| mooghead 21.05.2014 13:59 |
Its uncanny!! link |
| noorie 21.05.2014 14:05 |
You can hear STH in there! And I just love that song! |
| The King Of Rhye 21.05.2014 21:00 |
Seems waaaaaaaaaaay late, doesn't it??? 40-some years after the alleged plagiarism happened! |
| thomasquinn 32989 22.05.2014 01:34 |
The thing is - this is not really news. And it's far from the only instance where Led Zeppelin committed plagiarism. link |
| Mr.Jingles 22.05.2014 07:06 |
The question is... what took them so damn long? Accusations against Led Zeppelin over plagiarism have been going on for years. |
| Holly2003 22.05.2014 08:49 |
I seem to recall LZ had to give song writing credits to at least one person from whom they had borrowed material. This was on a reissue, but I don;t have it so can't confirm. To be honest, I;m not that put out by it. While they should have acknowledged their influences at the time, and paid royalties to them, it was very common among blues players to use other players riffs. It was never really an issue until big music corporations became involved and started looking for their cut too. Take Robert Johnson, the "King of the Delta Blues" and a huge influence on Dylan, Clapton and Keith Richards. He stole the melody for Sweet Home Chicago and never acknowledged it. He also stole the "sold my soul to the devil at the crossroads" story from anoter blues musician who was using it to promote his career. No one is suing the heirs to Johnson's estate for that. (Also, a lot of old blues music is now owned by people unconnected to the original artists or their families and the rights have been bought by investers. It's often those people suing artists for alleged plagiarism, not artists or their families. It's all become part of the commercialisation of art.) |
| john bodega 22.05.2014 10:37 |
First of all, we've known this for decades. Second; it hurts for them to admit it, but the song was improved by the theft. It was developed beyond what it was originally. Now you can look at that as being dirty business, but I don't give a fuck about the original. |
| pittrek 23.05.2014 15:26 |
link link |
| thomasquinn 32989 24.05.2014 05:04 |
Zebonka12 wrote: Second; it hurts for them to admit it, but the song was improved by the theft. It was developed beyond what it was originally. Now you can look at that as being dirty business, but I don't give a fuck about the original.You've completely and dramatically failed to see the point. Yes, the song is an improvement. That is not the point. They are, by all means, welcome to take a song, any song, and improve it. That is not the point either. What IS the point is that you are supposed to give credit for what you borrowed. Borrowing in music is nothing new and nothing to be ashamed of, but when you borrow stuff and pretend that you wrote it, you are a thief and a conman rolled into one. Example: Rachmaninoff wrote Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. He used, quite blatantly, Paganini's 24th Caprice as a basis for this work. Nobody gives Rachmaninoff a hard time over this. Why not? Because he admits, in the title no less, that he used Paganini's work as a basis. There's no shame in that, and no one with any appreciation of music will think less of Rachmaninoff or of Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini because it is borrowed. It is, by all means, a vast improvement over the original. On the other hand, there is Mozart. Really respected composer, universally hailed as a musical genius, right? Well yes, according to the general public. But serious scholars of music have some more reservations. What is their main reservation about Mozart? He stole much of what is now remembered as "his masterpieces". Take The Magic Flute, it is by now well-established that he stole much of it, both subject matter and music, from an earlier opera (The Beneficent Dervish) written by friends and acquaintances of his. This is not the only example of Mozart being a thief. Needless to say, Mozart didn't have a knack of holding on to friends. And music historians regularly talk smack about Mozart for being a fraud while the only criticism leveled at Rachmaninoff tends to be that he was a little on the conservative side in his compositions. The morale? If you borrow and frankly admit to it, all the more credit to you and to the music you improved. If you steal and pretend it's your own work, it'll depreciate the music and ruin your reputation. |
| mooghead 24.05.2014 06:17 |
"it hurts for them to admit it, but the song was improved by the theft." But you can say that about Ice Ice Baby... ;-) |
| brENsKi 24.05.2014 16:45 |
mooghead wrote: "it hurts for them to admit it, but the song was improved by the theft." But you can say that about Ice Ice Baby... ;-)obviously you're talking about the Jedward version? |
| FreddieCat 25.05.2014 23:54 |
And Queen's reference to Innuendo being inspired by LZ's Kashmir. |
| john bodega 26.05.2014 01:18 |
