There was an interesting short piece in The Conversation [Borrowing a Stairway to Heaven: did Led Zeppelin rip off a riff?](Loading a Stairway to Heaven did Led Zeppelin rip off a riff)
It is mentioned that:
So you can’t really “think of worse” after all…you were just talking through your hat?
Your attempt at condescension is not helping your case in the least.
So in your view, using “samples” of other musicians’ work (which by definition are short excerpts of an existing song) as “instruments” — with no attempt to pass them off as anything other than what they obviously and identifiably are — is equivalent to recording a song with melody and/or lyrics that are entirely the creation of someone else and putting your name on it as the composer?
Please give an example of a song from this “entire style of music” that was made up solely of samples of others’ work and then given a composing credit of the newer recording artist.
I’m not a particular fan of sampling, and it should be noted that many legal cases arose from its use. But for better or worse, by virtue of its ubiquitousness if nothing else, it became a recognized (if controversial) technique in hip-hop and rap music.
By contrast, the Led Zeppelin rip-offs did not engender a similar trend in rock music. They stand out precisely because they’re so blatant, numerous…and so rare.
No, I could not meet your criteria for “worse”, nor did I care to really spend my time searching for one. I gave an example of what I felt was a worse incident by its direct nature. Simon was in the room with Los Lobos when he ripped them off, and wasn’t forthcoming with credit and cash when confronted.
My condescension was in turn with your comment with how you’d “LOVE” to hear my response to your criteria, which I’d never agreed to in the first place. If you don’t like it, don’t dish it out, and quit making up hats for me talk through.
And in regard to samples. The legality is still the same. They didn’t pass on credit, and they didn’t pass on cash.
Case in point, the Amen Break
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
Neither the performer, drummer G. C. Coleman, nor the copyright owner Richard L. Spencer have ever received any royalties or clearance fees for the use of the sample, nor has either sought royalties. Spencer considers musical works based on the sample “plagiarism”.
[/QUOTE]
And really, I largely don’t care about your beef with Zeppelin. Wear yourself out. To quote Robinson Jeffers: Be angry at the sun for setting.
OK, let’s go with your criterian for “worse.”
I don’t in any way minimize the severity of the Paul Simon/Los Lobos incident — no doubt about it, it really stinks.
But what you’re telling me is this one incident exceeds (i.e., is “worse”) than the totality of the multitude of Led Zeppelin rip-offs, all of which have been detailed in the videos I linked to and elsewhere?
I’m just looking for some clarification of your position. It was you, not me, who used the term “worse” in the first place.
It seems I really don’t have to.
And it’s not that I don’t like it…I’m just amused by it.
So the use of uppercase letters for one word equals the condescension quotient of “Perhaps you’ve heard of it”?
Ohhh-kay.
I’m also glad to see you agree with my assessment of sampling vis a vis Led Zeppelin’s thefts. Thanks.
Oops! This is what happens when you try to change “criterion” to “criteria” but miss the “n.” Sorry.
First, let’s get this out of the way again: I really do usually agree with you on subjects regarding music. Sometimes I don’t have to post because you’ve posted before me. This isn’t one of those times, it seems. I hope it doesn’t sour you on me. I really did take LOVE as a condescension, as it was tied to criteria I wasn’t using in my estimation of “worse”.
I see Simon’s transgression as worse because he did it to their faces. He had them play on the record, and then refused songwriting credit. If someone approached me about a song I wrote while they were playing on the recording I released myself? You had better bet your last dollar I’d give them songwriting credit if they played one note outside of the chord changes I had shown them. I’ve heard Mick Taylor’s playing, and those songs would often be forgettable without him on them. I’d pay any price to have him making me better than I really was, and Richards is a hero of mine.
I see Zeppelin’s transgressions as acceptable in degree, if not in number, as many of their contemporaries. They often borrowed, or even copied completely other artists they loved, and their contemporaries. The Stones probably got away with copying Johnson wholesale because I imagine there wasn’t much of Robert Johnson’s estate to sue them. The Beach Boys happily signed away the royalties for “Surfin USA” to Chuck Berry. Heck, Berry had a cottage industry of suing folks. He even sued John Lennon, for what I can figure was one line of a song.
