I'd ask you to
sing, but that's probably not the best way to do it. What's the best way for you to describe what a
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full vocal was that you were looking for?

A. Again, we .... for the most part we looked to song structure, and ....

Q. And this is with respect to Michael Jackson.

a
Te

A. Yeah, yeah. Look for song structure, so Michael was very much about, you know, a little ....
the hook is .... the chorus is the most important thing.
w.

Q. Oh wait, I just heard hook. What's a hook?

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A. Oh, I'm sorry.

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A. hook is a chorus.

n.c
Q. Okay.

so
A. A hook and a chorus is basically the same thing, just record speak. But .... and everybody
writes a song .... write songs differently. Some write the verses first, some write the choruses
first, some sort of write it all at the same time. It really varies. But we were looking for .... you
know, when you look at Michael's past releases, he had pretty much of a regular song structure

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for the most part, which would be a verse, chorus, verse, pre-chorus, chorus. Pre-chorus is a
piece of music that helps to set up the chorus to kind of give it a .... again, give it a launch. But
Michael, again, very often had that song structure, which would be verse, chorus, verse, chorus,

lJa
bridge, and then he would always have a long outro, which would be the chorus with a lot of ad
libs and rhythmic things, things .... you know, he liked to .... he made noises with his mouth, or,
you know .... and that was a certain part of his sound. So we would be looking ....
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Judge Holmes: And you said there was an outro? What was that word you used? Verse, chorus,
verse, chorus, outro ....
ich

A. Outro. I'm sorry, outro. Outro is the ....

mM

Judge Holmes: Can you spell that? Is it A. -L- T-R-O?

A. No, no. It's .... it's ....

Judge Holmes: Okay. Well .... A....- again, record speak. It's just a .... an outro is ....
a
Te

A. It's the opposite ....

w.

Judge Holmes: What does it mean again?

ww
 om
A. It's the opposite of an intro.

n.c
Judge Holmes: Oh. Okay. Thank you Mr. Doelp for elucidating that.

A. The idea is ....

so
Mr. Weitzman: It's an alternate tro, as opposed to the intro.

ck
Judge Holmes: I guess so.

lJa
A. But very often an intro might not have vocals, but an outro would because an intro is setting
up the song, usually instrumentally, for the vocal to come in. And then on the end of the song ....
and again sometimes you hear the tag which is also the outro or the last chorus of a song, that
would be kind of the point where the chorus might change a little bit with additional ad libs,
ae
additional textures, things that would .... if you think of a song having a sort of a path to a climax
and the climax certainly being the outro, where it's the most exciting, the most fun, and it would
be the way that the song would end.
ich

Q. You mean if I could play a song, and I guess that would be the best way to do it, but I think
we're not ....
mM

A. Yeah.

Q. .... set up here to do that. Okay. So you were looking for full vocals.
a

A. Correct.
Te

Q. And I hate to use this phrase, but you'd know it when you heard it. Is that correct?
w.

A. Absolutely.
ww
 om
Q. And was there a certain look that defined full vocal for you when you were searching for
Michael Jackson vocals?

n.c
A. Well, we use .... we did a lot of research, talked to a lot of people to find out, you know, early
on ....

so
Q. By early on you .... we're still post-death - -

ck
A. Yes, oh yeah ....

Q. .... but early on in the search.

lJa
A. .... you don't know .... yeah, this is within the first six months of Michael passing away. We
talked to a lot of people that we heard had been working with Michael to try to find out if they
ae
had tracks and, again, full vocals, something that was releasable. We basically would identify a
song and take it to the estate, a name of a song and then the estate .... Michael's archives weren't
really that well organized. So we'd take the song to the estate and the estate would go looking
ich
through the archives to see if they could find the tape, find the multi- track. And then from there
we'd call it up. We'd bring it up and we'd do two things. First thing we'd do is we'd look at what's
called the track sheet. And the track sheet is .... if you think about, when I mentioned the tracks
they had .... there's a piece of paper that goes with every multi-track tape that identifies what
instrument is on every track. So usually ....
mM

Q. And does it first identify the name .... the title of the song?

A. Yes. It would say the title of the song. It would say the studio it was from, it would say the
a

engineer, it would have the dates .... it would have all the pertinent information of what .... who
was involved that day when it was created.
Te

