"This is not about money. I am being deprived of the opportunity to be recognized along with my peers for our collective lifetime contributions to the music industry. Neither the MusiCares' Person of the Year Award nor the Grammys' Lifetime Achievement honors can ever be repeated," Kramer told Rolling Stone.
The band responded to his suit, issuing a statement to People magazine.
“Joey Kramer is our brother; his wellbeing is of paramount importance to us. However he has not been emotionally and physically able to perform with the band, by his own admission, for the past six months. We have missed him and encouraged to rejoin us to play many times but apparently he has not felt ready to do so.”
The statement went on to say:
“Joey has now waited until the last moment to accept our invitation, when we unfortunately have no time for necessary rehearsals during Grammys week. We would be doing a disservice to him, to ourselves and to our fans to have him play without adequate time to prepare and rehearse. Compounding this, he chose to file a lawsuit on the Friday night of the holiday weekend preceding the Grammys with total disregard for what is our limited window to prepare to perform these important events. Given his decisions he is unfortunately unable to perform but of course we have invited him to be with us for both the Grammys and our MusiCares honor. We are bonded together by much more than our time on stage.”
The Grammy-winning band, which released its self-titled debut in 1973, has hits including “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” ″Janie’s Got a Gun” and “Walk This Way.” The band formed in Boston in 1971.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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