Stevie Nicks once sang, “Thunder only happens when it’s raining.”
Well, there’s a downpour of drama over at the Golden Theatre on Broadway.
The playwright and producers of “Stereophonic,” this year’s Tony Award winner for Best Play, and its landlord, the Shubert Organization, are being sued by writers Steven Stiefel and Ken Caillat, the Fleetwood Mac sound engineer/producer, who claim the popular show ripped off their 2012 book, “Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album.”
The pissed-off pair filed their lawsuit on Oct. 1 in Manhattan federal court.
Why the Mac attack?
Playwright David Adjmi’s “Stereophonic,” you see, is about a fictional 1970s rock band made up of three men and two women — three Brits, two Americans — angstily recording their second album in a Sausalito, Calif., studio, as told from the perspective of a young sound engineer.
Nonfictional “Making Rumours,” meanwhile, is about Fleetwood Mac — Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, Lindsey Buckingham, John McVie and Christine McVie; three Brits, two Americans — angstily recording their second album, “Rumours,” in a Sausalito, Calif., studio, as told from the perspective of a young sound engineer.
I just got a rush of déjà vu.
Caillat, joined by a New Yorker reporter, attended a performance of “Stereophonic” in September and saw his reflection on the wood-covered stage.
“Now I feel ripped off!” he exclaimed to the mag.
The Post has reached out to reps of Adjmi for comment.
The sound-engineer-turned-producer’s beef isn’t that the characters are obviously stand-ins for Fleetwood Mac members — despite Adjmi’s assertions to the contrary — but that the play’s format and scenes bear a striking resemblance to “Making Rumours.”
The show “copies the heart and soul” of the book, the detailed complaint says. And it’s not a parody, either. Adjmi can’t make a “fair use” argument, the lawsuit alleges, because he denies having used “Making Rumours” at all.
The play, like Caillat’s memoir, takes place in the control room of a recording studio and establishes a tech guy as the protagonist — a set-up that’s rarely, if ever, seen in musician stories onstage or on screen.
Oh, and the lawsuit also claims that whole chunks of dialogue are paraphrased from sections of Caillat and Stiefel’s work.
For example, Christine McVie in “Making Rumors”: “We don’t want to have to come in and listen every time we try out something different.”
Holly (a McVie clone) in “Stereophonic”: “No, I don’t want to ‘have a listen.’ I don’t have time to come in there and ‘have a listen’ every bloody time we lay something down.”
And that’s just one. There are plenty more that the lawsuit runs down.
Raising brows even higher: Adjmi has owned up to having read “Making Rumours,” and said that any “similarities to Ken Caillat’s excellent book are unintentional.”
That doesn’t inspire much confidence, but OK!
The playwright, who himself made a public stink in 2022 when he said another writer stole his idea for a different play, also maintains his show is not really about Fleetwood Mac, but an amalgam of many rockers and his own imagination plus some real tidbits.
For instance, a guitarist named Peter has a brother who is an Olympian, just like Buckingham’s.
And both pieces just so happen to include stretches about houseboats.
“I’m teasing out those details in order to build dramatic substratum,” Adjmi told Deadline of his borrowed bits and bobs.
I’m no lawyer, but if it was me on the stand, I would avoid the use of pretentious word salad such as “dramatic substratum.”
Caillat and Stiefel are seeking an injunction to stop performances, broadcast and publication of “Stereophonic,” along with unspecified monetary damages.
The Broadway play has grossed about $21 million and runs through January.
The writers also believe that a possible future film of “Stereophonic” could hurt the chances of a major movie being made based on “Making Rumours.”
They’re onto something there. Because The Post has learned that Adjmi has already sold the movie rights of “Stereophonic” to Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment, who I’m sure is loving this landslide of bad press.
A spokesman for “Stereophonic” had no comment.
That Hollywood production company has been involved in such tiny, tiny films as “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” and Best Picture winners “12 Years A Slave” and “Moonlight.”
Producers of “Stereophonic” (Sue Wagner, John Johnson, Sonia Friedman, Seaview and a slew of others) will also soon announce that it’s slated to play London’s Duke of York’s Theatre in the Spring.
Whatever happens, there will be plenty of rock ‘n’ roll roughhousing ahead on the Great White Way.
These guys make Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham seem cordial.
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