Back on Monday, Ears To The House revealed that the garage house world was – in common with its ancestors – fighting amongst themselves yet again. This was because Grant Nelson – a very long-time UK producer – had accused rising garage house star Marc Cotterell of essentially stealing his work.
Cotterell denied the allegations, telling Ears To The House that “Grant’s productions have been a huge inspiration to me, [and] you can certainly hear that sound in my music. But I would never intentionally do anything to disrespect Grant’s legacy. I believe in and stand by my music, as do many others.”.
However, this is not the first time that Cotterell has found himself in hot water. Back in 2015, he released a song on his Plastik People label called “For Those We Love” – which contained vocals from an artist called Tears of Velva.
Previously, Tears of Velva – real name Velva Johnson – released a number of singles with Kerri Chandler in the 1990s. Probably the most famous of those was “The Way I Feel”, first released on King Street in 1993 – indeed, Ears To The House understands the two were in a relationship for a number of years.
There was just one problem. Johnson claimed in a rant on Facebook – which is still publicly accessible today – that she hadn’t licensed the use of her words on this song…
Johnson claims that Cotterell was going to put out a single with her in 2014, which we believe was called “Life”. However, Cotterell opted to release this instead, much to Johnson’s irritation – with her claiming later in the same Facebook rant that the vocals on “For Those We Love” were actually an “outtake” and “not requested to be in a record form”.
We’ve also learnt that Cotterell requested Johnson to try and use her influence to persuade Kerri Chandler to listen to the song – whether he ever did is unknown. But amidst this, there is one thing which is a lot less clear – Johnson’s own stance.
Because there’s at least one video of the song on YouTube where Johnson personally replies to several people who comment favourably on the song – only for Johnson to come back over a year later demanding her vocals are removed from the song.
Draw your own conclusions…
What about this is now? The comment was made in 2015, she didnt like the take but at one point she felt good enough to respond to those comments favorably. I think the time of this article is in poor taste and is intended to further drag Marc’s name through the mud. Any producer who has collabed enough or worked with vocalists will have experienced some form of disagreement and I don’t think this says anything about Marc’s integrity.