Q. And that's the beginning of the process to look for these full vocals.
w.

A. Yeah. Yeah. And then certainly ....

ww
 om
Q. And then ....

n.c
A. .... the first thing that we would do is look on the track sheet, is there a vocal. Is there a box
that says vocal? And if there wasn't, we would still listen to it because, you know, sometimes
things were mis-identified, but certainly if there wasn't a vocal written on the track sheet there
probably wasn't a vocal there. So early on that was our process, we would identify songs by

so
just .... by what we would look at and what we would hear. You know, I .... again, I talked to a lot
of people. I went on .... there's some sort of Wikipedia page that has, you know, a ton of songs
that they say, you know, that were unreleased Michael Jackson songs. And I just went and
checked it to find out if these songs existed and what existed. And with some of them I would

ck
find a track that had a chorus, or I would find a track that might have a couple of lines. I'd find a
track that might have .... Michael when he was writing, he did la-las where he didn't have a lyric
at the time. He was just .... they were experimenting, so it was more a track was created and he

lJa
just sort of started the process of writing the song by doing la-las.

Q. What do you mean la-las, or is that exactly what it is?

ae
A. Just doing a melody, la, la, la, la, la, la.
ich

Q. Got it. Okay. Okay.

A. And then there was things that I never found. There as a lot of things that I never found.
mM

There were, you know, there was .... again, on that Wikipedia page that I couldn't find in the
archives and I couldn't find by, you know, talking to people that might have been involved in the
sessions. At one point when the ....

Q. By the way, did you ever talk to Karen Langford about that Wikipedia page?
a
Te

A. Yeah. Yeah.

Q. Okay. And was she, as well as you, looking for the songs listed on that page?
w.

A. I'm sure she was. We were .... I think we were all looking to find .... yeah, we had a .... we all
ww

wanted to find whatever the songs .... whatever songs were there.
 om
Q. And what .... were you told that this came from a list from the IRS, or you found the
Wikipedia page on your own?

n.c
A. Oh, I found that, again, probably six months, nine months after Michael passed away.

so
Q. Got it.

ck
A. So again, I was .... I had to find the songs, so I had to take everything that I could do to just
find information, and I figure if I find information it gives me a starting point and from there be
able to backtrack it to see really existed. And at one point we .... there was .... the estate did do

lJa
a .... basically created a database of all the multis and all the two-tracks, everything that was in
Michael's archives, the audio archives. And at one point Matt and myself and Karen were in the
archives, and we went through the entire database. And the first thing we'd do is we'd look at a
song .... the first thing we'd do is pull up the track sheet, and we'd look for the vocal. And again,
ae
you could also see if there was, you know, on a 48-track tape, or a 24-track tape, if there's only
five instruments, well, it's certainly not .... it ain't finished and very often it's just a track. And
Michael did do that a lot. He had a lot of people that he worked with that created these tracks,
ich
and sometimes people would create tracks for Michael and then Michael would sit there and
listen to them and then decide what he'd write to because keeping in mind a track is not a song.
A track is just an arrangement. It's instruments. The song is the melody and lyric, and so if
Michael didn't feel the track then he wouldn't write to it. So there's a lot of tracks that don't have
mM

anything on them. And when we were doing that, we'd .... you know, I relied on Matt Forger who
was there for some of those recordings to say, Matt, do you remember .... you know, we'd find a
song and then we'd say, Matt, do you remember if he ever sang on this. And at one point I
remember seeing .... we .... he said, I think so, and we pulled up the track sheet and there wasn't a
vocal on the track sheet. So .... but we put the tape in and we listened to it, and there wasn't a
vocal. But he remembered that he had sang something, so we went looking .... sometimes an
a

artist in a recording session, they'll put an additional recording on the end of a tape. So usually if
you're running 30 inches per second which is, you know, that's the rate that the tape is going
Te

through the machine, you only have about 15 minutes worth of recordable time on that tape. So
sometimes when you're .... you might label it one song and you're working on maybe one song or
two songs, but sometimes you might get inspired by an idea or something and you'll throw
that .... you need a tape. And you might not have one, so you just throw up an empty tape that has
w.

some time on the end of a tape, and you might record on that. So part of what we did was we
would know certain sessions that might have happened at the same time and we'd pull up that
tape to see if there was a vocal, and we did find some things. But usually in those cases we found
ww
 om
pieces. We found, you know, again, a chorus, we didn't find full songs. But at least we .... it
helped us to kind of continue our digging to find those full vocals.

n.c
Q. And did you find any completed unreleased recording?

