Busted x-members sue for £10 million
February 26, 2008
Two members of the former pop band Busted are sueing for £10 million in unpaid royalties. (Surely they aren’t worth that much, are they?)
The pair are sueing alleging they had to give up rights to songs after they were threatened to do so by the band’s management team.
Songs written by the band members became huge hits in the UK and abroad but Ki McPhail and Owen Doyle say they haven’t recieved a penny in royalties.
The pair say they were kicked out of the band after Richard Rashman became manager in March 2001. Tim Penny, representing the pair, told Mr Justice Morgan that Mr Rashman then informed them that their former band colleagues, James Bourne and Matt Willis, would continue to use the name, Busted, and there was nothing they could do about it.
The songs in question include Sleeping with the Light On, What I Go to School For, Psycho Girl and Year 3000. The songs where written by the members while they where starting out in their former band called the Termites.
Mr Penny said his clients were in a band with Bourne and Willis from late January 2001 to October that year. During that time they performed together and wrote the songs while trying to get a record deal with a major company. From March 2001 they signed with a professional management company and in April the band changed its name to Busted. But in October Bourne and Willis said they no longer wanted to be a group with the claimants, said Mr Penny.
The claimants alledge they where heavily persuaded to relinquish their rights the the songs in question, via threats to themselves and their familys saying they would lose their homes and the pair would never work in the industry again.
It’s a nasty business isn”t it!
