Foreigner's Lou Gramm Sues EMI Over Contract

09/27/2000 10:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen

(9/27/00, 10 a.m. ET) - Foreigner lead singer Lou Gramm has filed a lawsuit in New York's State Supreme Court that seeks to free him from his contract with music publishers Screen Gems/EMI Music and Colgems/EMI Music.

The original deal--signed December 1, 1975--gave the EMI companies 50 percent ownership of any songs written (in whole or in part) or acquired by Gramm during the course of the contract, as well as total say over how those compositions can be exploited. Thus, Gramm has had no say over how his music is sampled, covered, or used in commercial advertisements.

Gramm was required to deliver three albums under the original contract, and after the release of Gramm's first solo project and Foreigner's Inside Information, the deal was amended to eventually include a fourth and fifth collection, described as "a studio album, released in the United States on a 'major label.'" The suit acknowledges that after the release of Gramm's third album, 1989's Long Hard Look, "Public taste evolved, and the music for which Lou Gramm and Foreigner had become so well known and successful declined in popularity." The singer claims that Foreigner's Mr. Moonlight should be considered the fourth album of the deal, although the EMI companies disagree.

The suit contends that "no major record company is even remotely interested in Gramm or Foreigner," making it impossible for him to fulfill the terms of the contract. It further states that since EMI is a major label as defined in the contract, the company could release an album and end the deal, but that EMI is now holding him and his songs in a state of indentured servitude that will continue even after his death--a violation of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Gramm is seeking to have the contract declared expired and to have the rights to his music returned to him.

-- Bruce Simon, New York

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