A. We found maybe .... I think maybe two. At .... after probably .... maybe six months, I think

so
we found two. One .... or actually two of them we both have released since then, but we .... they
were completely reworked from the originals.

ck
Q. Blue Gangsta was one.

lJa
A. Blue Gangsta and the other was ....

Q. What was the other?

ae
A. .... was Xcape. And they're both just on the Xcape record that we just released.
ich

Q. All right. And did you find some full vocals that you could add some elements to make a
complete song?
mM

A. Yes.

Q. Do you recall how many of those you found? Again, if you don't have the exact number, just
get us close.
a
Te

A. Well, there's sort of two ways you look at it. There's the .... if you qualify it from the
standpoint of do you have a full vocal? We may have found maybe 25 or 30, maybe. Again, I
can't fully remember, but it's maybe somewhere around there. And then after you qualify it that
you've got the vocal then you have to take a step back and you say do you .... would we release
w.

it? Is the song good enough? Is the vocal performance good enough? You know, because some of
the .... if it's a demo vocal, it's very possible that it's just a bad performance. There could be notes
that are flat. There could be just it's not well recorded. It just could .... it could just not sound
good, and then the song itself just might not be good or just not up to Michael's standard because
ww
 om
he had a very high standard. So in that 30, we found some that we wouldn't release. And I think,
you know, between us and the estate we had a lot of conversations about what those songs would
be.

n.c
Q. And eventually were there some that you believed you could add elements to and in effect
reproduce?

so
A. Mm-hmm.

ck
Q. And about how many was that?

lJa
A. Well, it's what we've released so far, so is it maybe 20? There's .... there are what we ....
again, I think it's about 20 that we've done, that we've actually completed the songs. There was
also some demos that we released as demos. We called them demos because that's what they
were.
ae
Q. All right. But ....
ich

A. They were not meant to be ....

mM

Q. .... can you define demos for us?

A. Yeah. Very often when a writer is writing a song they'll create sort of the first piece of the
songwriting process. And it's usually a very stripped down track, nothing that's .... it's, a, not
produced. It just might be a keyboard and a vocal. Like when we .... when on This is It, I put the
a

demo for She's Out of My Life. Now it .... what made it different was it was Michael and a guitar
as opposed to Michael and a keyboard. And .... but it was, again, it was the demo. It was the first
Te

time that he sang it to kind of get a feel for the song and he decided, you know, after he'd done
the demo that he'd rather do it with keyboard as opposed to a guitar, so there's a .... that process
that he goes through after he would listen to something that he did. But the demo is usually very
stripped down. It's just the basics of the song. And again, sometimes the vocal is not a real .... it's
w.

not a great performance. It's just trying to get a .... the writer is trying to get on tape what the
song is.
ww
 om
Q. And would demos be defined as a completed recorded song, or are they referred to as
demos?

n.c
A. They're referred to as demos. Can you release them? You can release them, but, you know,
for the most part you don't. And you always have to identify them as to what they are, which is a
demo, so people when they listen to it they understand they're getting something less than a full

so
production. So you don't think of it as .... in the same way. Again, you never release an album of
demos, you know.

ck
Q. And the songs that you found that you believed could be produced and released, is it your
understanding that those songs have all been produced and released?

lJa
A. There's a .... no, there's a few that haven't.

