Musician sues Rod Stewart for royalties

A musician who claims he wrote part of Rod Stewart’s 1970s hit Maggie May is set to launch legal proceedings against the star for royalties, it emerged today.

Ray Jackson claims he was paid just £15 by the music legend when he played mandolin on the recording – which went on to become a worldwide hit – in 1971.

Mr Jackson, a member of Tyneside band Lindisfarne, now believes he may have lost at least £1m (€1.44m) because he was not credited for the track’s distinctive “hook“.

The Wallsend-born musician has now decided to press ahead with his claim after the Court of Appeal ruled last week that session musician Bobby Valentino should be recognised for his part in writing the violin riff on the Bluebells’ 1993 number one hit Young At Heart.

His spokesman Barry McKay said: “Ray Jackson in 1971 was asked to do a session for Rod Stewart. He was an up and coming musician at the time and drove down to London from Newcastle.

“I think Rod Stewart and the engineer that was there at the time produced an unfinished Maggie May and asked, could he write something? Ray wrote the hook of the record but he had no idea he was entitled to part ownership as a composer. Rod Stewart paid him £15 for the composition.”

Mr McKay, who was manager of Lindisfarne, said that Mr Jackson – who now lives in Oxfordshire – had brought up the issue of whether he might be entitled to royalties from the song several times but had never taken it further until he saw a television advertisement for a bank in 1995.

The ad featured the mandolin section from Maggie May and Mr Jackson called Mr McKay to ask whether, as he thought, up to £100,000 (€144,000) might have been paid for its use.

Mr McKay claims that some time later he contacted Rod Stewart’s representatives to try to settle the matter but without success.

He added: “I believe that Ray Jackson deserves to be credited. I think it is a very serious injustice. This has cost Ray about £1 million at least. This is one of the biggest pop songs of the last century. He has been very hard done by.”

He added that he would be “extremely surprised” if Mr Jackson did not now launch legal proceedings against Rod Stewart, following the Valentino case.

Mr Jackson is currently on holiday in Spain.

In a statement, he said: “I am convinced that my contribution to “Maggie May” which occurred in the early stages of my career when I was just becoming famous for my work with Lindisfarne was essential to the success of the record.

“Furthermore, a writing credit would have given me a writing status which would have encouraged my writing efforts and could well have opened doors for me.”

A spokesman for Rod Stewart described the claim as “ridiculous“, saying it was accepted that Mr Jackson had played on the song but not that he had any part in writing it.

He added: “This ridiculous claim was first brought up in the mid-1980s, some 14 years after the song was written and recorded in 1971.

“As is always the case in the studio, any musical contributions he may have made were fully paid for at the time as ’work-for-hire’. And from the inception of their creation, they are the sole and exclusive property of Rod Stewart, his record company and the co-publishers.”