RE: "You've completely and dramatically..." I've never seen someone use so many words to essentially say 'I agree with you'. I said it was dirty business, we agree. I said the song was improved, we agree. And while song theft is a shit thing on paper, I'm thinking about this from a longer term perspective, ie. once we're all dead and only the songs are left. Which is why it's pretty handy to bring Paganini and Mozart into this. They're all dead now, so it really doesn't matter. I don't want to come over all Ozymandias on you guys, but as someone who's dabbled in creating stuff - it's great while it lasts, but how long is that going to be, realistically? In no way do I think plagiarism is a cool thing to do, but I'm dubious about the Stairway thing only just now becoming a legal matter. |
| Queenfansunite 26.05.2014 02:50 |
I am Surprised dragonfly trumpeter is not making a claim, but I haven't heard him being a clone of any personnel of Zeppelin yet. |
| The Real Wizard 26.05.2014 21:20 |
Page was always one to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. His thinking is that he'd have the money to deal with it later. I'd say he made the right choice. About a quarter of the Zeppelin catalogue comes from somewhere else, some credited and some not. Page was a bluesman. This is what they did, and they didn't always give credit. It was generally considered a form of flattery for someone to use your song and make it better. Zeppelin were the first band to make a lot of money doing this. It wasn't until litigation in the music business became fashionable that this actually became a major issue - with rare exceptions, of course. Nobody really knows who Jake Holmes, Spirit or Bert Jansch are. The only reason why 99% of the people who've heard of them have heard of them is because of Jimmy Page. He put them on the map, not the other way around. Page will just settle out of court. As for this particular case - it's just an acoustic guitar playing a descending bass line. The Beatles used the same musical idea a couple years earlier on And Your Bird Can Sing. It even goes back to classical music. There are way more blatant examples of Page borrowing/plagiarizing than this one. |
| The Real Wizard 27.05.2014 09:31 |
Scuzzy lawyer may have lawsuit thrown out of court? Well, colour me shocked.. link |
| Holly2003 09.03.2020 19:28 |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-51805905 Stairway rules. |
| brENsKi 10.03.2020 09:29 |
Holly2003 wrote:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-51805905 Stairway rules.it's difficult to see how this ruling was arrived at, when: George Harrison vs The Chiffons went the other way. There's enough in both Zep and Harrison's songs to rule in favour of the claimants, surely? - at least on a "significant influence" level. So let's consider that a court rules against Ed Sheeran (Thinking Out Loud) vs Marvin Gaye/Ed Townsend (Let's Get It On) - does this one just keep being batted in and out of court forever? - til one side runs out of money, or concedes that any financial gain is outweighed by legal costs? Mind, it's not like Sheeran doesn't have "form". Didn't he pay out $20m to Thomas Leonard and Martin Harrington - for the chorus of his "Photograph" being almost identical to the chorus of Matt Cardle's "Amazing". Would Sam Smith conceding writing credits (for Stay With me) to Tom Petty's (Won't Back Down), be a better way forward? ie acknowledge some influence, and apportion financial reward accordingly - thus saving lawyers making a fortune from any successful law suit, appeal etc. |
| thomasquinn 32989 10.03.2020 11:39 |
The jury wasn't allowed to listen to actual recordings, they had to judge solely on the basis of sheet music - which, by the way, Jimmy Page can't even read. Page testified that he did in fact own a copy of the album containing Taurus at the time Stairway To Heaven was written. Seriously, I don't see how the way this case was handled could possibly stand up on appeal. |
| brENsKi 10.03.2020 18:38 |
thomasquinn 32989 wrote:Seriously, I don't see how the way this case was handled could possibly stand up on appeal.and yet; it did just that. |
| thomasquinn 32989 12.03.2020 07:23 |
Sadly, yeah. And I seriously doubt the Supreme Court would take up a case like this. Still, the 9th circuit court of appeals is extremely controversial for weird rulings, so you never know, they might find a way to file a new case in a different jurisdiction. |
| brENsKi 12.03.2020 12:11 |
it'll be down to how far both sides can afford/are willing to go. at present "Stairway" is valued around $580m global income to date. this is made up of royalties and licensing (public performance, radio etc) $79m and the accrued IV album sales ( as the album's main track) - fans had to buy the album as Zep refused to release "Stairway" as a single. even the song alone $79m is worth pursuing the court case. so is the legal abandonment of the case anything around £20m in legal fees? ie the claimant stands to lose the estimated return if they lose? or is it literally "in for a penny" - til the death. the flip side of the argument is Zep will defend their ownership to any definite final judgement. they have everything to lose. any potential payout (the first 2m:00s of an 8m:02s = 25% writing credit) is a big loss, and they can afford to spend more on lawyers than the claimants. |
| Freddie Jupiter 15.03.2020 06:09 |
I'm sick of these bullshit plagiarism laws made intentionally ambigious and unreasonable to enable a bunch of thieving lawyers to cash in. At worst LZ took a few seconds of elevator music and transformed it into an epic masterpiece. At best they were merely inspired by a few notes they heard in some song. Stupidest shit ever. |