Q. Okay.
ae
A. And they probably will .... you know, I don't think they ever will be.
ich

Q. And what is the reason why you don't believe they ever will be?
mM

A. Well, you know, like I said before, they're .... it's very possible they have a .... not a very
good vocal performance. The song just might not be up to the standard. A variety of reasons,
but it's just that, you know, you don't .... you don't want to tarnish the brand. You don't want to
put out something substandard that just doesn't live up to anything else that he's done or we've
done. So yeah, there's definitely songs that I don't think will ever be released.
a

Q. And ....
Te

A. But not that many because it's just not that many left.
w.

Q. And Blue Gangsta and what was the other song that you ....
ww
 om
A. Xcape.

n.c
Q. And Xcape, notwithstanding that you thought those were songs that were completed and
releasable, did you nevertheless do work on those songs?

A. Yes. Completely reproduced them. The only thing that was used from those was Michael's

so
vocal, and in Blue Gangsta I think we used a couple of the - - there's some horn parts. But other
than that it was completely reproduced.

ck
Q. I want to read another quote to you that was quoted in Mr. Anson's report. You don't know
who Mr. Anson is, but it's okay. This is from an unnamed executive. "Estimates Jackson's
unreleased music at being worth well in excess of $500 million." Would you agree with that

lJa
statement?

A. No.
ae
Q. Okay. Another quote from a book titled Unmasked by someone named Ian Halperin, "He,"
ich
referring to Michael, "had almost 200 unreleased songs." Would you agree with that?

Mr. Musen: Objection. Hearsay.

mM

Mr. Weitzman:
A. No.

Judge Holmes: Overruled. Overruled, you can answer.

a
Te

A. Oh, I'm sorry.

Judge Holmes: You should answer.

w.

A. I did. I didn't know that you didn't hear me.

ww
 om
Mr. Weitzman:

n.c
A. No.

Q. Okay.

so
A. No.

ck
Q. So tell us now, as you begun to go through that process and what exactly you did, unless
you've told us everything you did.

lJa
A. That's .... I mean, that's what we did. We were trying to find those full vocals. And when we
found a full vocal and we thought it was a good vocal performance and we felt the strong .... this
song was strong enough that we would find the appropriate producer to build the track.
ae
Q. And do you still have a mission, so to speak, to try and locate any Michael Jackson full
ich
vocals?

A. We haven't had that conversation in a little while.

mM

Q. Okay.

A. Yeah.
a

Q. What about This is It?

Te

A. Mm-hmm.
w.

Q. What did you do with respect to This is It?

ww
 om
A. Again, the idea was that, you know, we all felt the film could do very well. And you know, in
the film world what we always tried to do is come up with a sound track that could have some
success based on the success of the movie or the documentary. And so what I would try to do is

n.c
try to figure out if there's a soundtrack there. And so I spent quite a bit of time at Sony Pictures
listening to all of the performances, the rehearsal performances that Michael had done to try to
see is there something that we can mix in a way that we can create that soundtrack.

so
Q. Are you referring to the hand-held cameras of ....

ck
A. Yeah.

Q. .... the rehearsal footage?

lJa
A. Yes. Yes, the rehearsal footage. ae
Q. Sorry.
ich
A. So they .... again they had .... those performances .... those rehearsals had been recorded
from an audio standpoint, so I spent time with the engineers listening to all those recordings,
those different days of performances. And the problem that we had was that Michael didn't ....
being that it was a rehearsal, Michael didn't sing songs all the way through. So you'd have bits
mM

and pieces of things and whoever's seen the film you'll see Michael, you know, singing a song
and then he stops and he's dancing. And again, he didn't want to hurt his voice, he didn't want to
push himself too hard because it was rehearsal. So from a film standpoint you have the benefit of
seeing Michael, the artist, doing something so you don't need to hear the vocal because you
know what he's doing. From a record standpoint, from an album, if you don't see anything, you
don't .... you hear a drop out on the vocals so you think there's a problem. And you might want to
a

return it because it's not .... you didn't get a Michael Jackson record. You got, you know, these
Te

performances that doesn't have Michael everywhere. So we had the conversation and we said,
well, there's just not a soundtrack there. So what we decided to do was we certainly wanted to
see if we could take advantage of creating a souvenir that would be for the film. And so we put
together a two CD package. We created a special booklet so it had a nice feel to it. It wasn't just a
w.

regular jewel case. Inside we got pictures from the rehearsal, so we had great pictures of Michael
at the rehearsal. And then I took Michael's track listing of what he was .... the songs he was
going to perform .... that he was performing at the rehearsal, I took that list in that order, and I
just took the original masters that we had. And I just created an album using the .... using that
ww
 om
track listing. And then we also .... I put .... I think, I put two or three demos on there and then also
included the song This is It, which we found.

n.c
Q. So a couple of things .... first of all it sounds like you were still in the marketing end of the
business the way you put that package together.

so
A. Yeah. Once you have a hat you can't take it off.

ck
Q. Got it. So the song This is It, was that on Michael's set list to be sung?

