Bootlegging Inc.

The Basement Tapes

Great White Wonder

Bootleg: The Secret History of the Other Recording Industry

Blow

Live’r Than You’ll Ever Be

Vice: You grew up in California, right?

Ken Douglas:

Tell me how you got involved in the record business to begin with. You came from a more legit side of things, right?

So you just sort of fell into that as the family business?

How did you distribute your first bootlegs?

And you guys immediately started repressing it?

You knew pretty much right away that this was potentially something that could make you some money?

It seems like at the time there was a combination of a lot of artists like Dylan, the Beatles, and the Stones that people were really, really obsessive over, and also these kinds of laws that were open enough that you could feasibly get away with something like bootlegging.

Great White Wonder

Live’r Than You’ll Ever Be

Was that when things started taking off for you?

I saw something in one of your blog posts about how Dub was living pretty large…

I didn’t think you made a million dollars, but it seemed you were living all right for some younger dudes.

You’ve said earlier that you guys didn’t get into it for the money, that it was a labor of love.

Do you remember what point it was that it became a money thing for you?

On the other hand, there’s sort of an outlaw aura to the whole bootlegging thing. It’s not letting the companies, or even the musicians themselves, determine what gets released. It’s like if the fans want a live record or if the fans want Dylan’s The Basement Tapes, bootleggers are sort of liberating the music for the fans. Is that over-romanticizing the situation, or was there an element of that?

You mentioned you were working at Saturn while you were still doing some of the bootlegging. How was it having that double life, working both sides of the industry, like the legit and the underground, at the same time?

Do you feel like you were able to take some of the skills and knowledge and contacts that you had from the straight business that you were doing and apply it to bootlegs?

It didn’t feed into it?

Live’r

Stealin’

It seems like there was, in terms of pressing, a sort of hit-or-miss element in terms of figuring out how and where you could get records pressed.

That seems like an incredibly gutsy thing to do.

Let It Bleed

Wow. You guys were going in and pressing stuff right—totally legit.

Live’r

Let It Bleed

Were there a lot of independent pressing plants back then?

I know there was some time where there were some authorities interested in your operation, right?

Billboard

Really?

Rolling Stone

That was either brave or stupid.

That’s a really deep cover. Just giving a different name.

Rolling Stone

That’s pretty sneaky. You guys were total hippies at the time?

It’s pretty common knowledge that the major-label record industry has always been really corrupt and kind of devious.

Yeah. But at least you guys were kind of up-front about being crooks.

The labels weren’t above taking hints from the bootleg industry.

Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out

Live’r

Live at Leeds

The Bootleg Series

There are also things like B-sides and rarities collections, and even box sets, that started off as bootleg formats and have been adopted by the legit labels. It seems, in the end, bootleggers helped the record industry as much as they hurt it.

What about artist reactions to your bootlegs?

You guys had some balls on you.

Live’r

Were there any times when things got really dicey or scary?

What was that meeting like?

Looking back on your bootlegging experience, what’s your overall feeling now about what you did?

Ragged Man

It’s sort of a shame, at least in my opinion, that there’s not the same kind of bootlegging now as you were doing back then. New bootlegs tend to be exchanged on the internet, but there’s something about the feel of having the tactile sensation of bootlegged vinyl in your hands. I mean, the fact that you know you shouldn’t have it makes it that much cooler.

Unreleased material and live shows come out online all the time now. With that, on top of file sharing and how the record labels adopted so many formats from you guys, it seems like your quest has been legitimized by history.