What's with the myth about public-domain music?

[Prob Lem]

So, I see it said pretty often (be it in articles, retro-reviews, reviews from the time, or whatever) that the music from the original Lemmings is entirely public-domain stuff, due to concerns about ripping off pre-existing tunes... Except, well, has anyone else noticed that that's not actually true?

Even if we put aside the original compositions made for the game, it features an arrangement of How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?, as well as a snippet from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, for example. These two are from 1952, and 1966, respectively, and were most definitely in copyright in 1991. (I know that How Much Is That Doggie In The Window? was loosely based on the folk song, Carnival of Venice, but the version in Lemmings features bark-like sound effects and uses Doggie's melody and not that of the folk tune, which makes it pretty clear that it's based on the 1950s song.)

Does anyone know where the claim about concerns about the music came about? After all, don't these two examples invalidate it?

[ccexplore]

I think it was probably a miswording of something said by one of the original DMA people that made Lemmings.  I think you might find something mentioned in Mike Dailley's Lemmings/Psygnosis site for example (don't remember where anymore), though obviously that's not the original source (which I suspect may have been from some interview of the DMA Lemmings team by some gaming magazine or similar).

I think the original wording was more to answer why there were so many classical music used in the game.  The original wording did not say every music in the game are in public domain, but then as people reference that information in their own publications, words got twisted and it eventually turned into the much less accurate "every music is public domain".

[ccexplore]

After all, don't these two examples invalidate it?

If we accept that the quotes may have been misworded and it's a matter of "many" rather than "every", then I think even if one or two songs have copyrighted materials, the fact that they were still able to avoid copyrighted materials for many of the other songs was probably good enough in terms of minimizing the legal overhead.

[Prob Lem]

I do recall seeing something in that vein somewhere (likely Mike Dailly's site, yes), but you know, it never occurred to me that it was something that also could have been said much earlier. http://www.lemmingsforums.com/Smileys/lemmings/tongue.gif" alt=":P" title="Tongue" class="smiley" /> What I'm remembering is a mention of Tim Wright re-doing some of the soundtrack, as the original version (by Brian Johnston, wasn't it?) supposedly had a lot more samples from copyrighted tunes. Honestly, I'd love to know what the soundtrack was like at that point - I wonder if anything still exists of it? I mean, I know that the Amiga scene is generally very good at preserving this sort of thing where possible, but I don't know if that extends to stuff that probably wasn't released to the public in any form, unless the authors come forward with such things...

And, agreed on the legal overheads thing, too, but the fact those two examples did remain does still puzzle me. Not that I'd change it now, of course - otherwise the soundtrack just wouldn't be the same!