The song is arguably Andrew Lloyd Webber’s most famous: Memory from Cats, the haunting ballad made famous by Elaine Paige that has become one of the most recognisable songs in Musical Theatre.
The musical Cats is also one of the world’s longest running musicals – in the West End and on Broadway, and is based on T.S. Eliot’s poems “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats”.
Now the High Court at the Royal Courts of Justice in London has ruled that Lloyd Webber and the song’s lyricist, director Sir Trevor Nunn, who shares copyright of the lyrics with T.S. Eliot’s family, do own the copyright to that song.
The copyright was being challenged by former dancer Philip Christian, 68, who is now a songwriter.
Christian claimed that he wrote the music and words to Memeory, and has been suing Lloyd Webber for authorship of the song, and the accompanying future royalty payments.
Christian claimed that the song he had written was listened to by a member of one of Lloyd Webber’s other shows at Pineapple Dance Studios in 1980, who then recited it to Lloyd Webber ahead of the premiere of Cats in the West End, at the New London Theatre, now the Gillian Lynne Theatre.
But judge James Brightwell dismissed the claim as “fanciful and entirely hopeless”, and said that it was “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 to Andrew Lloyd Webber”.
Lloyd Webber’s barrister Stephanie Wickenden argued that, “If there were any merit to the claim, it would’ve been brought 40 years ago.”
The judge granted summary judgment against Mr Christian.
Andrew Lloyd Webber is head of production and rights company Really Useful Group and London theatre chain LW Theatres. His musicals include Sunset Boulevard – which is now playing at the Savoy Theatre in London, Starlight Express – which is getting a reboot in London next year, and long-running West End musical The Phantom of the Opera at His Majesty’s Theatre.
His Majesty's Theatre, London
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