A. No.

lJa
Q. All right. How did you find This is It? ae
A. When Michael was working with our catalog division, which we call Legacy ....
ich
Q. So now that's pre-death?

A. That's pre-death, yeah. Michael was working with them. They were putting together Thriller
mM

25. Ao at the 25th anniversary of Thriller, they wanted to create a special package to
commemorate the .... you know, 25 years of the biggest album in the world.

Q. So this is 2007, 2008?

a

A. I thought it was earlier than that.

Te

Q. Could be. I'm asking you.

w.

A. I got .... I was not ....

ww

Q. I would never give you the answer.

 om
A. Yeah. I wasn't involved, so I don't know the date. I can't say, you know, but it would have
been 25 years and it wasn't Thriller .... maybe it was 2007 because Thriller was '83, I think. So

n.c
anyway, around then. And they had the discussion with Michael was to find a couple of songs
that had been created that weren't used on one of his albums. And so they were able to find
several things from Michael that I think they ended up using on .... there's an Essential Package,
and I think they put out something that had been a finished track but unused. It was recorded for

so
one of the albums. And .... but in that collection there .... the Legacy guys, our catalog guys,
again after Michael passed away, they gave me a couple of CDs that had these songs that they
had gone through with Michael. And on one of those discs was the song This is It, and so I

ck
brought that to the estate. Now the thing is with This is It, it was .... just to remind everybody
when I was talking about two-tracks, this was a two-track recording, so it was a demo. And it
was a two-track recording of a vocal and a keyboard, okay. Now you can't separate them. It's just

lJa
a full stereo recording, but it was extremely distorted. So ....

Q. It was an older track, wasn't it? ae

A. Very old. Very old .... and again I .... it was .... I think it was ....
ich

Q. Maybe in the '80s just ....

A. It was the 80s. It was definitely the 80s. Yeah, I think early .... it might have been early 80s.
mM

But ....

Q. And do you remember the name of the piano player that he dealt with?
a

A. Yeah, it was Paul Anka. Paul Anka was the co-writer, but we .... which we didn't know at the
time. And we .... when .... again, when we listened to this thing, the appeal certainly was the
Te

name, This is It, being that was the title of the .... what was going to be the title of the tour. So I
brought that two-track stereo mix to the estate and they organized to have .... using digital
technology, to actually carve out the vocal and reduce the piano so .... and actually cleaned up the
vocal to a point. It still is not perfect, but you don't hear the distorted elements as much. And
w.

then from there a track was built underneath it using strings and different arrangements. And a
new keyboard was put on.
ww
 om
Q. So just keeping with what you told us before .... this is a perfect example .... you took this
track and you ended up, I guess, putting it on a machine that had multiple tracks.

n.c
A. Yeah.

Q. And then you had what done? Did you record other sounds or vocals?

so
A. Yeah. We recorded a new piano. We recorded I think there might have been a new bass part,

ck
a full string session, so we basically built it out. We actually had put some background vocals on
it. So we .... it hadn't been produced because, again, it was a vocal piano .... that was all we
had .... and a distorted vocal piano. So we had to build it in to make it into an actual production.

lJa
Q. And your opinion is would this have been released as a Michael Jackson song if it hadn't of
been for the movie? ae
A. No.
ich
Q. Why?

