LOVELESS: Love and Rockets’ self-titled fourth album...

LOVELESS: Love and Rockets’ self-titled fourth album is one of the year’s best-selling alternative rock collections, but there’s no love lost between the two record companies that had worked together on behalf of the acclaimed British group: tiny, Australia-spawned Big Time Records and industry giant RCA Records.

And the bad feelings extend far beyond RCA’s initial failure to place the Big Time logo on copies of the current Love and Rockets album, a flap that was reported in Pop Eye last week.

The charges and counter charges between RCA president Bob Buziak and Big Time president Fred Bestall typify the contentiousness that sometimes occurs when an act suddenly hits pay dirt.

Buziak told Pop Eye that Bestall owes RCA about $1.1 million in unpaid loans and advances made between 1985 and 1987. Bestall agrees that he owes RCA money, but estimated that the figure is closer to $250,000.

Said Bestall, “Charging us interest on interest, charging us interest on the reserves they’re holding, charging us processing for returns, that’s a lot of internal hogwash.”

Buziak said that instead of being bitter, Bestall should be grateful for the loans and advances from RCA and for RCA’s willingness to give him a royalty on all subsequent Love and Rockets albums.

“We advanced him money outside of any contractual obligations purely to try to help him keep his business going,” Buziak said. “Even in our new deal with Love and Rockets, we pledged an overriding royalty to him--He gets a 2% override that increases to 2 1/2% after 500,000 units.”

Bestall sees it differently. “They closed me down,” he said. “I’m sitting here with this debt over my head. I’m just about out of business. It’s been very frustrating for me knowing that I’ve found a successful act and have still been treated this way.”