Led Zeppelin officially being sued for Stairway

[moreblack]

Its worth noting also that in the times Zep made a lot of this stuff authorship was only just starting to become the hugely important thing it is today, all of Zeps heroes came up doing that kinda quasi plaguaristic stuff, so they were pretty much doing what their peers did in regards to music, which is what most do really.

That's the part that seems to get lost when looking at it with modern eyes. But it's an important part of the conversation. All them old folk and blues guys lifted riffs melodies and lines from each other. Not all of Bob Dylan's material is 100% original from what I hear.

Not even close. I think people find it difficult to seperate themselves from the contemporary mentality where authorship is some kind of fucking essential, like writing your own songs and that, it's something I've always thought to be a load of fuckin' bollocks, this essential thing where you simply MUST have written your own matierial or you're somehow less on an artist, as if its impossible to perfect A component part of an overall art endeavour and still be a credible artist.

Don't get me wrong, i love the idea of people writing their own shit, expressing themselves and their thing and their songs being kind of a map of their psyche but at the same time, does it HAVE to be that fuckin' way? Does The Beatles first album suck cuz it's mostly covers? These mentalities and learnt and also they're generally bullshit.

Plagiarism is plagiarism and I'm still of the mentality that i like the blues better coming out of old black geezers but at the same time I can't really point this plagiarism stick at Led Zeppelin, no one with any kind of knowledge of the way music history has gone down can really.

Also, with cool clever clued up artists like Jimmy Page, he don't have no trouble writing his own shit, he made a handsome living doing that shit and he's well aware of his music history so if he ever did nick stuff (and he clearly did) it must've been knowingly and, being an artist of his calibre, i don't think he would do it unless it was the ONLY option to make the song really work and not only that but take the piece somewhere different, as every different artist or musician always does they THEIR take on something when they do a cover, it comes out sounding different.

To me, it's like this...put the song on...is it good? If yes well then shut the fuck up.

Also, like, this plagarism shit, look, this is how we fuckin' learn, we hear something cool, we try and play it...we change some notes here and there and like...y'know, you kinda discover your way around a fretboard to where you realise that if you take x riff and then change this and this and this notes in the sequence you come up with something totally different.

Before motherfuckers were doing A Level music and becoming bedroom snobs about this shit the way people learned was by copying their peers...copying how they play, what they play, perfecting it and then getting onstage doing THEIR take on it...and they either do or don't go on to write their own shit, depending on their inclination but my point is, this shit is kinda how people get into this shit.

I ain't ashamed to say the first time i ever held a guitar in my hand my first thought was 'how the fuck do i do that voodoo chile riff!'

Reminds me of something Neal Adams said about how he got good in no small part by tracing photographs in his early days, it gave him a good grasp of anatomy, proportions, foreshortening and composition, and some of the other artists he'd work with would ask him where he picked up this and that from, and when he'd tell them they'd be just aghast, illustrators do not trace. Hell, even some of the most well known artists ever used projectors to trace images to canvas, and ended up with some of the most well known paintings of all time.

Edited May 28, 2014 by moreblack

[dalsh327]

BTW, since we are talking about "theivery" The Police clearly lifted the "Every breath you take and every move you make" lines in Every breath you take from Led Zeppelin's D'yer Mak'er, did they give Zeppelin the proper credit???

That would be like Carole King (as a co-writer) suing Sting for this song.

[Daedalus]

Jimmy Page Says ‘Stairway To Heaven’ Lawsuit Is ‘Ridiculous’
by Ken Kelley May 29, 2014 10:32 AM


Although the lawsuit that is being considered against Led Zeppelin may not move forward given the potential sanctions being levied against the lawyer representing the band Spirit, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page has called the plagiarism charge leveled against the band “ridiculous.”

Page, speaking to French publication Liberation, then said he had no additional comment on the matter.

Spirit bassist Mark Andes is planning to file suit against the group, alleging the introduction to ‘Stairway To Heaven’ is similar to their track ‘Taurus.’

During the interview, Page takes the opportunity to discuss the re-release of the first three Led Zeppelin albums, due next week. Each record has been remastered and includes a wealth of previously unreleased material, all overseen by Page himself. He clarifies that the albums have been re-worked from the ground up, stating that he was not happy with the sound of the Led Zeppelin catalog when it was originally issued on the CD format.

“These are not remixes,” Page said, alluding to the upcoming reissues. “When these albums were transferred onto CD at the start of the ’90s, the sound was frightful; horrible. A musician wants their music to be heard in the proper way so I obtained the original album masters and brought them up to modern standards.”

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/jimmy-page-says-stairway-to-heaven-lawsuit-is-ridiculous/

[DR DOOM]

Len sums it up perfectly, yet again.

[Iron MikeyJ]

Len sums it up perfectly, yet again.

Lenny usually hits the nail right on the head. He (usually) doesn't let his personal feelings get in the way of the bigger picture.

[DR DOOM]

Usually, yeah

I love how internet cool kids now portray Led Zeppelin as unoriginal rip off artists to the nth degree...

[John Bonham]