A. Because of the quality of the recording.

mM

Q. And why wouldn't it have been released because of the quality of the recording? What were
you concerned about?

A. Just the distortion element because it's .... the track is pretty distorted and it's .... the song is
a

a good song, but it had more value because it was connected to the film. But again, it's that
Te

distortion that was .... it was very hard to get that out, and I think that the recordings that we've
done since then .... it's just .... it's they're a higher level because the .... we were able to .... we had
multi- tracks, so we could always separate the vocal completely. You could isolate the vocal and
build everything around it and not have to worry about using any kind of digital exercises to try
w.

to create a sound for Michael's voice. It didn't make Michael sound as rich as he normally does,
just vocally.
ww
 om
Q. Was there a cost .... significant cost involved with it?

n.c
A. Yeah. I .... again the estate did it so I don't know the cost, but it was very expensive.

Q. Is there a cost each and every time you reproduce or add musicians or singers .... vocalists to
these unreleased tracks?

so
A. Yeah, because there's the cost of hiring the musicians. There's the cost of hiring the producer,

ck
certainly the studios, the mixing, mixers, mastering, there's .... you know, every .... you know,
with every recording we're using very high level people, so we're paying top dollar for
everybody that's involved. So they're very expensive.

lJa
Q. When you release music that's posthumous, after death of an artist, are there risks or
different risks than if they were released when the artist was alive?
ae
A. I think no doubt about it, and there's different decision-making that takes place.
ich
Q. Well, can you explain to us, in your experience, the risks that you encounter and the different
considerations?
mM

A. Well, if you don't .... if you aren't trying to be true to the artist and you just take any
recording and just because you have it you put it out, you could tarnish the value of the brand of
that artist. So you really have to make sure that as you're looking at the material that you feel that
the fans will enjoy this music in the same way they've enjoyed other music from that artist. And
you don't want to put out something that's less than that because the fans will be .... feel like
they've been taken advantage of and just sort of served something just because it's there. So I
a

don't think, you know, we wouldn't .... I wouldn't want to do that. I always want to make sure we
sit there and say, you know, do we feel this is .... let's start with do we feel this is a good song.
Te

Do we feel this is a good Michael vocal performance, and then go from there how we're going to
build it out. If we can't say yes on either of those, we can't release it.
w.

Q. And is it fair to say that Michael Jackson had a fragile reputation? My word fragile, but if
you have a different ....
ww
 om
Mr. Musen: Objection. Leading. Vague. And vague, what is fragile.

n.c
Judge Holmes: Well, what do you mean by fragile?

Mr. Weitzman: I'm going to ask it differently. I give in. Let me ask it differently.

so
Mr. Weitzman:
Q. What was Michael's reputation in the sense of releasing posthumous music by you?

ck
A. Well, the indicator for us was when he passed away his catalog sold extremely well.

lJa
Q. A big spike as they say?

A. Big spike, yeah.

ae
ich
Q. Okay.

A. And bigger than most when an artist passes away, so that gave us an indicator that there's
probably a current fan base and probably a new fan base that's, you know, young people that
mM

didn't grow up on Michael but were introduced to Michael and, you know, because of his
incredible talent and his incredible songs and everything he did. There was opportunity, no
doubt.

Q. And so the Legacy music continues to do quite well even through today ....
a
Te

A. Yeah.

Q. .... for Michael, correct?

w.

A. Yeah. When you look at the general charts, the Billboard charts, I believe he's probably the
only .egacy artist that has, on a repeated basis, almost for the entire year, at least one, two, three,
ww
 om
or four of his releases in the charts, and when I'm saying in the charts, in the top 200, which is
really pretty amazing.

n.c
Q. And the newer released albums, that is the albums of unreleased material, Michael and
Xcape, they've done well, but not the same as the Legacy albums, correct?

so
A. That's correct. That's correct.

ck
Q. Okay. Did you talk to Mr. Musen before you came ....

A. I did.

lJa
Q. .... here today to testify? ae
A. Done on the phone.
ich
Q. On the phone, although you were introduced to him today.

A. Yeah.
mM

Q. Right?

A. Yeah.
a

Q. Looks just like he sounds, right? Okay. What did you discuss with him when you spoke to
Te

him?

Mr. Musen: Objection. Hearsay, Your Honor, relevance.

w.

