Credit: Alamy

The Rolling Stones sued for copyright infringement on ‘Living in a Ghost Town’

Mon 13 March 2023 10:10, UK

Legendary rockers The Rolling Stones have been sued for copyright infringement over their single, ‘Living in a Ghost Town’, released during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the court documents (via Classic Rock) filed in the US state of Louisiana, songwriter and musician Serio Garcia Fernandez, who performs under the moniker ‘Angelslang’, claims that The Rolling Stones “misappropriated many of the recognisable and key protected elements” from two of his compositions, 2006’s ‘So Sorry’ and 2007’s ‘Seed of God’ for ‘Living in a Ghost Town’.

The lawsuit was filed against “Michael Phillip Jagger, Keith Richards, Universal Music Group, Inc., BMG Rights Management, LLC and Promopub B.V.Garcia,” and in it, Garcia claims that he handed a demo CD of the songs to one of Jagger’s family, shortly before the singer received the record.

Garcia also alleges that the 2020 single takes “vocal melodies, the chord progressions, the drum beat patterns, the harmonica parts, the electric bass line parts, the tempos, and other key signatures” from ‘So Sorry’, and the “harmonic and chord progression and melody” from ‘Seed of God’.

Notably, ‘Living in a Ghost Town’ was based on 2019 recording sessions and finished remotely due to the Covid-19 pandemic, marking The Stones’ first original music since 2012. They sped up the release of the track due to its relevance to the lockdown, with Mick Jagger changing some of his lyrics to directly refer to it, as the originals were about being a ghost after a plague. He claims to have penned them in ten minutes.

“So the Stones were in the studio recording some new material before the lockdown and there was one song we thought would resonate through the times that we’re living in right now,” Mick Jagger wrote at the time of release.

The Rolling Stones are yet to respond to the lawsuit.