Flaming Lips Avoid Cat Fight

The Flaming Lips will split royalties for the song "Fight Test" with Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) according to the terms of an agreement between the two artists' publishing companies. The settlement stems from the similarity between the Lips' new single and Stevens' 1970 song "Father and Son."

Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne acknowledged the likeness between the two songs in an interview last year before the song's release. "I know ["Father and Son"] and when I came up with 'Fight Test,' I knew there would a little bit of comparison to that," Coyne told Rolling Stone. "Parts of it are radically different than what I intended in the beginning, which I thought sounded a lot like the Cat Stevens song, but I didn't give it that much thought. We did the song quite quickly once we came up with the arrangement. It?s not a reference necessarily to the ideas of [?Father and Son?], but, yeah, definitely a reference to the cadence, the melody, and stuff like that. I think it's such a great arrangement of chords and melody that you just hope to express something, even though it's in a similar vein."

Flaming Lips management declined comment on the settlement.

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Song Stories

“Is It True”

Brenda Lee | 1964

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."

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