Tom Petty - Funny Or Die

HAHAHAHA!

R

Ha, that's great. How'd you come by that clip? 

I never picked up on that linkage, was "Ain't Love Strange" a major hit? After hearing the whole song on youtube, it seems like it's a Mike Campbell lick in the tune, and not central to the structure. If it was in any way a conscious lift on Mike's part, I'm flattered. I happen to be a big fan of him. He's really underrated, and I think as players and writers we have similar melodic sensibilities. "Boys of Summer" is one of my favorite all time guitar driven pop songs. Wish I'd written that.

I quote songs and musical references all the time in my improvisational playing. In songwriting, you can't copyright a chord progression, of course, and even melodies are common, unless you just steal bar after bar of someone else's song.

The only reason I think George Harrison lost the suit for "My Sweet Lord," stealing from the Chiffon's "He's So Fine," is he took too much, consciously or unconsciously. Starting with the 2m—5 change and melody of the verse, and then he goes too far, using the same structure through the entire verse, THEN going to the same 1-6m chord change and melody as "He's So Fine,” Basically 12+ bars in a row. Steal too much, and anyone can tell you're copying.

Thing is, by my lights, Harrison should be able to own his version of those changes and melody, if ANY blues 1-4-5 song written is legally viewed as unique. But that’s not the way it works, musical plagiarism is in the ears of the legal system. 

Moral? Yeah steal musical ideas you think are good (we all do,) but make the usage your own, in the ears of the listener. ‘Cause you could get sued. I wouldn't have written "My Sweet Lord" the way George did. I would have made it different enough.

As for the clip, making fun of Petty is fair game, but I bet it was his publisher who went for the payday. I’m not down with song plagiarism suits in general, unless it’s totally egregious. It’s to me like modern day patent trolling.

well i only appreciated 12% of that !

The devil is a lawyer!

I like that Tom Petty fought for himself to earn money. If more musicians would do that we would not be in the sad state we're in right now, where there's a billion bands and singer-songwriters giving their stuff away for free. I know this is a big subject, but this used to be the music business, not the music giveaway. So, relics like Petty being business-like doesn't bother me one bit.

Brilliant.

Love Tom Petty and it was probably his publisher's deal but it's a really well done send up.

Hell I just stole some TP the other day. He can have the shit out of the 12% of $0 I'll be making off it.