the epic plagiarism of Led Zeppelin

good article.

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/when-it-comes-to-songwriting-theres-a-fine-line-between-inspiration-and-plagiarism-2021199.html

The Rolling Stones now share their credits for "Anybody Seen My Baby?" with k.d. lang, and in 2000, a court determined that The Rolling Stones had "improperly borrowed" two of Robert Johnson's songs, "Love in Vain" and "Stop Breakin' Down". Keith Richards was nonplussed: "There's only one song in the world," he said, "and Adam and Eve wrote it."

tbf eddie's got some valid points. led zeppelin stole/copied a lot of shit without mentioning it and are cunts for that. but he's right, so have so many others.

it just makes me laugh.

what did noel do on cigs & alcohol.

he's got sole writing credits on that song.

page & plant did the same thing and he's moaning about it.

why didn't noel find it in his heart to give bolan's estate half the royalties.

he admitted it in interviews but he didn't pay back no wonga did he.

led zeppelin bettered all the versions in those videos and that's surely what it's all about.

they put there own identity on those songs just like noel and the boys did.

bless.

Eddie has summed this whole thing up perfectly. Thread closed.

bolan says he pinched the riff off chuck berry, noel also stole the riff to one of the most famous songs of all time, and everyone with a pair of ears knows its not his, this is massively different to led zep stealing things people arent so familiar with and saying its their own.
AND ITS ABOUT STEALING WHOLE FUCKING SONGS ANYWAY NOT PINCHING RIFFS
have you even watched those videos eddie?

its fairly shocking that you can't see this distinction and even more worrying that people are agreeing with you.

reusing a bit of a song isnt the same as doing a cover of asong and then pretending you wrote it. led zep didnt pinch bits they pinched whole songs and then pretended they wrote them

am I falling for a massive windup here? theres some towering stupidity in this thread.

They didn't steal whole songs though did they? Those videos show small portions or tiny pieces in most cases and are not fully in context, besides, if you read a lot of actual song credits people were often given credit, i'm not even a Led Zep fan really, I like the first album but can take or leave everything else, but this shit goes on all the time, there must be thousands and thousands of songs that have lifted generic blues riffs and the odd lyrics here and there and as has mentioned the ones they did use, they borrowed or 'stole' stuff and made their own arrangements around them, thats how the blues has always worked, there are only a certain amount of things you can do within the blues structures as a musician and they were probably all done within the first 5 blues songs ever written..

Plus, Led Zeppelin had John Bonham, I generally phase out and only listen to the drums when listening to Led Zep, absolutely no idea what Robert Plant is ever singing, also this performance is mega!

the video I believe refers to the credits that are given on the original pressings of the album not to whats ended up after various out of court settlements...

and they have lifted whole songs, black mountain side and dazed and confused being two examples.

They lifted portions of Dazed & Confused, notably the descending bass riff, however, the arrangements are completely different, admittedly, the original composer Jake Holmes should have a writing credit for that alone (though there may not be enough bars of exact identical music to warrant that..) but his version is a 3 minute folk song, Led Zeps version is nearly 7 minutes and is split into 3 sections, 2 of which have absolutely no relevance to the original song and make up the biggest part of it and are predominantly lead by Bonhams drums and Page' solo riffs which again have no resemblance to any part of the original song. Also the lyrics are completely different.

I'm not defending Led Zep here, as said i'm not really a big fan, but its fucking easy for some geek to sit for hours making youtube documantaries cutting 25 second snippets of songs here and there and making up shit about Page denying he borrowed stuff where, unless he knows Page personally, has absolutely no proof whatsoever about what he is claiming, and pretending he is unearthing some universal secret when I always thought it was common knowledge amongst anyone who is at least a tiny bit interested in Led Zeppelin that that borrowed a tonne of stuff from the Blues etc.. which was probably borrowed and recycled dozens of times before that

No, because he ripped the riff from an Abba song anyway.

Yeah that, but also his name is Kelly

Inspiration for 'The Immigrant Song'.



Both awesome songs anyway.

HI GUYS, DON'T YOU RECKON THAT RADIOHEAD RIPPED THIS OFF TO GET CREEP?

Anyone here Coldplay's 'Talk' ?

Yeh, and that's why Kraftwork are on the writing credits for Talk.
Coldplay asked them beforehand if they could use the riff and were given permission.