Jon Davison, the current lead singer for the progressive rock band Yes, has responded to allegations of copyright infringement made in a recent lawsuit.
The lawsuit accuses guitarist Steve Howe and Davison of using portions of a song titled “Reunion,” by musician Riz Story for their song “Dare to Know,” off Yes’ 2021 album, “The Quest.”
Story, aka Rudolph Zahler, said in the lawsuit that he met in 1990 and that the two of them, along with Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins played together in a prog-rock band called Anyone when they were younger.
The song “Reunion” was featured in the 2014 movie “A Winter Rose,” which starred Paul Sorvino, Billy Zane, Taryn Manning, and Edward Furlong.
In a statement shared on social media and the band’s official website today, Davison refuted the claims made in the lawsuit.
“It’s hard to put in words how it feels to wake up one day to hear that a person who I thought was a friend has brought not only an utterly fictitious, but also, a defamatory case against me,” he said in the statement. “While my initial reaction is to say nothing in the face of these blatant lies and this frivolous lawsuit, I feel I must address the personal slander that has been included within it as I have been so deeply hurt.”
“I did not write ‘Dare to Know’. I was not a ‘founding member of Anyone’. I have never heard ‘Reunion’ before this lawsuit,” he continued. “And, most importantly, I did not steal ‘Reunion’, a sequence of notes that is so generic it can be found in hundreds of compositions going back over 200 years.”
Davison went on to say that when he first heard about the lawsuit, he attempted to contact Zahler to no avail and that the band’s manager received threatening emails from Zahler’s legal team.
“In contradiction to the false, and we believe defamatory narrative put forward by this lawsuit, it is our belief that Mr. Story is possibly attempting to ‘steal’ a credit on our album, and gain publicity for himself, following 12 years of frustration with his own career,” Davison said. “We have evidence to confirm that over this period, and since I joined Yes, he has approached my manager, my record label, and Yes, his “favorite band ever,” on numerous occasions to ask them to represent him as a client, to release his album, or to work with Yes as producer, mixer, remaster, the list goes on.”
“Whilst I always tried to do my best for my friend, and did all I could to try and help him attain “the major music success” that, as he put it to me in April this year, “has thus far eluded me”, every single attempt by him has been met with polite refusal, rejection, or simply ignored,” he concluded.
Davison joined Yes, known for such songs as “Roundabout,” “Long Distance Runaround” and “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” back in 2012.
