Permission Granted

For the past few weeks I have been calling and sending email to get permission to use an old Bob Seger song as the soundtrack for a video tribute for the Treasure Island bridge. Today permission was granted. Although I almost gave up several times, now I can move on to the hard part—finishing up a slideshow that honors the bridge and respects Mr. Seger, not that he will ever see it.

The Treasure Island bridge, which is near Grapeview in Mason County, Washington, is being replaced next year. Built in 1953 and supported by timber pilings, the bridge is about 10 years past the expected life of similar saltwater structures. If not for a major repair in 2009, it wouldn’t be safe to drive on. There’s a picture of the bridge on the home page of the Treasure Island web site.

The new bridge will have steel pilings and will be a huge relief to island property owners when it opens in 2012. Still, as the storyboard for the slideshow says, the old bridge is both “our one-lane wonder” and “our lifeline.” There have been millions of crossings since it opened and tons of memories. It will be missed. Using the right music for the tribute is important.

Surprisingly there aren’t a lot of songs about bridges. My first thought was “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” by Simon and Garfunkel. But it’s too long and doesn’t convey the right mood. Nor did several other bridge songs I tried. Finally I hit on “Living Inside My Heart” by Bob Seger, from the excellent soundtrack for the 1986 movie About Last Night. It seemed like a perfect fit.

A few people told me not to bother with getting permission to use the song. I’m not making the slideshow for commercial reasons. And it isn’t going to be posted on You Tube, which has strict rules about copyrights although not everyone seems to follow them. It’s just something for people at Treasure Island to watch and use to remember the old bridge. But I feel strongly about observing intellectual property rights, even as the Internet makes them harder to protect. Plus the video will have the imprimatur of the Treasure Island Board of Trustees. It would be embarrassing if we were asked to remove it once it is posted online.

To get permission I started out by trying to contact Bob Seger’s agent. That wasted about a week and never did result in a returned phone call. Then I read an article on ehow.com and it dawned on me that to get permission to use a song you need to contact the record company not the artist. The article suggested searching several online databases to find out which company owns the rights to the song I wanted to use. I got my answer on ASCAP.com, where a search gave me the name Hideout Records and a phone number.

Getting permission took several phone calls and emails over three more weeks (and some nagging). The man I talked to was nice enough, just super busy with other things. In one email, he asked me to post the video online so he could see what I was talking about. Today he watched a first cut of it and then asked me to call him. During our conversation he said that while he isn’t going to issue a license, Treasure Island has his “unofficial permission to use the song.” He also thanked me for asking.

Good enough for me.