Judge Holmes: I believe he's his own demonstrative exhibit, as to how he looks, Mr.
ww

Weltzman ....
 om
Mr. Weitzman: I'll stipulate to that, Your .... Okay. That's good. I'll stipulate to ....

n.c
Mr. Weitzman:
Q. What did he ask you, and what did you say?

so
Mr. Musen: Again, Your Honor, hearsay.

ck
Judge Holmes: Overruled. I don't think he's admitting it for the truth of what you said but only
that you said it. With that understanding, go ahead and answer the question.

lJa
A. And, as I remember he asked me in the first six months how many songs .... how many full
recordings, full Michael vocal performances, did we find and I believe I answered that about 15,
something in that realm in the first six months. And then you asked me since then, and I think I
ae
said about 30. And then another question was asking me about the Natalie Cole, Nat King Cole
duet of Unforgettable, and whether there is a possibility of anything along those lines with the
recordings that we have. And the difference that .... in this case, is that that song was fully
ich
composed, fully written, full melodies throughout the song and all they did was they took Nat's
voice out and put Natalie's voice in. And if we have a song that doesn't have a verse, well, it's not
a song. It's a part of a song. And you know, one situation I had where there was a producer,
writer-producer that Michael had been working with that I had heard about and, again, in my
inquiries, I called him to say, you know, I hear you have a song. And he said, I do, and I said,
mM

well, can I hear it? So he played it for me over the phone and what he played me was a track and
a chorus of Michael, no verse. Well, that's not a song. And what he was thinking of doing was to
take an artist, an artist he was developing, to put on the verse and have Michael sing the chorus.
Well, the .... you know, from what I know, from what I heard, the song hadn't been written with
Michael, so it wouldn't have been a Michael Jackson song. And so it was something we could
never do. And again, just having Michael on the verse, it doesn't make it a song. It makes it a
a

verse .... excuse me, it makes it a chorus, and that's what it was. It was a chorus.
Te

Q. In looking for Michael Jackson full vocals, your phrase, were you looking for songs that
Michael had written, or did that make any difference to you?
w.

A. Made no difference because, again, all I .... all we wanted was a full vocal. We didn't care if
he had written it, not written it. It just .... it didn't matter.
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 om
Q. Did Mr. Musen ask you about the song Free Bird and the Beatles.

n.c
A. I don't remember that he did.

so
Q. Do you know about the song?

A. I do. As I understand it, it was a John Lennon song that was written not as part of the

ck
Beatles. And again, this is all what I know, and I don't say that I absolutely know what happened,
but from what I heard it was the other Beatles recorded on it and finished the song. So ....

lJa
Q. Finished it after John Lennon died.

A. Yes.
ae
Mr. Musen: Your Honor, objection. Lack of personal knowledge.
ich

A. Yeah. I was not involved, so I really don't know.

mM

Judge Holmes: Hold on. Admitted only to the extent it affects the witness's response to his own
perception of the difference between Free Bird and the possibility of posthumous Michael
Jackson recordings.

Mr. Weitzman: That's one of the reasons the question was asked, Your Honor.
a
Te

Judge Holmes: I understand. With that understanding, he can answer. And I think he did.
w.

Mr. Weitzman:

A. Well, the one difference is that Michael was a solo artist, so you couldn't have someone sing
another part of the song. Where with the Beatles, you know, John and Paul sang different parts at
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 om
different times, so it wouldn't of been unusual to have a song that ... and again, I don't know
whether it was a ... had ... was a full song or not, but it was ... because it was a group, they
could all come together and create the track and it still be ... it could be considered to be a track I

n.c
guess. But I don't know how much was written, wasn't written for that song, you know, in terms
of, you know, what Paul sang, didn't sing. I don't know.

Q. So Mr. Doelp, is it fair to say that as of today you do not believe there are any complete
unreleased Michael Jackson recordings?

so
Mr. Musen: Leading.

Judge Holmes: Overruled.

ck
A. There are. Again, there's a few, but I don't think they'd ever be released for the reasons I said
before. The song is not strong enough. The vocal performance isn't strong enough. It might have

lJa
some flat notes. It might be missing, you know, something here and there. I don't think there is,
no.

Q. I'm going to ask that question differently.

ae
A. Okay.

Q. Do you believe there any completed, unreleased Michael Jackson songs that you are aware of
ich
that are commercially viable recordings?

A. No.

Q. I have nothing further. Thank you, sir.

mM

Judge Holmes: Any re-cross?

