Led Zeppelin loses first court battle in "Stairway to Heaven" lawsuit!

I listened to the first video, but not all of them. Here's Killing Floor, a Howlin Wolf song written by Willie Dixon also done by LZ...can't remember what LZ called it.

But Wolf's version is one of my most favorite songs of all time. It's in the top 10 "most played" on my iPod.

Yep. Huge chunks of Led Zep's first few albums were thinly-disguised versions of early R&B numbers.

As has been stated, it's not that the songs were copied - that's happened throughout the history of rock music - it's that Jimmy Page claimed the entire writing credits for himself.

The band would have been just as successful if he'd been honest.


..

No, certainly not the case for all 16 bar blues songs but enough of them. If I had the time to wade through the ocean of tunes, I could easily post dozens that were "musically" almost identical.

Lyrically? Well, that's another kettle of fish. And again, that's where Zep screwed up big time. Didn't catch the rest of the lyrics. Didn't have to. That one line was all I needed to be directed to the source. It doesn't take much.

But plagiarism laws don't state that ripping off lyrics is a no-no but music is okay. The laws apply to everything, and that's my point. If we're going to make a case out of this or Stairway to Heaven, then we have to make a case against everything that falls into that same area. Otherwise, we are not treating everybody the same and fairly.

That's why I say that if we go down this road and apply the law equally to everybody we WILL be opening up a Pandora's box.

However, the reality, as Frank pointed out, is that nobody will really give a crap unless it's a high profile case.

And that is what I feel isn't right.

But since when has the law been fair and applied equally to everybody?

I'm hardly a musicologist, but I am a huge blues fan so this naturally gives me leave to share my opinions -- which undoubtedly are completely baseless and pointless. (But when has that stopped me from speaking up before?)

Back in the early history of the blues -- I'm talking Robert Johnson, Blind Lemmon Jefferson, Son House, Charlie Patton, and the thousands of people nobody has ever heard of -- people used to copy each other all the time: tunes, lyrics, licks, whatever. Of course then, most music wasn't recorded, so (1) there wasn't nearly as much money in the music industry and (2) you couldn't prove copying regardless. And anyway, copying was just part of the way things were done. And of course, this wasn't just limited to the blues. I'm not sure that one of my favorite songwriters, Woody Guthrie, ever wrote an original tune in his life. Instead he "borrowed" tunes from traditional music, church music or pop songs.

So in one sense, you could just say that Page et al were just continuing the tradition of adapting the blues -- and in that way keeping the blues alive. That said, Led Zeppelin probably made 3.6 gazillion times more than Howlin' Wolf ever did and you'd have thought they could have spread the wealth a bit, right? Which naturally makes me think of Bob Marley who went so far as to credit people who had nothing to do with the songs he wrote in order to share the wealth. Now there was a class act.

Anyway, fun thread -- definitely made me go through my music collection to find some gems that I hadn't listened to in far, far too long!