*Ray Parker Jr. wrote and performed the iconic theme to the original “Ghostbusters” movie, and the musician now says he feels disrespected by the studio releasing the all female version of the film because they haven’t hit him up to participate in the project.
TMZ caught up with Ray outside Mr Chow in Beverly Hills where he spoke about the snub. Interesting fact: Parker was accused of plagiarizing the melody to the “Ghostbusters” theme song from the Huey Lewis and the News song “I Want a New Drug”, which had been released on their “Sports” album the previous year. Lewis sued Parker and Columbia Pictures, and the three settled out of court in 1985.
READ RELATED STORY: Leslie Jones Responds to Being Called a Coon for ‘Ghostbusters’ Remake
In 2001, Parker filed a suit against Lewis for breaching part of the settlement which prohibited either side from speaking about it publicly. Lewis had implied in a VH1 “Behind The Music” special that they had paid a financial settlement as part of the original agreement. The case did not make it to court; Lewis paid Parker an out of court settlement.
Despite the rocky history, Ray’s still holding out hope that the studio will reach out to him, since the film doesn’t come out until the summer.
Of course it’s totally possible that the studio will hire another vocalist to sing Ray’s classic lyrics. We’re betting money on it!
During an interview with Classic Bands, Parker Jr. spoke about “Ghostbusters” being the biggest song he’s had to date, primarily because of the movie tie-in.
“Ghostbusters” was the biggest song even without the movie tie-in,” Ray explained. “It was just the biggest song, period. There was some magic in that song that people all over the world really liked. In America, when it first came out, we thought OK, it’s tied to the film, you get the publicity from the film. But then the strangest thing happened. I don’t know if you know, but they don’t release most films in the foreign market for maybe a year or so. But the song would go to countries like Poland, Africa and go to number one. They wouldn’t even know it was connected to the film. So, within six to eight months, I had sold fifteen million records just overseas. So, it was just a strange phenomenon. There was something in that song had a happy vibe, whether you knew the words or not or whatever language it was in, it was just a popular song.”
Watch Ray’s moment with TMZ below:
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