I believe the reasons they did not use lyrics on TAGS is because they would
have to pay royalities to any songwriter whose lyrics they used. The short
nonsense tunes that Opie and his band mates played were almost surely composed
by Earl Hagen, who was already on contract to provide the music for TAGS. I
mean you have to admit that the songs played by Opie's band were in no danger
of making the Top 40.There is another interesting story that goes with the
music part. For some reason there were about 25 episodes of TAGS that the
owners failed to renew the copyright on in the 70's. As a result, these 25
episodes fell into public domain, which means that any television station could
play those episodes at their will without compensation to the original owners
of TAGS. However, Earl Hagen was smart enough to always renew his copyrights,
and as a result, those 25 episodes, even though they are in the public domain,
are not allowed to use the opening theme that was composed by Earl Hagen. If
you catch TAGS sometimes on channel 999, and they are showing an episode of
TAGS without the opening theme, you will know they did not pay for that
episode.................................................................................
Orville Hendricks - Mount Pilot Butter and Egg Man
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