Drummer Joseph Roderick Jr who says he played drums on a demo version of Billy Joel’s hit ‘You May Be Right’ back in 1979 has filed a lawsuit over allegedly unpaid royalties. He says his work on the song was never acknowledged or rewarded – he now wants at least $15 million in damages. The drummer sued Billy Joel over ‘You May Be Right’ and it is a lawsuit to look out for.
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 copyright infringement.
The lawsuit is aspiring: 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 in spite of 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 crux of the issue started in 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 songs recorded in that session was ‘You May Be Right’, the platinum-selling single that appeared as the first track on Joel’s seven-time platinum 1980 album ‘Glass Houses’. This 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. The Drummer sues Billy Joel over ‘You May Be Right’ will be closely watched for how it turns and helps understand more about the nuances of copyright laws and artists.