English poster boy Robbie Williams' much hyped ego has yet to take the U.S. by storm (his American debut, The Ego Has Landed, climbs meekly to No. 68 this week), but his arrival has not gone unnoticed by New York-based publishing company Ludlow Music Inc. Ludlow, which represents both Loudon Wainright III and American folk poet laureate Woody Guthrie, is accusing the former Take That star of copyright infringement.|

At issue is the bouncy Williams track "Jesus In a Camper Van," which contains the refrain, "I am the way." The same phrase turns up in singer/songwriter Loudon Wainwright III's 1973 song "I Am the Way (New York Town)," itself adapted from the Woody Guthrie song "New York Town." Wainwright is co-credited for "Jesus" on the Williams' album; Guthrie is not.

Then things get really confusing. According to U.K. press accounts, Ludlow Inc. has served Williams' management and publishers with a copyright infringement lawsuit. A source at Ludlow today however stressed that no suit has been filed. "It's just a dispute ... there's never been a lawsuit. We're trying to solve this matter with Robbie and his representatives."

Meanwhile, Williams' press contacts in the States were unaware of the matter entirely. A representative for Wainwright at the Rosebud Agency said that the singer/songwriter was not party to any lawsuit against Williams, and that it was strictly a disagreement between publishers.

But even though Wainwright is given a songwriting credit on the Williams track, the Ludlow camp is still asking that Williams own up to clipping the lyric. "You can't take the last three lines of 'Blowing in the Wind' and then write a new song around it, and then say, 'I only used your lyric.' An infringement's an infringement," said the source. "You can't take someone's work. Loudon wrote lyrics and got permission to copyright a new version, or a derivative work, of Woody Guthrie's 'New York Town.' That's the proper way that a writer proceeds in saying, 'I'd like to do something that's a derivative work.' Everybody participated.

"We as a company are trying to ask Robbie to be responsible and acknowledge the fact that he took Loudon Wainwright's lyric and put it in a song, and not to claim that it's only a small part of the song," continued the source. "Some publishers, like Robert Klein or ABKO, will go in and take 100 percent of the copyright away from the Verve guys, and that's not what we're trying to do. We were trying to resolve it in friendly terms."

What Ludlow is trying to do is uncertain. A lawsuit of some sort may not be out of the question, but as to what they're asking for, the source only said, "Right now it's not appropriate to discuss it."

RICHARD SKANSE(May 21, 1999)