"Time Has Come Today" singer getting second chance Lester Chambers hit hard times

[jobeterob]

"Time Has Come Today" singer Lester Chambers, right, with son Dylan, has turned to Kickstarter and Reddit to fund new album.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
"Time Has Come Today" singer getting second chance online
Lester Chambers hit hard times despite his song's popularity
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian is helping with a Kickstarter campaign
Campaign will fund a new album; Chambers will have the rights
[[CNN) -- His song is one of the enduring anthems of the turbulent 1960s, a soulful call to action awash in a psychedelic wave of sound.
It has appeared in more than 100 movies and TV shows, even a multimillion-seller video game, and has been covered by artists from Sheryl Crow to Joan Jett to The Ramones.
So, decades later, what does Lester Chambers have to show for "Time Has Come Today"?
So little that, early this year, the 72-year-old found himself posting a photo online. In it, he held a poster declaring that he was living on Social Security and charity, having gone nearly 30 years before seeing his first, paltry royalty check.
The poster was taped to one of his gold records.
"It's been a long journey," said Chambers, who said he never blew his money on drugs or booze like so many artists before and after. "I have not understood what happened yet and how it happened."
But now, through a series of events only possible in the digital age, he's getting a chance to start again -- this time making and selling music on his own terms.
"We've got a lawyer now," Chambers said. "It's called the computer."

"Time Has Come Today" was a pop hit for The Chambers Brothers, spending five weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1968 and peaking at No. 11. The group, which shared the stage with the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and The Doors, would fail to match its success again .

But it became emblematic of the political and social upheaval of the late '60s and would be used for decades to invoke the spirit of that era. As recently as last year, it was used in a pivotal scene in "Homefront," a military-style video game that has sold somewhere around 3 million copies.
Chambers said the entire group got about $4,000 for its use in that game.
"If they did that with one of the major groups, mainly one from England and you know who they are, they would have gotten $150-200,000 for that," he said. "We never got taken care of at all."
It's a story of bad contracts -- and record company executives refusing to even honor those, he said. The contract for "Time Has Come Today" promised a small percentage of sales, but the record company kept finding expenses that came out of the band's share before they saw any of it.
Other albums were produced but never released, he said, although the "expenses" for them kept racking up. To this day, he's not sure how some of those albums are available for sale online or who's getting the money for them.
That all led Chambers, with the help of his son, Dylan, to post the Web photo as part of the "I Am the 99 Percent" movement.
"People were all riled up about the '1%' screwing over the little man," said Dylan Chambers, who has lived with his parents and helped support them through the lean years. "Dad wrote that piece of paper and I taped it to his gold record.

With The Chambers Brothers, Lester shared the stage with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, among others.
"We woke up the next morning and it had 200 shares and 10,000 'likes' on Facebook. Dad had 500 new friend requests."
Chambers didn't identify himself in the photo. But it had picked up steam on social-news site Reddit and it didn't take long for members of the site's popular music community to figure it out.
That's where Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, came in.
He was fresh off of helping lead the Web's successful fight against the Stop Online Piracy Act, legislation supporters said would crack down on Internet piracy but that many in the Web community felt would stifle free speech and creativity.
"One of the few narratives the entertainment industry kept trying to push was that they were really pushing for this on behalf of the artists," Ohanian said.
Chambers' story, he said, showed how that business really treats its own sometimes. Furthermore, he said, it was personal.
"I was raised right by my dad -- the Stones, Dylan, Janis, Hendrix ... . I had no idea, and my dad had no idea, of the fate of Lester Chambers," said Ohanian, 29.
View the Kickstarter project: "Lester's Time Has Come Today"
He wasn't the first person to reach out to Lester and his family. But they say many of the offers they'd gotten sounded just as dodgy as ones from the days Lester said his band would play concerts for 1/10th of what other acts were getting.
"Sure, you'd get five or six snakes out of the grass saying ... I want to book you a gig or something," said Dylan Chambers. "But I was familiar with Reddit and checked out who Alexis was. He said 'I want to do this project with you guys and I want this to blow up.' "
Ohanian helped Chambers host an AMA [["Ask Me Anything") on Reddit and create a project on crowd-funding site Kickstarter to pay for his first new album in decades.
With 16 days to go, "Lester's Time Has Come Today" had raised $37,000 of its $39,000 goal on Monday. If successful, that cash will pay for rehearsal, production and musicians. This time, Chambers will retain the rights to the songs he records.

