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Post by Johnkenn on May 21, 2014 14:22:00 GMT -6
Damn...this is disappointing...
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Post by jcoutu1 on May 21, 2014 14:37:43 GMT -6
Don't let matt see this!  |
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Post by matt on May 21, 2014 15:03:47 GMT -6
This is verrrryyy old news. Zeppelin, and Page in particular, have been called out several times over the years. Songs with borrowed lyrical themes and/or basic structure include:
Whole Lotta Love (You Need Love, Willy Dixon)
The Lemon Song (lyrics borrowed from Howlin' Wolf)
Babe I'm Gonna Leave You (written by Anne Bredon and performed by Joan Baez)
Dazed and Confused (written by Jake Holmes, adapted/rearranged by LZ)
Black Mountainside (similar to Blackwaterside, by Bert Jansch)
When The Levee Breaks (lyrics borrowed from Memphis Minnie)
and of course, Stairway to Heaven
The boys have been to court on most of these and paid out/adjusted credit where credit is due. While I understand why people might be bothered, I made peace with this long ago. Their depth of talent, and breadth of music catalog, far outweighs their propensity to nick ideas. And in every case, IMHO, the ideas they re-imagined (or OK, stole) ended up being far superior or significantly different than the rendition by the prior artist. And who knows, perhaps Willy/Howlin'/Anne/Jake/Bert/Memphis got their "inspiration" from somewhere else. Also, I greatly suspect the timing of the lawyer involved, who is looking to cash out on the re-release of the 4th album. It's been 43 years.
I admit that I am opinionated, but I Thank the Musical Gods they they did what they did, and recorded what they recorded - ripped, or not.
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Post by tonycamphd on May 21, 2014 18:47:02 GMT -6
other than that video being mostly a crock of shit, it's what people did in that era, you think the first rendition you've heard of certain blues tunes, are the FIRST renditions of said blues tunes? NO WAY. I saw this a long time ago, it's hard to try to put perspective on it in the mindset of today, ALL of them did this back then, Zep just did it HUGE and successfully, they called it putting your stamp on something, and making it your own, do you think "when the levee breaks" would be even a blip on the radar if it wasn't for Zep? no, it wouldn't, it sounds nothing like the original. Do you think if whole lotta love had any other words for lyrics, it would have been recognized as Willie dixons tune? no, it wouldn't. As a matter of fact, you would have never heard any of this music if it wasn't for zep putting their stamp on it with all their style and talent, those guys were/are beasts, plain and simple, they paid their debt to those affected by more obvious borrowings, and that's the end of it imv, they should have used different stories and lyrics, it would have still been huge and classic(by virtue of 90% of their tunes), then they wouldn't have had to deal with this at all.
i guess this is supposed to be stairway to heaven? what a bunch of happy horseshit, i guess any tune with a descending or ascending line on an acoustic guitar is owned by Spirit? This progression is as common as the day is long, if there is a law suit on this, they will lose, Zep defense will be able to show dozens and dozens of progressions of the same ilk.
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Post by Johnkenn on May 21, 2014 20:08:08 GMT -6
Well - I - for one - think it's terribly uncool. Whether or not it was the "thing to do," there is such a thing as integrity...Being a songwriter, I find it pretty shitty.
That being said, I freaking love Led Zeppelin.
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Post by wiz on May 21, 2014 20:34:43 GMT -6
Well - I - for one - think it's terribly uncool. Whether or not it was the "thing to do," there is such a thing as integrity...Being a songwriter, I find it pretty shitty. That being said, I freaking love Led Zeppelin. agreed cheers Wiz |
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Post by levon on May 22, 2014 2:55:52 GMT -6
Yeah, it's been known for a long time that Spirit's Taurus inspired the opening sequence of Stairway, and, yes, it is very close. But Spirit didn't write Stairway The Song, Jimmy Page did. BTW, I read that some guys from Spirit now sue Led Zeppelin over this, some 40 years after the fact. They claim they didn't have the money to go ahead earlier. And just when Page is ready to re-release the album again, they suddenly have the money? And it's not even the guy who wrote it, Randy California has been gone for a while, it's the freakin bass player.
