They were just, 'No, we're not negotiating. I even offered them 50 percent and they were threatening to sue the whole time. Leibold said that since Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald , which recounts a Great Lakes ship sinking 25 years ago, was originally released, Lightfoot has received hundreds of requests to remake the song. Out of an agreement with the survivors, he will not allow anyone to remake the song. It gets tedious for us to deal with it.
Every time there's a disaster in the world, somebody rewrites that song.
I've gotten the Exxon Valdez, the garbage barge off the coast of Florida, the space shuttle Challenger. It's like every disaster in the world, everybody thinks they can take that song and reword it. After consulting an attorney, Yoder said he decided to rewrite his own song, to distinguish it from Lightfoot's. He's changed the melody, and plans to record his vocals once more. I've sang the new version about 15 times to different people associated with this new version.