Supertramp’s Roger Hodgson prevails in royalties suit brought by former bandmates

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A federal jury took less than an hour to decide that Supertramp's former frontman Roger Hodgson doesn't have to continue to split songwriting royalties with his three former bandmates of the English rock band who didn't write any of the songs.

The eight jurors late Tuesday returned a unanimous verdict that Hodgson had waited a reasonable amount before terminating the 1977 agreement under which the three received a cut of the royalties that he and Rick Davies, Supertramp's other main songwriter, received.

David Given, an attorney representing bass player Dougie Thomson, saxophonist John Helliwell and drummer Bob Siebenberg, said his clients will appeal the verdict. The attorney had asked the jury in his closing argument earlier Tuesday to award the three $1.3 million in damages for the royalties Hodgson stopped paying them in 2018.

They sued Hodgson and Rick Davies, the band's founding members and main songwriters, in 2021. Davies settled with them last year.

According to Hodgson, he and Davies agreed to share their royalties from songwriting in 1977 only because the other three band members had no money coming in at the time.

Hodgson explained to the jury last week that at the time, most of the revenue from their album sales went to the record company, which had advanced the band the funds to pay for studio time and for the sound equipment needed to perform their songs live. As a result, with sales from their 1975 album "Crisis? What Crisis?" falling short, the three were broke while he and Davies at least had some income.

The 1977 royalties sharing agreement, Hodgson claimed, was meant to be a temporarily measure until the band had money coming in from record sales. However, after their financial fortunes improved with the commercial success of the 1979 hit album "Breakfast in America," Hodgson left the arrangement in place, he testified, because he never felt it was the right time to terminate it.

Hodgson quite the band in 1983. But it wasn't until years later, when Davies announced that Supertramp would never tour again and after he and Davies had negotiated a new copyright agreement with Universal Music for the last two Supertramp albums he had been involved with, "Breakfast in America" and 1982's "Famous Last Words," that he felt it was time to stop paying the three a share of his songwriting royalties.

According to Hodgson, some of the bands biggest hits, such as "Dreamer" and "The Logical Song," were based on his experiences growing up in the English countryside and attending boarding school. He testified that he wrote many of the songs years before the other three joined the band he formed with Davies in 1969.

Meanwhile, from 1977 to 2018, each of the three were regularly receiving $100,000 or more each year from Hodgson and Davies, and they now claim that these payments were meant to be in perpetuity.

"They did not write a single melody, they did not write a single lyric," Hodgson's attorney Alan Gutman told the jurors in his closing argument. "They got paid for all the work they actually did."

Gutman stressed to the jury that the three band members were getting a share equal to Hodgson's from record royalties, based on the sale of Supertramp's music, and were paid just as much as him from touring. However, according to the attorney, they had no right to receive in perpetuity a share of his songwriting royalties.

The 1977 agreement could be terminated at any time after a "reasonable" amount of time had passed. Gutman said 41 years was more than reasonable, especially given that the band members only played together for 10 years.

Gutman said after the verdict was returned that he was pleased with the outcome and he applauded Hodgson for sticking with the courage of his convictions.

Follow @edpettersson

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