listening to the fast version of WWRY something in the guitar track started to bug me.
so, played it over and a few times and knew i'd heard that riff somewhere else.
lo and behold it's incredibly similar to ELO's "Poker" - from face the music lp - from two years before WWRY.
naughty Dr May
Can't see it to be honest. Maybe he was inspired by it but it's not a rip off IMHO. I think John may have been more than inspired by Do Ya' from ELO on If you can't beat 'em :)
Music can't be created in a vacuum. You're often going to be influenced by something you hear, and from there you make it your own... usually unconsciously.
Some purists argue that there has been no original music since Mozart. Might as well join that crowd if we think Brian pinched the riff off ELO.
cmsdrums wrote:
Would make a change to ELO so desperately wanting to sound like Queen the rest of the time!
that's a fairly ill-thought comment. ELO pre-dated queen in the music business. they released two albums BEFORE queen's first album.
and if anything, they sounded more like the beatles....with strings
Among Jeff Lynne's many influences were Roy Orbison, Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Beach Boys, The Beatles etc., but not Queen.
As for the WWRY fast riff, it's certainly possible that Brian borrowed it from ELO, who were hugely popular back then. It's exactly the same riff. Then again, it's not as if Jeff Lynne invented it either, snce Keith Richards, Paul Kossoff and many others used it too.
I'd love to know the origins of the fast version of WWRY. I've always had this suspicion that the fast version was the original version of the song and the slow version came from it, but, like most good conspiracy theories I have no evidence whatsoever to back that up :)
I've never liked ELO. they never "had it" like Queen did.
However often i see that Queen Fans tend to follow ELO too.
Someone should ask this in Brian's Soapbox. maybe we would get a surprising answer.
I asked Brian if he had used a section/line of Aaron Copelands 'Fanfare for the Common man' as his inspiration for WWRY. There is a section where the percussion play the stomp, stomp, clap pattern followed by brass playing the same melody and rhythm as "We will, we will....rock you..." about 2:25 in...
He said..."No, it was a gift from the angels".
Steve Millers 'Rock 'N Me" is very close sounding to 'Alright Now' by Free.
True, nobody creates in a vacuum.