Alexis Ohanian, left, sought out Lester and offered to help bankroll a new album through Kickstarter.
"It's very, very different -- much cleaner," said Chambers, who has continued to perform live through the years. "You don't have to sit and hear somebody [[with a record company) tell you their little stories.
"There are so many of us who never got anything out of being a musician. I'm just so blessed to have this opportunity to come back into the music world and put my feelings and lyrics and music out."
He's already gone into the studio to record a pair of Christmas songs, which were sent digitally to Kickstarter backers. [[To listen, click the audio links to the left of this story.)
To Ohanian, it all shows the promise of what the Internet could, and should, be.
"It fills me with so much hope and optimism ... ," he said. "That's why you saw millions of people fighting for this."
The man who sang that his "soul's been psychedelicized" puts it differently.
"You can get on the Internet with all your creative processes and thought processes and it will take you to higher places than you could ever dream," Chambers said. "A whole lot of people are going to be able to come out of the dark and into the light and the mountains that were so high will be easy to climb."
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Pimplestiltskin • 3 hours ago
A great, classic song from the 60's. What a shame that Lester's story is so similar to that of many many other artists. And this includes big name acts like Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd - both were completely screwed by record companies and other people working in their "best interests."
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Web design vizag Pimplestiltskin • 24 minutes ago
Pink Floyd's done quite well for themselves. Dave Gilmour's given millions to charity.

Sad to say, but personal character/brains are lacking in a lot of these sob stories.
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Stu Gotz • 3 hours ago
Most artists - mostly Black - were screwed back then, even back from the 1950s. Corporate greed.
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XSF5thGP Stu Gotz • 2 hours ago
Explain the explosion of MoTown.
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james XSF5thGP • 2 hours ago
Barry Gordy made the money, many MoTowners died poor as dirt.
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Jose DelMadre XSF5thGP • 2 hours ago
MoTown artists notoriously were under paid and not given their royalties due. It goes to demonstrate the problem. Even the big acts like Marvin Gaye had great difficulty and little progress in getting the money due to him.
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Scumbag_Annihilator XSF5thGP • an hour ago
Easily. The music was undeniably great.

The money still never made it to the pockets of many of the artists though. The production and distribution companies were ruthless about milking every penny they could from artists hands [[this still goes on but with the growth of indie studios it has been less easily done). Trying to sign on to an indie label back then was career suicide as far as many in the industry were concerned. The artists then stuck with their major labels out of the belief that they were serving in their career's best interest. So yes, MoTown did explode in popularity [[rightly so), but the artists were, for the most part, anything but rich for their hard work and efforts. It's even more sad when you look at today's music in contrast. Companies clamor to throw buckets of money at so many talentless twits for a fast turnaround cash in. Meanwhile music as a whole suffers as the talentless grab the spotlight from the really skilled and deserving all for the sake of merchandising and being mainstream.
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Tim Spriggs Stu Gotz • an hour ago
Elvis Presley was another one. Until he got another manager later on.
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Stu Gotz Tim Spriggs • an hour ago
How true that is.People forget that, while artists may become very successful, most aren't experts when it comes to contracts or much anything else. That's NOT a rap on them. Same can be said for people in other professions.
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TomGI • 3 hours ago
I attended many festivals and concerts in Southern California in the late 60's early 70's. I saw the Chambers Brothers at the OC Fairgrounds in '68 and Devonshire Downs in '69. Plus at least 6+ other times. Those were the greatest of shows second to none. I hope they cash in and live happily ever after.
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Mbane • 3 hours ago
This is the result of illegal downloading in the 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's. Wait...we didn't have illegal downloading than. Are we to believe the record industry is the one who has been screwing these people all these years?
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JC Mbane • 3 hours ago
Yes, believe it. It's a fact.
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Benjamin Filbert Mbane • 3 hours ago
So the artist screws over the businessman, or the businessman screws over the artist? Don't forget that this was during the 60's when black people weren't quite yet people...
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Tim Mc Mbane • 2 hours ago
Hell yes the record industry screwed them over, and throw the 50' in too. Just keep the band in booze, drugs and groupies and they'll be happy. As the majority of hundreds [[thousands) of members of the bands throughout at least the 50-70's drive around and hear their stuff on the radio, or whatever, they know they are not getting a penny.
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TomGI Mbane • 2 hours ago
Bootleg cassette tapes sold at Southern California drive-in swap meets during the late 60's were the grandfather of illegal downloads.
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Jose DelMadre TomGI • 2 hours ago
The corporate greed however had no offspring. It's remained a constant unto itself. Major record labels using talent getting rich and dumping them penniless without paying them money due is not new. It still goes on today just as it has for years. The recording industry is only interested in protecting itself. The artists are there to fend for themselves at the end of the day.
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Pete Mbane • 2 hours ago −
It didn't only happen back in the 50's and 60's. It happened to the Backstreet Boys and N'Sync under the guidance of Lou Pearlman. Lou made a killing off of these groups. The Backstreet Boys were getting $500 a month while Pearlman was pocketing the rest as "expenses". In the contract, he considered himself as the "6th Backstreet Boy".
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Tim Mc • 2 hours ago
I have tears in my eyes as I read this, just thinking back to that period of life and listening to "Time" at volume 10, and how so many rockers suffered financially do to the "suits." They had such a great effect on our lives. I have the CD "Time Has Come Today." It's sad to figure he never saw a dime. They do a great job on Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready" on the CD and there are some other good tunes. It's good to know that no matter how much the world changes, the 60's and early 70's will always be a part of the fabric of our lives.