The fact that LZ made a pile of cash made them a quite attractive target for lawsuits. If I’m surprised by anything I’ve learned over the years, it’s that Jake Holmes waited until 2010 to sue. If I were him, I would have sued the second they bought a Boeing 720. It was as airtight a case as I can think of. I theorize that the reason that a lot of early Rap/Hip-Hop artists weren’t sued was because they weren’t making any cash, and weren’t attractive as targets for lawsuits. When the style started to sell records, they started licensing more carefully, even before the slew of lawsuits began.
And really, the root of my argument against pillorying Led Zeppelin over their transgressions is that they danced close to the line between plagiarism/influence many times over their careers in a style which has a tradition of doing just that, and it seems they might have actually done it unwittingly in the case of Baez. When they were called on it, they usually ponied up with both cash and credit where applicable without animosity, and they never hesitated to mention their influences in interviews.
ETA: And the Robert Jeffers quote was to point out that you and I have little to do with increasing/diminishing LZ’s stature in the world.
I appreciate your efforts at clarification. I assure you that any snideness in the use of “LOVE” in my post was much more aimed at LZ and the enormity of what they did than it was at you, so sorry if that was miscommunicated.
Here’s the crux of our disagreement:
I’m not clear on the instances in which The Stones “copied Johnson wholesale” in terms of songwriting — which it should be remembered, is a separate issue from style.
In both cases, equitable settlements were reached fairly quickly. In fact, more than equitable. I’m not sure if it’s changed now, but for a time, “Surfin’ USA” carried the sole composer credit of “Chuck Berry,” despite the fact that the lyrics are obviously not his. The songwriting credit on “Come Together” remained “Lennon-McCartney” despite the one appropriated line from “You Can’t Catch Me.” Lennon recorded a Berry tune or two on the Rock and Roll album as recompense.
I see what Led Zeppelin did — most prominently on their debut album but on subsequent ones too —as worse than what The Beach Boys did. In his original naiveté, Brian Wilson and Mike Love probably figured that since they’d written all-new words over a set of very simple V-I changes, they should get writing credit. Wrong, but quickly rectified — if anything, too far in the other direction. Lennon appropriated one line from Berry, and was probably thinking this was more of a tribute than a theft. Wrong again, but again, corrected.
All but two songs on Led Zeppelin’s enormously successful debut album came from somewhere other than Led Zeppelin members. In a couple of instances, the covers were correctly credited. In a great many more, they were not. This practice continued, to a lesser degree, on their next three albums as well. Some thefts were more egregious than others, but with the possible exception of “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” (which as I noted upthread, Quicksilver Messenger Service had managed to credit correctly for their earlier cover), Page and company knew EXACTLY what they were doing in each case.
They KNEW that they were appropriating “How Many More Years,” “The Hunter” and other songs for “How Many More Times.” They knew that they had no business putting “by Jimmy Page” as the composer credit on “Black Mountain Side” (even if the song were “traditional” in origin, he still stole Bert Jansch’s arrangement and playing style lock, stock and barrel).
And they CERTAINLY knew that “Dazed and Confused” was an out-and-out theft from a contemporary songwriter who had written the song less than two years previous.
I don’t see how these actions can be minimized by looking at them on a one-to-one comparison basis, as you did, or by ignoring the totality of them. You simply cannot find any precedent in popular music for the depth and breadth of their thievery.
I don’t tear my hair out or lose sleep on a regular basis over this. However, I do find it more than a bit odd when anyone tries to make light of it or excuse it with “others did it too.” NO ONE did it on the scale of Led Zepellin…EVER. It’s that simple.
But underlying this statement is the premise that the big guys are targets for lawsuits just because they’re big. As I said earlier, the ethics of theft exist independently of the two parties’ relative positions on the wealth scale. It’s either stealing, or it isn’t.
I agree that it’s more than a little odd. Holmes’ initial position, throughout the 1970s, was expressed in his quote: “I figured ‘What the hell…let them have it.’” My theory, and it’s nothing but that, is that he may have had the contemporary hippie’s disdain for courtrooms and legal proceedings conducted by guys in pinstripe suits. Also, Holmes was reasonably successful as a songwriter through much of the 70s, with a decent-sized hit in “So Close” and advertising jingles.
In the 1980s, he wrote a letter to Page and asked him, man-to-man, to “do the right thing.” Page was obviously not inclined to do absent the threat of legal action, and ignored the letter.
Perhaps, but I still don’t see a parallel to the many Led Zeppelin thefts.
But again, you can identify precious few examples of this “tradition” that rise to the level of what LZ did. In my view, they crossed that line not once, but many times. At least once (“Dazed and Confused”), they completely obliterated it. You just can’t find any artist on either side of their level of success that did this to such a degree, and in such a way that enriched said artist while taking money out of the lesser one’s pockets.