I liked Spirit back then and maybe Randy California should have gotten a credit. But then again, there's a whole sequence in Stairway that's 'inspired' by All Along The Watchtower, so will Mr. Zimmerman be the next to sue?
I love Led Zep and will always love them. One of the greats, for sure. Saw them live in 1973. And, as Tony so rightly pointed out, a lot of people would have remained unknown without Zep. Those early bluesmen surely borrowed heavily from each other, just like the 1960s folk guys. I mean, even the Beatles plagiarized others and what great songs came out of that.
Long live Zep!
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Post by odyssey76 on May 22, 2014 13:24:52 GMT -6
Well, there's a bright side to all this......at least we didn't just find out that Robert Plant's voice was auto tuned during "Babe I'm Gonna' Leave You" or Bonahm's drums were actually just samples which were loosely quantized for "When the Levee Breaks." Now that would piss me off......
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Post by henge on May 22, 2014 14:52:20 GMT -6
Well, there's a bright side to all this......at least we didn't just find out that Robert Plant's voice was auto tuned during "Babe I'm Gonna' Leave You" or Bonahm's drums were actually just samples which were loosely quantized for "When the Levee Breaks." Now that would piss me off...... LOL! As been said don't like what they did but the result was so spectacular it doesn't bug me. The stairway thing is ridiculous imo. |
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Post by Johnkenn on May 22, 2014 16:52:00 GMT -6
I swear I'm not being disagreeable here - I agree - the Stairway thing was reaching a little. But I was just thinking about this and it made me think about the whole IO Audio U47 circuit thievery that went on recently. I don't really see this any differently.
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Post by tonycamphd on May 22, 2014 19:53:48 GMT -6
I swear I'm not being disagreeable here - I agree - the Stairway thing was reaching a little. But I was just thinking about this and it made me think about the whole IO Audio U47 circuit thievery that went on recently. I don't really see this any differently. i'm not saying it was right, but it's different because thats what everyone did back then, including clapton, beck... all of them. They'd hear something, they'd play it their way, they made a record and put their names on it, i don't believe it was a sinister thing at all. I know in this day and age its a wholly different thing, and so do they i'd bet. It's also far from the ioaudio debacle, that yannick dude was emailing chung in 2013 to steal info from him straight up. I almost guarantee when they wrote whole lotta love, it was their idea of a tribute to dixon by using those words and applying them in an entirely different musical context, they are utterly unrelated by anything other than word, and they are not even that close. i've said all i will on this matter, they are an amazing band, they could have made any song huge! long live Zep! |
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Post by levon on May 22, 2014 23:38:51 GMT -6
I swear I'm not being disagreeable here - I agree - the Stairway thing was reaching a little. But I was just thinking about this and it made me think about the whole IO Audio U47 circuit thievery that went on recently. I don't really see this any differently. i'm not saying it was right, but it's different because thats what everyone did back then, including clapton, beck... all of them. They'd hear something, they'd play it their way, they made a record and put their names on it, i don't believe it was a sinister thing at all. I know in this day and age its a wholly different thing, and so do they i'd bet. It's also far from the ioaudio debacle, that yannick dude was emailing chung in 2013 to steal info from him straight up. I almost guarantee when they wrote whole lotta love, it was their idea of a tribute to dixon by using those words and applying them in an entirely different musical context, they are utterly unrelated by anything other than word, and they are not even that close. i've said all i will on this matter, they are an amazing band, they could have made any song huge! long live Zep! I think you nailed it, it's just what they did back then. Today is a different story, too many mediocre 'songwriters' (they call themselves beatmakers, shudder, these days) copying what's in the charts only to make money. No love for music, no passion. Now that's disgusting. Page took the stuff that inspired him one or two steps further. And created something new that was mind-blowing. Case in point: Whole Lotta Love, they didn't just recycled some lyrics, that very riff can be found if you look for Howlin Wolf's Who's Been Talking. Still, what a great song Whole Lotta Love was. Back then, it changed my world more than Howlin Wolf ever did, not to disrespect the man. |
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