Townsman Al passed along a New York Post story of former Billy Joel drummer Liberty DeVitto bringing suit against Joel for unpaid royalties. This is a cautionary tale for hard-working drummers who fuel the massive hits of their bandleaders.
“Everybody always assumes that you make a lot of money because you worked with Billy Joel,” DeVitto told The Post. “It didn’t happen that way.”
Although I can’t help but agree with the sentiment that kicked off Al’s message to our basement dwellers (ie, “I’m on the side of Liberty…”), for the following contribution to Joel’s recordings alone I am tempted to root against DeVitto in his suit against his former employer.
DeVitto doesn’t have a songwriter’s credit but insists he was a major part of a collaborative creative process between Joel and his musicians.
“If Billy sang ‘Only the Good Die Young’ like he wanted to, it would have been a reggae song,” DeVitto said.
See, I hate “Only the Good Die Young” as a song as much as I hate Joel as an artist. Without DeVitto’s musical guidance perhaps that song would have been buried as a deep cut that Joel haters would never have had to hear, and perhaps Joel’s career as a hitmaker would have petered out shortly after The Stranger.
In short, perhaps no one wins, but that DeVitto was a fine drummer on all those hideous hits!
I like Liberty DeVito. I like his name, his look, and his drumming. I don’t, however, think he has a leg to stand on here. I mean, if you don’t get a songwriting credit in the 70’s and 80’s, how can you expect royalties in the 00’s? Maybe he’s counting on the judge hating Joel as well!
ummm…yeah….
maybe billy should’ve been more generous at the time. i mean, suggesting the switch from reggae to straight rock is major.
but does he have a list of songs where he had such a heavy hand in a song’s fortune? and does he have witnesses?
and where does writing end and production begin? i mean, what if he suggested the sound effects on ‘allentown?’ would he want royalties for that, too?
that poor judge.
Come Now VirGinJah
Don Let me wait
You Cat-o-lik girs
Staht much-ah-too Late
i’m going down to the studio right now to cut my reggae VERSION!
i already did a trip hop cover of The Stranger a few years ago.
i played it live and Tom Lax called me an asshole!
I never knew Liberty rocked the Gene Shalit “look”! Now that was gutsy!
As for his chances in the courtroom? Quit while you’re ahead buddy.
Oh my God! I just watched the video! at 3:24 while adjusting his synth knob, Joel sneers and looks into the crowd to see if anyone is impressed…priceless!
why is the acoustic/mouthharp/harmonizer guy standing on a little riser?
why did Billy never name the band like Billy Joel and the Strangers, or Billy and the Itallians, or Billy and the Beaters?
shawnkilroy: good eye! That moment is indeed priceless. What a sneer!
I had no idea early Joel was so progged out. It’s a whole different kind of craptastic I can now go back to ignoring.
I can’t believe how many of us have rallied around The Sneer. When I saw that earlier today I made a mental note to consider doing a full-length analysis of Joel’s sneer and its implications in his vision of “New York Rock.”
go for it!
Late addition to this news item, totally changing the odds in Liberty’s favor. Apparently Mike Love is suing Joel, saying he helped DeVitto as DeVitto was helping Joel write the songs as well.
“why did Billy never name the band like Billy Joel and the Strangers, or Billy and the Itallians, or Billy and the Beaters?”
billy and the goombah’s?
billy and the shalits?
sneering billy and the….?
or if he wanted to be really cutting edge, he could’ve called his combo “hey yo, billy, get in the car (said with brooklyn accent).”
This guy played with Joel for 800 years. The money thing never came up?
Is there some sort of rule of thumb for compensating non-songwriting band members/session musicians? I read once that Paul Simon paid Steve Gadd a little extra the day Gadd came up with the marching-band rhythm on “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.”
Robbie Robertson’s riposte to Levon’s money complaints is that band members shouldn’t necessarily be paid songwriting money for coming up with arrangements and parts; that’s just their job!
It probably doesn’t help that I’m citing two fairly notorious jerks. But this story is about a couple of jerks.
In the Sneer Clip above, is that the Mike Douglas Show set, or were Joel and his employees the house band for a short-lived Trivial Pursuit game show?
