Billy Joel is being sued by a musician who claims that he played drums on a 1979 demo that became the hit ‘You May Be Right’, but that he was frozen out of any rights and royalties in relation to the track.
Representing himself in a lawsuit filed with the courts in Arizona, Joseph Roderick Jr accuses Joel - and his label Sony Music and publisher Universal Music Publishing - of breaching a verbal contract. In addition, he’s claiming what the lawsuit calls “detrimental reliance on a promise” as well as good old fashioned copyright infringement.
The lawsuit is ambitious: Roderick is asking for at least $15 million in damages and “all performance, mechanical royalties, publishing and sales, which includes: television, motion pictures, radio, social media, internet sales, anywhere the song ‘You May Be Right’ has been played, and future royalties as long as the song is being played and performed”.
That’s despite admitting that he doesn't know if his performance on the demo was even included in the final recording of ‘You May Be Right’ or whether Joel’s drummer Liberty Devitto rerecorded the drums, replicating what he had performed on the earlier version. .
Nevertheless, he says, “hearing the song ‘You May Be Right’ on the radio and elsewhere is not just a slap in the face, but it’s like getting slapped with a semi truck day in and day out”.
The roots of this dispute are from summer 1979, when Roderick says that he was invited, by another musician he knew called Brian Shackleford, to play drums on three tracks at Pantheon Studio in Scottsdale, Arizona, with Shackleford playing keys.
Two weeks later Shackleford told him that Joel was going to record two of those songs, but, says Roderick, he was assured that “they would get me on the other end”, implying that he would get royalties from his work on the demo recordings. This verbal contract appears to be the basis for his claim.
One of the songss recorded in that session was ‘You May Be Right’, the platinum selling single that appeared as the first track on Joel’s seven times platinum 1980 album ‘Glass Houses’. Which means Roderick was involved in the early development of a bona fide hit record. And yet, he reckons, that involvement was never rewarded or even acknowledged.
While Roderick concedes that he doesn’t know whether the drums on the final version of ‘You May Be Right’ were his performance or that of Devitto, if it was the latter, Roderick reckons he still e “created the drum beats, feels and energy” of the track, which Devitto then replicated.
Of course, even if Roderick’s performance did make it into the released version of ‘You May Be Right’, as a session musician it is unlikely he would have received royalties from the record, other than performer ER payments due in some countries when the track was broadcast or played in public.
However, by claiming to have “created the drum beats”, Roderick is also basically saying that he had a role in writing the track, which might allow him to claim a cut of the song copyright and the money that copyright generates. Currently Joel is listed as the sole writer of 'You May Be Right'. That said, it wasn't uncommon back in the day for session musicians to evolve a song during its initial recording, but not receive a co-writer credit or split of the copyright.
Which means, even if the facts as described by Roderick can all be proven to be true, Joel and his business partners can likely argue that, according to music industry convention, it’s unlikely Roderick would have been offered a recording royalty or split of the song copyright.
Another big challenge for Roderick is the length of time it has taken him to file a lawsuit. There is a three year statute of limitations for copyright infringement claims in the US, though that is usually three years from when a copyright owner becomes aware of the infringement.
There was a recent landmark judgement on the statute of limitations in copyright cases in the Warner Chappell v Nealy case which Roderick cites in his lawsuit.
That clarified that a copyright owner which successfully sues over infringement that it became aware of in the last three years, but which occurred longer ago, can claim damages all the way back to the actual infringement. However, the basic three year statute of limitations still applies.
The massive delay is partly explained at the end of Roderick’slegal filing. He says that in 1981 or 1982 he was “admitted to Good Samaritan Hospital in Dayton Ohio after suffering a nervous breakdown and severe depression”. It took him “many years to heal from his mental breakdown”.
His lawsuit concludes by saying that Roderick’s “dreams as a studio musician would have been very prosperous if he had received residuals and credits as the drummer for his work on the song ‘You May Be Right’”. Since he was allegedly cut out of any credit or reward from that work, he has “suffered many trials, tribulations and shortcomings that are difficult to comprehend”. He then adds, “I want this nightmare to come to an end”.
