Lindsey Buckingham and his accidental case of plagiarism has been resolved following the musician’s release of a song he had not written. The former Fleetwood Mac guitarist’ track, Swan Song, arrived in September of this year via his self-titled solo album.
Lindsey had been given a demo over 20 years ago, and over time, he forgot he did not write it. Originally titled Mind’s Eye, the track had been submitted by musicians Jordon Zadorozny, and Brad Laner.
Speaking in a recent interview with Spin, Zadorozny said his “thought was, ‘How do I know this song, and why do I suspect that I have sung it before?’. It was a strange feeling of deja vu, but a deja vu where your hero is singing your song.”
Zadorozny met Buckingham in 2000 when he signed to DreamWorks, where president Lenny Waronker asked him who he wanted to produce his next record. After Zadorozny was invited to work with Lindsey on two songs, he brought Laner in to take part, afterwards producing Buckingham with a CD of song demos. “It was obnoxious of me… But there was no way in hell I was not going to hand Lindsey Buckingham a CD,” Laner said.
Before Zadorozny told Laner about Swan Song, all participating artists had not spoken to one another in 19 years. The pair pursued decided to pursue the issue via Buckingham’s management, sending a version of Mind’s Eye, and photos to prove the trio had in fact once worked together.
“He’d taken our song, made a demo himself of it, put it away for a rainy day,” Zadorozny said, “and, as it turns out, 16 or 17 years later found that demo and thought, ‘This is a cool thing I did back in 2000.’”
Buckingham agreed a payment fee with the writers, once he became aware of the issue, while adding their names to the song’s credits. Although many units have been sold without the recognition of Zadorozny and Laner, future versions of the album will include those credits.
“Following the recent release of Lindsey’s self-titled album, it was brought to his attention that significant elements of the song ‘Swan Song,’ had come from a song that had been shared with him more than 20 years ago while he was working in a Los Angeles studio, producing some music for Brad Laner and Jordon Zadorozny. When this unintentional and inadvertent usage was raised to Lindsey, he quickly realised his mistake and a friendly resolution was made by all parties.”
“It’s magnificent,” Laner said of the track. [Buckingham] “made it his own, and that’s a thrill. I have zero complaints about that.” Zadorozny added: “There’s almost no one else whose album I’d rather have my music on. I’m grateful to Lindsey for rediscovering this piece of music and I love what he did with it.”