Judge Holmes: Please be seated. Go ahead, Mr. Musen.

a

CROSS-EXAMINATION
Te

Mr. Musen:

Q. Good afternoon.
w.

A. Good afternoon.

Q. In the first two months after Michael Jackson died, I believe you testified earlier that you saw
a huge increase in record sales.
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 om
A. Mm-hmm. That's correct.

n.c
Judge Holmes: Oh, yes. Yes or no.

Mr. Musen:

A. Yes.

so
Q. You ... Sony saw perhaps several million Michael Jackson records sold ...

A. Yes.

ck
Q. ... within the first two months?

A. That's correct.

lJa
Q. And that's pretty good.

A. Very good, yes.

ae
Q. Better than your average pop star. Better than John Legend and ... or Katie Perry?

A. Yes.
ich

Q. You talked earlier about master recordings. I just want to be clear about this. Master
recordings are used by a record company to make duplicates, product to be sold in record stores
when they used to have record stores.
mM

A. That's correct.

Q. When you were analyzing the Michael Jackson material with Karen Langford and Matt
Forger and making decisions about what would be releasable, that's subjective.

A. Well, we ... that's not what we were doing then. We were just identifying what was there so
that we could take to the estate into senior management to decide what we would release, but we
a

... our job at that point was just trying to determine what we could find.
Te

Q. And at Sony ... at the next stage.

A. Then it was to take it to the estate and have the conversation between Sony and the estate to
decide what was ... what we wanted to release.
w.

Q. Okay. But those decisions though are subjective though. This is ...

A. Yeah.
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 om
Q. ... this is going to make it, this is not going to make it.

n.c
A. Yeah.

Q. Okay. And music history is rife with 45s for example where the B side, the side that the ...
was not intended to be a hit, outperformed the A side, right?

so
A. Not very often, but it has happened, yes.

Q. Right.

ck
A. Correct.

Q. Example, the Beatles when the

lJa
A. side was I Saw Her Standing There, but the B side was I Want to Hold Her Hand. And
obviously, the latter did much better than the former.

A. They were both pretty big hits.

ae
Q. But I Want to Hold Your Hand was the bigger hit.

A. I can't say that it was or wasn't. I was six years old.

ich

Judge Holmes: That's my favorite song.

The Witness: Great song.

mM

Mr. Musen:
Q. You were saying earlier, too, that when you listened to some of the material that the audio
quality was just really poor.

A. Some of it, correct.

Q. But studio technology has evolved since 2009, yes?

a

A. Yes.
Te

Q. And I assume you expect that technology will continue to evolve.

A. I'm sure. I mean, I'm not a technical person, so I can't say absolutely, but history would tell us
w.

that, but I ...

Q. You have no idea like in 10 years from now what the technology will be.
ww
 om
A. I have no idea.

Q. So it's possible that with tomorrow's technology that you could use some of the Michael

n.c
Jackson material that you discarded earlier in 2009 and ...

Mr. Weitzman: Objection. Calls for speculation, Your Honor.

Judge Holmes: Overruled.

so
Mr. Musen:

A. As I remember it, I ... again, this was a while ago ... I don't remember there's that many

ck
songs that are technically not good and that was the reason we didn't want to work with them.

Q. But that subset of songs that were ...

lJa
A. But there are some.

Q. Yeah, so possible that we ... it could be used in the future.

ae
A. If ... again, if we think the song is a good song then, I mean, that's a possibility, but again,
there's a two-step process that the ... where there is a full vocal and the quality of the vocal and
whether the song is strong enough.
ich
Q. Okay. That's it.

Mr. Musen: No further the questions. Thank you.

Judge Holmes: Okay.

mM

Mr. Weitzman: Nothing further, Your Honor.

Judge Holmes: I don't have any questions. Do we need him anymore, or can he go back to real
life? Thank you very much.

The Witness: Thank you very much.

a

Judge Holmes: Interesting, Recording for Dummies. What you characterize as dummy
Te

involved . Thank you very much. Next witness.

Mr. Weitzman: Yeah.

w.

Judge Holmes: We're going to bring back Mr. Dahl, is that ...
ww