Members of Yes are being sued over a song from their 2021 album ‘The Quest.’
Riz Story, known as Rudolph Zahler, filed a copyright lawsuit in Los Angeles. He claims that Yes guitarist Steve Howe and lead singer Jon Davison stole the music of his song ‘Reunion’ for the track ‘Dare To Know,’ and added their own lyrics.
In the court filing, Zahler states that he wrote the music for ‘Reunion’ in 1981 when he was just 15 years old. Although the song was never released as a single, it was featured in the 2014 movie A Winter Rose, and Zahler later copyrighted it.
Zahler claims that in 2022, he discovered his music had been used in ‘Dare To Know.’ He insists that he never gave Yes permission to use it, and argues that the band violated his copyright by performing the song and using it to promote their album.
The filing states, “Mr. Davison decided to just ‘steal’ Mr. Zahler’s song ‘Reunion’ for the album, rather than getting Mr. Zahler’s permission,” adding that Davison and Howe “decided to add lyrics to the music, affix the name ‘Dare to Know’ to the song and attribute sole songwriting credit to Mr. Howe.”
According to Zahler, Howe became familiar with ‘Reunion’ through his connection with Davison. The two met in 1990 through the late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins. The three of them were in the band Anyone Together.
Zahler further claims that Davison once asked him for help co-writing songs for Yes, admitting that he didn’t feel his songwriting was up to the band’s standards. Zahler says he declined, and instead, Davison chose to ‘steal’ ‘Reunion’ giving songwriting credit to Howe on the album.
The lawsuit also mentions that Zahler hired a musicologist. The expert found that ‘Reunion’ and ‘Dare to Know’ share a ‘pitch similarity percentage of 96%, which is extremely high.’
Zahler is suing for monetary damages and is seeking an injunction to stop Yes from distributing the song and to give him sole songwriting credit for ‘Dare to Know.’