Brandy You're a Fine Girl

Who is Stephen Homner?

There is a bit of a controversy, has been for decades, over the true authorship of "Brandy," the syrupy woman-waits-for-her-sailor ballad from Looking Glass in the early '1970s.

There is a commonly expressed view that Looking Glass' Elliott Lurie didn't write the song -- he bought it from Stephen Homner. The specific figure sometimes used is $10,000.

Lurie denies this.

Is there even a real Homner? So far as I know he has no existence outside of this claim.

The more heated accusation is made, too, that Lurie "stole" the song. Obviously both claims can't be true. If Homner (whoever he is exactly) willingly sold it and cashed the check then it wasn't stolen from him.

A seller of those rights for $10,000 would plausibly have had buyer's remorse when the song seemed to be coming out of every radio in the world but ... that's the way it goes.

And yes, he should have been given song credit IF this Homner person is real AND the story is true AND if there was nothing in the agreement that specified that he was not to get named credit.

All of which just slightly piques my interest in the question: which one of those ugly farts on the album cover is Lurie?

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