It totally makes sense – he thought he was creating a transformative work. The score is identical in both cases, therefore you need a license. The analogy would be if you had a score that was inspired by, but transformed from, the original.

(As I understand it, and I could be wrong about this: the cover isn't the original photo run through a transform; it's a pixel art recreation. A better analogy would be the companies who replay samples to evade mechanical rights - http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&...).

Technically speaking, the score isn't identical, judging by the bits I heard. But the melody lines certainly were, and that's all you need to trigger the need to license the music.

Yep. In fact, I'm fairly sure harmonies aren't protectable, just the top line, hence all the contrafacts (same chords, so same solos, but different themes) in jazz. There are hundreds of tunes on the Coltrane or Rhythm changes.

Rhythms aren't either, or James Brown, the Winstons, or Sly and Robbie and their billion reggae ridfims would be the richest musicians in the world...