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Philip Christian, 68, said in the 1970s that he penned the words and melody that became the main theme from the hit 1981 show Cats.<\/p>\n
He alleged that a member of one of Lord Lloyd-Webber\u2019s other works overheard a recording of the song and\u00a0recited it to him ahead of the show\u2019s production.<\/p>\n
Mr Christian was suing Lord Lloyd-Webber and lyricist Sir Trevor Nunn for breach of copyright.<\/p>\n
He claimed he owns the rights to the \u201clyrics and musical score\u201d and demanded future royalty payments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
But following a High Court hearing in London last week, judge Master James Brightwell threw out the \u201cfanciful and entirely hopeless\u201d claim.<\/p>\n
Rights to the song Memory were registered to Lord Lloyd-Webber and to Sir Trevor, who shares the copyright in the words with the family of poet TS Eliot, whose work Rhapsody on a Windy Night was the inspiration.<\/p>\n
Mr Christian told the court his own song was inspired by his experience arriving in the UK aged 11 from the Dominican Republic in the 1960s.<\/p>\n
He said he was training in performance arts when a recording of his song was heard by one of Lord Lloyd-Webber\u2019s dancers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
He claimed it must have been \u201cmemorised and then recited\u201d in front of the star composer.<\/p>\n
Representing himself, Mr Christian said: \u201cI have always had that tune in my head. Every time I hear it on the radio, I get angrier.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barrister Stephanie Wickenden, however, argued his copyright claim should be struck out.<\/p>\n
She said his argument the song was memorised then recited was \u201cnot a plausible allegation\u201d, adding: \u201cIf there were any merit to the claim, it would\u2019ve been brought 40 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The judge said Mr Christian had failed to produce a copy of the song.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI find it inherently incredible that a dancer could, in the context of the entrance hall to a dance studio, have remembered word for word both the lyrics of the song and the melody and been able to communicate them at a later point.\u201d<\/p>\n
He granted summary judgment against Mr Christian.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[ad_1] Philip Christian, 68, said in the 1970s that he penned the words and melody that became the main theme from the hit 1981 show Cats. He alleged that a member of one of Lord Lloyd-Webber\u2019s other works overheard a recording of the song and\u00a0recited it to him ahead of the show\u2019s production. Mr Christian …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15355,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[766],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15354"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}