The 'Without Me' hitmaker has recently been named among the artists whose original audio tapes were destroyed in the Universal Studios fire, but his spokesman is quick to assure otherwise.
- Jun 13, 2019
AceShowbiz - Eminem's representative has assured fans the rap superstar's early masters were not lost forever in the Universal Studios fire of 2008, as they had been digitised just months earlier.
The "Without Me" hitmaker was said to have been one of the artists whose original audio tapes were destroyed over a decade ago, when a massive fire wrecked one of the Universal warehouses used for the storage of music and film reels dating back to the 1940s.
The news of the huge loss was only made public following an investigative report published in The New York Times on Tuesday, June 11, when musicians including John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, Elton John, Louis Armstrong, Chuck Berry, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Nirvana, No Doubt, Snoop Dogg, Tom Petty, Hole, R.E.M., and The Roots were all listed as affected parties.
However, Eminem's spokesperson, Dennis Dennehy, has revealed the hip-hop star may actually one of the lucky ones, as his masters had already been duplicated in digital form.
"I'm fairly confident that most, if not all, of the masters are backed up," he told the Detroit Free Press, with reporters noting the rapper's tapes seem to have been "painstakingly duplicated onto digital media just in the nick of time - months before the June 2008 disaster".
Dennehy admitted he was unable to confirm which, if any, of his original audio recordings had still been locked away in the Universal vault.
His comments emerged hours after representatives for rockers like Hole and R.E.M. revealed they had been unaware of the destroyed material until the Times article was published.
