Eric Carmen's Widow Sues Rolling Stone, Alleging January 'Hit Piece' Defamed Late Musician

The federal courthouse in Downtown Cleveland. Credit: Tim Evanson

Amy Carmen, the widow of Cleveland-born music legend Eric Carmen, has sued Penske Media Corp., the owners of the Rolling Stone, and three estranged family members, for a handful of allegedly defamatory remarks made in an article the magazine published in January.

In a 55-page complaint filed Monday in federal court, which was first reported by Bloomberg, Carmen claimed that Rolling Stone allowed at least 15 false or misleading statements to be published in an article published after Carmen’s passing.

The article, penned by writer Andy Greene, mostly centers on Carmen’s apparent plunge into right-wing conspiracy theories throughout Donald Trump’s campaign and presidency, a twilight-era personality shift that, the article frames, only further alienated Eric from his children, Clayton and Kathryn, and his brother and ex-attorney, Fred.

Greene’s article “was a Frankenstein monster born of a warped alliance between embittered family members with axes to grind,” the complaint says, “and an unscrupulous publisher clinging to every poisonous word in a calculated effort to manufacture controversy.”

“Even worse, the defendants used the article to create a fantasy world woven from whole cloth,” it adds, “a magical realm of good versus evil in which heroic, albeit fictional, versions of Fred, Clayton and Kathryn were Eric and Amy’s helpless victims.”

“In reality,” it says, “the reverse was true.”

Part of the familial dispute also deals with the lucrative trust Eric formed in 2014—and a subsequent lawsuit, blaming Fred for siphoning money from that trust. Details of that have trickled into court documents and the pages of Rolling Stone.

It also comes downto a battle of reputations: Was Eric Carmen, the immortalized singer of “All By Myself,” a benevolent well to his two entitled children in wealthy Gates Mills, or was Eric Carmen, as Clayton says in the article, “a manipulative, paranoid, isolated person” in the years up to his death?

Amy, who was married to Carmen from 2016 up to his passing, claims the former despite Greene’s characterizations.

Rolling Stone “grossly exaggerated” Carmen’s drinking; he was not kicked off a tour with Ringo Starr in the early aughts; Amy was not an “evil” stepmom; Clayton, after headache-inducing years of “out-of-control” behavior, did not “consider Eric’s death to be ‘bad news,’” the complaint says.

Greene and Rolling Stone’manufactured a political “hit piece,” Amy argues, to defame her late husband and trample on his legacy.

“Far from fact-checking, Greene ignored public records, legal records, social media, reliable news reporting, and common sense,” the complaint reads, “to make sure Eric was portrayed as as a neglectful father, bad husband, paranoid ex-celebrity.”

“And worst of all, in the eyes of Greene and Penske,” it adds, “one who dared to cross the imaginary line that forbids artists and entertainers from supporting the Republican Party.”