this sounds sketchy...

But it was on Brain Damage so I'm just repeating what I heard:

Yikes.

That sounds weird. Then again, a lot of people are desperate for money.

She "composed the song"? I don't think so. Even if she did "compose" the part she sung, y'all know Roger, he won't give a credit to ANYBODY for ANYTHING. She has no case, unless she can pull out an old contract that guarantees her a % of the profits.

Probably what happened is Clare sees Dave giving away millions to charity and figures it they all have £'s to throw away, she might as well get in line.

Well, from a musicological perspective, she is responsible for coming up with (actually, improvising) a good 90% of the song's net melodic content. But you're right, in this case that simply isn't grounds for getting back royalties, or even more ridiculous, stopping sales of DSOTM altogether.

I wouldn't say she was responsible for THAT much of the melody.... She sung along with what Rick had already written and recorded. Now, if she had sung and THEN Rick played along with what she sang, AFTER her voice had been recorded....... that I could understand. But she was singing along to his song, so 90% seems a bit much.

If Clare Torry deserves writing credit for the song, then any Pink Floyd song with a guitar solo should have writing credits to David Gilmour.

Which shoudn't be the case

UnaBeefer... If you picture the song without the voice, it's just a weird keyboard chord progression and some slide guitar with a fairly modest bassline. Not much melody at all. That's why live performances of the song pre-1973 are pretty boring to listen to.... no melody, just a tape recording of preachers' voices.

When everyone in the band heard playback of Clare's vocals for the first time, they were absolutely floored at what the song had transformed into. She did make the song what it is famous for. Then again, the band and Alan Parsons edited together several of her performances and she had nothing to do with that.

And yes legspin, improvisatory soloists are usually never given composers' credits unless they had something to do with the premeditated structure of the song (like the Gilmour/Waters songs but not Money or Brick 2 even though their guitar solos pretty much never change) or if the song's structure was improvised by everyone at once (eg Interstellar Overdrive).

All I'm saying is that it'd be a pretty poor tune without Clare Torry's vocals or a close facsimile thereof. Whether she deserves millions of dollars for it is another story.

You make a good point. Her voice does add quite a lot too that song. Of course, the same goes for the dog on Seamus.... and I don't see fido suing anyone.

It is true that without Tory the the song would be nothing and she deserves some credit, but she still is following on from what Rick/Roger had already laid down. If she hadn't have sung that they would have put something else on top so it wouldn't just be keyboard progression. This may have been worse maybe better (doubtful) but at the time she was happy to go with her session fee to turn around 30 years later is just greedy.

Actually the dog on Seamus was Nobs. I think...

Here's some more info on it, from the Floydian Slip web site.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Session singer brings suit against Floyd
Clare Torry looking for compensation for "Dark Side" contribution

Session singer Clare Torry, whose vocal stylings are a stand-out on "The Great Gig in the Sky" from Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" (1973), is suing the band and EMI Records.

The Daily Express reports that Torry claims her contribution to the song constitutes co-authorship, and she is suing for damages that could be worth millions of dollars.

"If I’d known then what I know now, I would have done something about organizing copyright or publishing," Torry says in an interview soon-to-be-published in a new book about "Dark Side." "I'd be a wealthy woman now. The session fee in 1973 was £15, but as it was Sunday I charged a double fee of £30 – which I invested wisely of course!"

Torry says she was instructed by the band to sing along to the musical track without using words, and it was her approach to that challenge that qualifies her as co-writer of the song.

"They played me the track a couple of times and I said, 'The best thing for me is to go out into the studio, put the headphones on and do something,'" Torry adds. "They didn't know what they wanted. I didn't know what they wanted."

The Sunday night session lasted only a few hours, and, afterwards, Torry was convinced the tape would be scrapped. "I honestly, truthfully, never ever thought it would see the light of day," she recalls.

The Daily Express also reports Torry is also requesting that "illicit" copies of the song be destroyed. If successful, the suit could temporarily halt production of the album, which has sold 43 million copies worldwide.

EMI had no comment.

That is exactly it! If you are going to take someone to court to try and get some sort of money out of them, you better well have something in writing with everyone's signatures on the document. Word of mouth doesn't mean a thing in a coutroom.

well she was more than happy to eccept the fee at the time, she sang they paid her, there is no lasting contract. the other thing to consider, as has been pointed out is that she didn't even expect it to be used, so clearly there was no degree of compositional colaboration, other than the specification's roger laid down. by her logic the people who's voices where used on speak to me, could claim to have co-composser's right's as those answer's where unscripted.
just my thought's

What about the various voices throughout the album?? How about the guy who says "I dunno I was really drunk at the time" & the lady who said "cruisin for a bruisin"??? Are they going to be suing anyone??

I agree that GGITS wouldn't be nearly as brilliant as it is were Clare Torry's vocals absent from it, but for her to claim she has rightful ownership of the song is ludicrous. It's tasteless enough for Roger to take half the writing credit for it without some unknown session player scrounging around for a buck. It's really sad how far someone will go to get noticed.