Bob Dylan has been sued by the widow of his former collaborator Jacques Levy, considering that his heirs have not been fairly compensated after the recent sale of the song catalog of the author of Blowin’ In The Wind to Universal Music Group for about 250 million euros.
The newspaper New York Post has had access to the lawsuit filed before the Supreme Court of New York, in which some 6 million euros are claimed in damages and for Levy’s contribution to his album Desire (1976), in which he co-wrote most of the songs, including the hit Hurricane and the themes Isis and Mozambique.
The musical collaboration between the two was an anomaly in Dylan’s career, who did not usually share the songwriting process.
According to the agreement they reached in 1975, it is he who appears as the total owner of the seven songs in which he collaborated with Levy, since the contribution of this would appear as a “commissioned work”.
However, it was decided that he would be entitled to 35 percent of the income generated by those themes. Automatically, during all these years his family would have obtained through various copyright management companies the corresponding money derived from the exploitation of the songs, either for their inclusion in audiovisual productions, for their reproduction …
However, his family considers that by this agreement they would also have the right to a percentage equivalent to the amount obtained from the sale of those songs to Universal.
Dylan’s representatives have ruled on the matter and, in statements to Pitchfork, they have assured that the heirs of Levy, who died in 2004, “have received all the money that is owed to them” and have crossed out this claim as “a sad attempt to profit unfairly from the recent catalog sale. ”
EFE
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