Pop Star and Writer in Discord Over Song

Pop singer-composer Stevie Wonder, accused in a lawsuit of stealing the song “I Just Called to Say I Love You,” testified Thursday in federal court that he got the idea for the hit tune in 1976 while being driven to a hotel in Hollywood.

Wonder, 39, who is in the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame and has sold millions of records, said he created “enough of a working idea for a verse and a chorus” during the ride to make a recording of the song the same day--but that he changed the tune over the years and did not record its final version until 1984.

In a $25-million copyright infringement lawsuit filed in Los Angeles, songwriter Lloyd Chiate claims that Wonder pilfered a song that Chiate had written in 1976 and converted it into the tune that won a Grammy Award and an Academy Award in 1985.

Chiate, 40, is a successful songwriter in his own right who has written for the Fifth Dimension, Billy Davis Jr., Marilyn McCoo, Eddie Money and Wonder himself.

Wonder, the first witness called to the stand, said he had left his mother’s home in the San Fernando Valley and was on his way to Hollywood when the song came to him.

The blind singer, who was born Stevland Morris, acknowledged under oath that “various things changed throughout the years” on the song, as they frequently do when he is working on one.

“I never completed the song,” Wonder said, in response to questioning from Chiate’s lawyer Herbert Dodell. “I never felt it was complete until I recorded it in 1984.”

Wearing a black-and-brown checked jacket and turtleneck sweater and with his hair tied in a ponytail, Wonder compared his song-writing process to the way a painter creates a painting.

However, Dodell presented a different account in his opening statement Wednesday before U.S. District Judge David W. Williams. The case is being heard by a six-member jury.

The attorney said Chiate and a partner, Lee Garrett, composed a song called “Hello It’s Me, I Just Called to Say” in 1976 that is “strikingly similar” to Wonder’s hit.

Dodell said that Garrett, an old friend of Wonder’s who also is blind, played a tape of the song for Wonder in 1977 after Wonder stopped a depressed Garrett from committing suicide. Asked about the incident Thursday, Wonder said he “honestly” could not remember what was discussed that day.

Chiate and Garrett registered a song called “I Just Called to Say” with Broadcast Music Inc. in 1979.

They sued Wonder in 1985, but Garrett dropped out of the lawsuit a year later. Dodell said Garrett had made a deal with Wonder in which he gave him a license to use the song “I Just Called to Say” in return for money and musical equipment. Garrett is expected to testify for Wonder at the trial.

Dodell pressed Wonder on a letter that Wonder supposedly wrote to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1984 using the name Stevland Morris. The letter states that Wonder wrote the song in 1984, making it eligible for an Academy Award.

Wonder denied writing the letter. He said it had been written by a lawyer who no longer represents him.

Wonder is scheduled to resume his testimony today.