Of course, and I can assure you I’m not on any kind of a crusade to do so. I’m just a guy who’s passionate about rock ‘n’ roll, and has been for over 50 years now. I enjoy talking about it, and have a certain perspective on its many aspects. Others will have a different one, and when that happens, it leads to discussion…sometimes passionate discussion. That’s as it should be.
Understood, consider my idiotic snark retracted.
“Love in Vain” was originally credited to Woody Payne so the Stones would not have to pay royalties. It was rectified later, I’m not sure of the circumstances.
The other instances aren’t really put out there to excuse what LZ did. They’re just examples that if their offense is worse, it’s because they did it more often. Even Simon’s instance isn’t meant to excuse them, it’s just an instance I feel is worse because it’s so very cold to do that to a person you’re actually working with.
That’s not why I mentioned it. I mentioned it because part of the reason LZ is actually sued is because there’s something there to sue. The people sampled by rap artists had just as much right to sue, if not more. However, there’s not much point in running up legal bills that will never be paid. That, and the later shift toward actually licensing the songs is why I think there’s no well-known equivalent to LZ from that genre/time period. Even if there was, it wouldn’t erase LZ’s crimes one whit.
If you can’t see the parallels between sampling without credit and LZ mashing together 3 different songs to make “How Many More Times”, we’ll just have to disagree. I don’t see the logical difference.
Again, you’re arguing with someone besides me, here. I didn’t try to equate anyone to LZ. I said getting close to the line has been part of the business of music since time immemorial, and it being crossed sometimes is inevitable. I’ll stand by that.
From the wiki entry on muscial plagarism:
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
The issue of plagiarism in folk music is problematic as copying and not crediting songs was common. Noted blues author and producer Robert Palmer states “It is the custom, in blues music, for a singer to borrow verses from contemporary sources, both oral and recorded, add his own tune and/or arrangement, and call the song his own”. Folklorist Carl Lindahl, refers to these recycling of lyrics in songs as “floating lyrics”. He defines it within the folk-music tradition as “lines that have circulated so long in folk communities that tradition-steeped singers call them instantly to mind and rearrange them constantly, and often unconsciously, to suit their personal and community aesthetics”. In 2012, when Bob Dylan was questioned over his alleged plagiarism of others music he responded, “It’s an old thing – it’s part of the tradition. It goes way back”. Princeton University professor of American history Sean Wilentz defended Dylan’s appropriation of music stating “crediting bits and pieces of another’s work is scholarly tradition, not an artistic tradition”. In 1998, B.B. King stated on the issue, “I don’t think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow.”
[/QUOTE]
No. Woody Payne is the name (probably a pseudonym) under which Robert Johnson’s songs were copyrighted at some point. The Blues Brothers, for one, also released a Robert Johnson song (“Sweet Home Chicago”) credited to Woody Payne. When the Stones released a live version of “Love in Vain” a year later, they dropped the Woody Payne attribution and credited it as “trad. arr. Jagger/Richard.” They also used a “traditional” credit for “Stop Breaking Down” on Exile on Main Street. Johnson had been dead for over 30 years at the time and his songs were generally assumed to be public domain, even being credited as such on the first LPs to collect his works. The Stones were otherwise scrupulous in crediting the many songs by their blues heroes that they covered, most of whom were still alive when the Stones were in their glory days.
Hmm, it looks like wikipedia has this two different ways (on the Let it Bleed page and the “Love in Vain” page), and a definitive cite doesn’t seem easy to come by in a search. I also see claims that Woody Payne was someone who held Johnson’s copyrights in the 60’s.
Either way, I was getting that name mixed up with Nanker Phelge, the Stones’ pseudonym. And yes, the Stones were otherwise very fastidious about crediting the songwriter when they did covers.
Ah, that makes sense. And now that you mention it, the Stones did use the Nanker Phelge credit on a couple of suspect “originals” on their first album: “Now I’ve Got a Witness,” which was an instrumental jam based on the riff from “Can I Get a Witness” (which appeared elsewhere on the album, so Holland-Dozier-Holland got their royalties for that one), and “Little By Little,” which was a rip-off of Jimmy Reed’s “Shame Shame Shame.” In the Stones’ defense, at this point in their career Jagger and Richards hadn’t yet quite gotten the hang of this songwriting jazz, but their manager was pressuring them to come up with some originals to supplement their covers-based repertoire.
