As far as I could tell, he was a full member of the band.
...
I do hope he received a fair severance package from the band, which may have included an NDA to not bad mouth his previous employer.
All that kind of thing gets really murky in a band context. I don't want to derail this and go too far off on a tangent, especially given the actual subject matter of the thread, as I don't want to distract from that. But since this has come up a few times, here's a bit of insight:
Being a "full member" of a band kind of means different things in different contexts. In terms of the "official"
legal context, that means whoever legally "owns" and controls the band. If we assume the band is legally set up as a corporation, that is whoever owns the shares of the corporation. And whenever the corporation (band) takes an official action or makes an official decision, the decision is made based on a majority vote. This is fairly simple and straightforward in a situation where, for example, you have a 5 person band and each member owns equal shares (20%). Basically, you would need 3 members to agree in order to have a majority. That gets tricky in a lot of situations where it
isn't equal. Let's say, for example, that after Kevin left, the band decided that the keyboard player role would be an "employee" role in the band rather than an "owner." That doesn't necessarily say anything bad about the keyboard player's value in the band. Just a corporate decision about "ownership." That leaves 4 voting members. That gets tricky in the event of a tie. So maybe they decided that JP would be the tiebreaker, and they restructured so that JM, JLB, and MP each owned 24%, and that 1% that got taken from each of them went to JP, so he now owns 28%. In the event of a tie vote, JP now breaks the tie, as anyone voting with him is now part of a 52/48 majority, in this hypothetical.
But note that this does not necessarily impact other day-to-day things, like how much each member gets paid, or what their role is in the daily functioning of the band. In terms of payout of dividends and other distributions that are tied to ownership, yeah, owners get paid those things according to their ownership percentage. But that has nothing to do with salaries, bonuses, and other payments that the band can set to be whatever they want and can be equal, can be different based on different corporate functions the members have, and lots of other things. In other words, ownership does not
necessarily impact how much each person takes home at the end of the year. It might. But it might not, depending on how they decide to structure things. And the ultimate compensation a band member gets may be based on LOTS of different things, including how much they contribute to songwriting, how active they are in managing corporate affairs (dealing with band management, marketing, etc. on a day-to-day basis). You may have situations where a band member who contributes almost nothing from a songwriting perspective gets equal pay because they are good with the business side and are heavily involved in that. You may have a situation where a bandmember gets a lot more than other members because he or she does a lot of EVERYTHING. It just depends. Lots of different ways to do things.
Now, as far as the day-to-day
music-related stuff, whether or not someone is a full "owner" of the band doesn't mean they do or don't have equal musical or creative input, or a voice in everyday decisions. A non-owner might even have a huge say in
official decisions if the band's model is to decide things informally based on a consensus of the entire band, and then the actual owners get together when necessary to do a "straw vote" to approve whatever the entire group decided. Again, there are lots of different ways this can play out.
With that context in mind, as far as Mangini's role within DT: Again, I have no idea what his role was, either officially or unofficially. It seems he had input in certain areas. And he did not have input in others, whether that was his choice, the rest of the band's, or by mutual agreement. Whether he was an "owner," I don't know, but even if he wasn't, that doesn't necessarily mean anything in the grand scheme of things, as there may be lots of reasons why he might not be. For one thing, they would have had to decide whether a new band member coming in would be an owner or employee. Or maybe a situation where the person comes in as an employee initially, and then there is a built-in option for that person to become an owner after a certain triggering event (such as the passage of a certain amount of time, or a certain number of albums/tours, or something else). For another, the new member might not
want to be an owner for any number of reasons. Maybe he or she doesn't actually want to deal with any part of the corporate management. Or maybe he or she does not have the cash on hand to be able to afford to buy in for however much those corporate shares are valued. (side note: I kind of laughed during the part in the Metallica documentary where they decided to hire Rob, and they made a huge deal out of offering him a huge signing bonus to join in order to show how "serious" they were about having him onboard as an equal member. I suspect that what that was
actually about was them just structuring the buy-in in such a way that they were paying him a bonus for him to then turn around and pay back to the corporation for his buy-in shares)
So with all that as background, I hope that provides context to the discussion that whether Mangini was a "full member" or a "hired gun" isn't really a simple issue. It means A LOT of different things in different context, and the answer doesn't necessarily mean what we might think it means. As for the ultimate answer: I don't know what his status was, either officially or unofficially. But there are lots and lots of reasons why he might or might not have had whatever status he had. Whatever the answer was, it seemed to work for him and be something he was content with, and I'm sure he had at least some bargaining power and influence over what his role would be when he came onboard.
Poll
Topic: The Mike Mangini Thread (Thanks & Farewell) (Read 121570 times)