Please explain to me the song-writing credit process

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Also see the O'Jays' "For The Love Of Money," where history was made (was it ever repeated?) when Anthony Jackson was given songwriting credit for his bassline.

the whole sorry tale

But as far as a self-contained, songwriting band works, yeah, basically they get together and confer/argue over who did how much on what song and who should get their name on it. Songwriting royalties and performance royalties are separate things - not only is songwriting (publishing) money separate, but you get it faster. And that's why Pete Townshend was doing pretty well in the early '70s but did a few Who tours for no other reason than to keep John Entwistle and Keith Moon out of the workhouse. It's also why groups such as U2 and the DLR-era Van Halen (I dunno about later) credited all song to everyone - so that everyone in the band would be making the same money.

Something tells me Damo Suzuki didn't walk off with 50% for "writing" the "words" to those Can songs.

It's not a 50/50 words/music thing; every name on the songwriting credits gets an equal share. Unless they contractually agree otherwise, which I imagine can happen.

I heard electronic beatmakers still get screwed a lot of the time, unless they can blag much coveted "producer's points".

I wondered about that. Can't they get songwriting credit? I think they do in most cases, don't they?

that is fascinating and fun stuff indeed for credit junkies. like me. but, for whatever it's worth, legally it doesn't make a whit of a difference exactly who wrote what. if a song is legally credited to, say, bacharach/david, then burt has as much of a legal right to the lyrics as hal does, and hal has as much of a legal right to the music as burt does, even though everybody knows who did what. it's like a house: you might have built and paid for the living room and the kitchen and your partner might have built and paid for the bedrooms and bathrooms, but once you move in together, you both own a share of everything.

i always admired the blasters' method, which was to publicly credit all songs to dave alvin, who wrote the words and chord changes, but to divide the publishing equally among all four bandmembers, as an acknowledgment that performance and arrangement are an integral part of the pop songwriting process.

and then there was pavement's method, which (at least for most of their albums) was to offer no songwriting credits at all, but to make careful note of which publishing company published which song, which any fan could easily translate to who wrote what.

Also IIRC, If you collaborate with another person, where you write the lyrics while they compose the music, but they get cold feet and walk away and get someone else to write alternative lyrics, you still get half of your collaborators royalties. Obv. this only works if you sit down and write the song together, not if you write lyrics to pre-composed music.

What it says on the record doesn't really matter. I think all the Strokes songs are credited to Julian on the albums for example but at the publisher's, all the members are credited equally and thus get paid equally.

It's a good policy if you want your band's original line up to be in it for the long haul (Pulp, Sloan etc) in my opinion.