I’m against DeVitto now because not only would the reggae version have been less of a hit, but I can also imagine Joel making a really weird, uncomfortable promo clip for it that could have further ruined him. I’m thinking the exact same clip as above, only with him wearing a crocheted rasta tam and fake dreadlocks.
Also, Billy Joel & The Designated Drivers.
If you are in the backing band, even if they use you in the studio, you HAVE to know that you are not gonna get paid as an artist, but as a musician (and this could be “hourly” or at best an anual salary.
I love Liberty’s drumming but he was hired to drum, not to create / write songs. If he did co-write then he should have had a publishing agreement and a co-writer’s credit (there are no Joel / DeVito songs).
He was not ever signed by Columbia records, he was not ever a required member of the band in the eyes of concert promoters (as in if he got the flu another drummer could sub and the promoter would not have to cancel the show)I think he did play on every song…. that had drums.
Liberty did not every have a mic or sing backup..even live.
Billy, Bruce, Melencamp, Petty all treat their bands on the outside like it’s all-for-one, but at the end of the day it’s one artist and a bunch of musicians in the eyes of their publishers, labels and promoters..and they are the ones who write the checks.
Didn’t Denny Laine do this as well (as if Wings was “even Steven”)
jungleland, what the hell does doing backing vocals have to do with liberty’s case?
also, just to play devil’s advocate, if enough witnesses take the stand and say that, indeed, it was liberty who suggested that ‘only the good die young’ be changed from a song with a reggae beat to one with a gospel beat, and that this transformed the song, wouldn’t you say that this meant that in relation to the completed song, joel *hadn’t finished writing it yet* when liberty made his suggestion, and that he therefore had a major hand in writing it?
i know i would. if i write a song with one groove in mind, and my band’s playing habits transform it, i *do* give them writing credit. not all the photon band’s songs are credited just to me, though most of them are. i’m always careful to remember if anyone has introduced a transformative element into my songs that completes them. i think any songwriter should.
the more i look at the video, i actually think the sneer isn’t a “hey, check out this awesome synth i’m playing,” sneer, but a look of dissatisfaction / frustration / confusion / slight pissiness at the fact that the volume of the synth wasn’t set loud enough when he started playing it.
maybe billy was a dick to the engineer, or somone else on the crew (maybe he even sneered at him!) and the guy punked him by turning the synth volume down after sound check and before the broadcast performance.
i fucking hate this song, but i like this performance of it much better than the recording.
liberty’s a fucking animal on the drums, i gotta admit. i actually don’t even mind all those toms. he puts them to good use.
i also like the fact that they all clap during the verses and the fact that the guys who aren’t playing are still grooving.
nice job boys. take a knee.
for my money, the cocky little shoulder shake after the line “wrong or right” (at 2:55) is much more mock-worthy repulsive than the sneer.
let us be clear. i hate this song too.
Firstly, in a just world, that man would be getting paid for hitting every fucking drum and cymbal with a clear intent to make it cry. Zam!! That aside, Billy Joel is like an Escher Drawing of Self Involvement. The more you stare at it, the more it morphs. Just when you think an asshole can only justify two buttocks, you see a third, only to realize its because there’s another asshole. Asshole Widget. I say this because a few years back I was talked into playing bass at a benefit, only to then find it’s a whole night of Billy Joel! Man, feckin’ Sartre wrote that one just fer me!
As to this whole law suit thing, man, you’re lucky if your progeny aren’t born with that sneer for ever after, playing with him all those years! Give him money, don’t give him money. Just listening to the story costs you karma points somewhere.
Did you ever read Steppenwolf? The Hesse novel? The guy leading the masses across a wasteland, and the narrator asks Mozart, “Who is that?” Mozart sez: “That’s Wagner. He’s condemned to wander eternity in a wasteland.” “Why” “For using too many notes.” Mozart laughs. “And who are all those people?” “They’re the musicians who played all the notes.”
I paraphrase, here, but that’s the gist. Funny…
“And those people over there, the ones with the gnarled fingers, bloodshot eyes, and surrounded by piles and piles of glowing boxes, and silver and black discs? Who are they?”
“Those are the townspeople of Rock Town Hall. They whiled away eternities writing disagreeable tracts about the composers who used too many notes, AND the players who played them.”
Mozart laughs.