Copyright row over "Stairway to Heaven"

[chip]

...notes have to come from somewhere and that somewhere is already there somewhere.

      Fucking poetry....beautiful.

                                                           henwrench

Aye... that's hell of a lyric. Shall we nick it?!

Already have!
Take on!

See you in court

Of course you can use it, I would love that. I didn't think about it, it just came from somewhere 

[AndyR]

Finally had a chance to listen to it. What a load of arse!

You can copyright melody lines and lyrics. You can argue that riffs are melodies.

That's not a riff, it's arrangement - a chromatic falling bass-line under a minor chord (and the chord changes a bit when it gets to the fifth note). I heard nothing to suggest the melody that appears over this arrangement in stairway.

Every time some-one plays a finger-picked guitar part with a falling bass note (even if it's not chromatic like it is here), someone's gonna say "oh that sounds like stairway". In this case it was released before stairway, big deal.

Try learning the standard "You'll Never Know" (by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon) for a performance by solo guitar and vocal. There's plenty stairway (and Taurus!) in that... oh, and that one won the Best Original Song Oscar in... 1943!

[Gnasty]

Stop ruining Zep fest!!

I think the ones that aren't musically inclined are the ones who will say it sounds exactly like stairway to heaven.
In fact I heard a female DJ say that this morning on the radio, and I thought to myself. She's an idiot!  

If you watch their last ever concert with Jason Bonham, Robert Plant explains on stage in his own lucrative way that stealing was the way it was back then and they weren't the only ones, but it's still wrong in my mind.
I think that page and plant should really fess up and just make it totally go away on the songs that they did rip off.
Like Bill Clinton and Tiger Woods did, confessing is the right thing to do.

[Gnasty]

I do know that they wrote a lot of damn good songs and I still love them no matter what!

[64Guitars]

John Lennon said that copying the music of other musicians isn't a rip-off, it's a love in.

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/05/it-wasnt-rip-off-it-was-love-in.html

He is also quoted as saying "Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it."

[danieldesete]

The story of this one is pretty sick and doesn't put Zep in a good light at all.

They didn't even acknowledge it till 2012!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTsvs-pAGDc

I really enjoyed that track, guys listen round 2'00-  and of course I'm tempted to write that it's better than the original. Hum,no, well  , I'm confused.

[AndyR]

^ Well, that's very interesting.... I knew the "Dazed and Confused and Jake Holmes" story, but I'd never heard the Jake Holmes recording.

Apart from the title, and the fact that the title line sounds very similar (try singing "Dazed and Confused" any other way! ), doesn't sound anywhere near as close as I've always expected.

Has a lot more in common with Fleetwood Mac's Green Manalishi to my ears!

[henwrench]

He is also quoted as saying "Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it."

            That's great.

               I've started a new song today....it's called 'Imagine'....

                                                                        henwrench

[danieldesete]

I've started a new song today....it's called 'Imagine'

[AndyR]

He is also quoted as saying "Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it."

            That's great.

               I've started a new song today....it's called 'Imagine'....

                                                                        henwrench

He'd be cool with it, I reckon... unfortunately you'll be dealing with someone else (whoever expects to be getting the dosh now for the 10 minutes or whatever it took him to write it)