Jeez, I go away on one business trip! 
Seems like a worthy discussion: Zep did some legitimately yucky things, but that doesn’t change the volume folks will play their songs.
I don’t think Zep is so uniquely egregious in their lifting of material - here’s a quote from the wiki entry on the Rolling Stones song The Last Time:
I wish they hadn’t made such dickish moves, and I still respect and enjoy Jimmy Page as a guitarist, songwriter and producer.
Jimmy Page’s remasters of the first three albums are out now, so for what it’s worth, I thought I’d update this thread with the credits from those liner notes. Below are the song credits for each track not credited to Page/Plant/Jones/Bonham or some subset or variation of same:
Led Zeppelin I:[ul][li]Babe I’m Gonna Leave You: Bredon - Page - Plant[]You Shook Me: Dixon - Lenoir[]Dazed and Confused: Page - Inspired by Jake Holmes[]I Can’t Quit You Baby: Dixon[][/ul]Led Zeppelin II:[ul][]Whole Lotta Love: Page - Plant - Jones - Bonham - Dixon[]The Lemon Song: Page - Plant - Jones - Bonham - Burnett[]Bring it on Home: Dixon[/ul]Led Zeppelin III:[ul][]Gallows Pole: Trad. Arr. Page - Plant[]Hats Off to (Roy) Harper: Trad. Arr. Charles Obscure**[/ul]* - I’m not familiar with Lenoir; according to Wikipedia, “Other than being listed as a writer, there is no information about Lenoir’s involvement, if any. Lenoir is best known for the songs he recorded — he did not record “You Shook Me”.”[/li]
** - Again according to Wikipedia, a pseudonym of Jimmy Page.
Perhaps most surprising to me is the “inspired by” credit to Jake Holmes for “Dazed and Confused”, which I’d thought was one of the more egregious examples of this phenomenon. I guess that’s what the settlement called for, though. Not addressed at all: “How Many More Times”, which is credited simply to Page - Jones - Bonham, though clearly containing passages from “The Hunter” (I guess there was no lawsuit there).
I’ve been a Zeppelin fan since I discovered them in my high school days (early 1980’s), and though possibly biased in my assessment, I’d have to agree with WordMan in that “Zep did some legitimately yucky things, but that doesn’t change the volume folks will play their songs.”
Here’s Jimmy Page from a Wall Street Journal interview regarding “Whole Lotta Love” (the article is a good read for the technical aspects of the recording as well; in addition to Page, engineers George Chkiantz and Eddie Kramer also share insights.):
Page seems to get defensive discussing the plagiarism allegations, but it is true in this case that the reference is to lyrics, not music – and even so, deserving of credit. Yes, it’s a shame that had to be litigated.
On the other side, I will say that Zep’s music did lead me to investigate their influences (and those of Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, etc.) and seek out the blues masters themselves. I don’t know that I would otherwise have been exposed to the music of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy, B.B. King, et al. And that’s a lasting legacy that stands.
OK, so on the flip side, after defending “Taurus”/“Stairway”, yeah, this is not just a lyrical thing to me. Here’s the Muddy Waters “You Need Loving.” I’m not sure how he can get away with saying it’s not even musically similar, especially here.
duplicate.
ETA: But I meant to say, now “homage” vs “inspiration” vs “ripoff,” we can argue about that. For me, it just barely crosses the line. For him to argue they’re not musically similar is silly.
Could you maybe point out in a little more detail what exactly you’re referencing there? Maybe it’s because I don’t have a musical education, but all I’m hearing in that Muddy Waters track is the same slow blues shuffle all the way through; I don’t hear anything distinctive in the spot you highlighted, and certainly don’t detect a specific similarity to Page’s riff.
I’m talking the melody line and phrasing.
There’s a very weird sounding low-register percussive sound on the Muddy Waters track that plays something very like the Page riff throughout the track, only with an extra low note at the end. Ba-dum ba-dum bump (bom). Ba-dum ba-dum bump (bom). Jimmy Page is a lying sack of shit.
Well, again, I don’t have any musical education, and I’m not hearing anything direct. I suppose there might be some similarity there, but I don’t think it even rises to the level of the “Taurus” thing, which I think is almost wholly negligible. I might see it as an “inspiration”, but nothing more (which is not to say “inspiration” is valueless). It’s also not only possible but probable that any similarity is unconscious and unintentional.