Sour notes on piano man
By GEORGE RUSH AND JOANNA RUSH MOLLOY
DAILY NEWS COLUMNISTS
Monday, March 19th 2007
It must have been difficult for author Mark Bego to find people to bad-
mouth Billy Joel.
The songwriter is beloved by fans for tunes like "New York State of
Mind," "She's Got a Way" and "Just the Way You Are" and by
environmentalists for his sup****t of fishermen. Even his problem with
alcohol seemed to be an affection-grabber: He checked himself into
Betty Ford in 2005 because of his affection for fine wines.
But Bego, who's written more than 45 celebrity books with 10 million
copies in print, and whose "Billy Joel: The Biography" comes out in
June, seems to have found the Piano Man's Achilles heel: He's cheap,
claim three dissatisfied musicians who've played with him: Doug
Stegmeyer, Russell Javors and Liberty DeVitto.
Perhaps Joel became extra-cautious after feeling ripped off by his
manager and onetime brother-in-law, Frank Weber, whom he sued for $90
million in 1989. Or he may have been raised to be frugal in a family
that lost everything to the Nazis.
But drummer DeVitto tells Bego: "After the release of [the 1978 album]
'52nd Street,' Doug and I were already hip to the fact that we were
underpaid for our contributions to the music on that album ...
"According to a 2002 covered earnings re****t from the Musicians Union,
Local 802, I grossed $7,789.76 in 1978. I would think about $3,936 of
it was for recording '52nd Street.' " DeVitto says he got $10,000
every time the album sold a million copies, but singles and overseas
sales were not included.
"So we went to see a lawyer. The lawyer said to us, 'Are you willing
to quit the band?' We looked at him and said, 'No.' He said, we were
considered nothing more than just hired session musicians.
"I told him I was getting divorced, my ex-wife was getting everything,
could he help me out? I helped him create hits, but I wasn't getting
any royalties. The next day, he had the tour manager tell me, 'No
way!' "
But a high-level music business source tells us DeVitto did not tell
all to Bego for his tell-all.
"Liberty was the highest-paid member of the band. He made $3 million
working for Billy."
As for the drummer's claim that he should have gotten royalties for
songwriting, the source points out, "Songwriting is creating chords,
melody, lyric, rhyme, time signature, inherent rhythm and basic tempo.
Liberty contributed a drum performance to the recording of the song.
Sometimes he played a drum pattern that he devised. Sometimes he
played a drum pattern that Billy Joel or the producers devised.
"For example, the drum pattern on 'Just the Way you Are' was Phil
Ramone's idea. The drum patterns on 'The Downeaster Alexa,' 'We Didn't
Start the Fire,' and 'River of Dreams' were devised by Billy Joel. The
drum patterns on 'Only the Good Die Young' and 'I Go to Extremes' were
devised by Liberty De Vitto. Nevertheless, that is not songwriting by
any stretch of the imagination.
"If Liberty or any former band member has any evidence that they wrote
or co-wrote any of Billy Joel's songs, why haven't they ever filed a
lawsuit and why did DeVitto wait until he was no longer in the band to
make these claims? Why did he take the money for 27 years? Why hasn't
he worked with another big name artist? Name one hit record that he
played on that wasn't a Billy Joel record. Name one hit song or any
song that Liberty has written on his own or co-written with anyone
else."
Joel's spokeswoman would only say: "Billy hasn't seen the book and has
no comment."
http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/r_m/index.html
|
