The Led Zeppelin Plagiarism Compendium

I'll admit I 'quite liked' PhysGraf, at least parts of it anyway.

I mean in every respect — the songwriting and the musicianship and yes the STYLE (I know this is not the cw but in retrospect their exceptional taste is just more and more apparent), but mostly the sonics. I just don't own many records that sound better than the ones Jimmy Page made.

I just don't own many records that sound better than the ones Jimmy Page made.

I've always maintained that Page is a lot more interesting as a producer than he is as a guitarist. (despite his great scenes in It Might Get Loud)

I agree and I don't think this diminishes his guitar playing one bit.

been avoiding It Might Get Loud cuz of the edge but I am pretty curious about the Page bits. He was an amazing producer, the engineering on the Zep records is next level.

The part in his house among his record collection where he's blissing out to Link Wray is pretty great.

Also re: above clip when he's in the foyer at Headley Grange explaining how they set up Bonzo's kit for Levee. Awesome.

There's about 5-10 minutes of that movie worth watching, all involving Page. I wouldn't recommend sitting through the whole thing.

Yeah it's otherwise kind of a cringe-fest. The other two guys wear "hat" hats and have relatively limited perspectives/bags of tricks.

Whoever had the bright idea for the big climax to be the three of them getting together and playing that massive guitar anthem "The Weight" should be kicked in the nuts.

So so painful.

Absolutely the most wtf part about the whole thing, aside from the casting.

i liked the movie quite a bit, but yeah "the weight" is one of the most wtf musical moments in cinematic history. and my favorite wtf moment within that wtf moment is edge suddenly realizing, just as they're about to play it, that they've been practicing the verses wrong, with an Em chord where a Bm should go. it struck me as wft-ily odd that three guitar greats could miss that. it also made me feel significantly better about myself.

Whoever had the bright idea for the big climax to be the three of them getting together and playing that massive guitar anthem "The Weight" should be kicked in the nuts.
lol, i haven't seen this yet, but my friend who has ranted about "the weight" sequence for about six months.

ranting friend otm

"The older I get and the more music I hear the better Led Zeppelin gets." ― Hadrian VIII

^^^ YES.

Copy/pasting my post from "It Might Get Loud"

Finally got around to watching this and yeah, the high-concept gave me a bad taste but the Page stuff was great. He was basically the only one of the three with anything meaningful to say and it was kinda neat seeing him quietly analyze what the other guys were doing (like the run through "I Will Follow") and then make it sound like Zeppelin.

Best part: Page cutting into "Whole Lotta Love" and Edge and White both bug-eyeing out because Jimmy Page Is Playing Zeppelin Right In Front Of Them.

― Elvis Telecom, Sunday, June 6, 2010 12:49 AM (2 months ago)

Here is a cartoon-slide review of a book that seems to be relevant to our discussion. It has Ben Franklin as Superman leading us through the slides, but I prefer to think of the guy as Shakey Mo Collier in tights leading the pro-plagiarism brigade. Substitute the "BF" on his chest for "SMC". Enjoy:

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/08/23/common_as_air_lewis_hyde/slideshow.html

The Gift is terrific book.

"A" terrific book, even. Ironically it was the book that convinced me to lend out books again after never getting so many back...and I never got it back :(

Yeah, I used to think "Oh, Whole lotta love is soet of based on a similar thing on the Small Faces album, so I'm told" until I actually got to hear the track and then I thought "IT'S EXACTLY THE RUDDY SAME!!!"

Yeah, more or less. Led Zeppelin rips off the Small Faces track "You Need Loving" which was itself more or less ripped off from Willie Dixon's "You Need Love". And yet, hilariously, 20 years later Willie Dixon sues Zep instead of the Faces! And wins his share of the publishing royalies. Shrewd guy, considering that Led Zeppelin II sold 93 times as many copies as The Small Faces over the years.

doesn't eddie kramer deserve most/all of the credit for the actual engineering on zep records?

I dunno I think that's similar to crediting Chuck Britz for all the weird stuff on the BB's records, or Geoff Emerick for the Beatles

doesn't eddie kramer deserve most/all of the credit for the actual engineering on zep records?

No.

Specifically, Page swapped engineers around so people like you wouldn't say things like that (about the engineers I mean, not Kramer in particular). I mean, they seemed to manage alright without him on IV.

"I consciously kept changing engineers because I didn't want people to think that they were responsible for our sound. I wanted people to know it was me."

Sounds like a peach of a guy.

If he gave all his money to earthquake victims, you'd suspect it was a tax avoidance scheme. We get it, you hate Zeppelin, etc.

Well, I saw some recent interviews. RobPlant seemed like a nice guy. Page did not.

Task Brasil was given an enormous boost in 1997 with a very generous donation by Jimmy Page, the Led Zeppelin rock icon, who witnessed first hand the deprivation of the children and troubles in the favelas whilst playing in Rio de Janeiro. The money donated was used to buy a plot of land in Santa Teresa on which ‘Casa Jimmy’ was built to provide a safe and happy home for a lucky few of the abandoned children.

Showoff! Carpetbagger!

http://www.taskbrasil.org.uk/

Page made those kids poor in the first place dontchaknow. also I think he killed their parents.

for a 'lucky few'. WHAT ABOUT EVERYONE ELSE JIMMY?????

also jimmy has yet to deny the rumors that he killed 100,000 people in East Timor. IF YOU'RE INNOCENT WHY AINTCHOO TALKIN ABOUT IT

Before recording Presence in 1976 Jimmy Page massacred thousands in the Laotian foothills and FAILED TO CREDIT POL POT.

lol

Those aren't pearl inlays in his fretboard, they're teeth.

"The Rain Song" totally ripped off George Harrison's "Something" - the two-chord intro is identical. But the compendium didn't mention it because Harrison himself stole it from the Chiffons.

Todd Rundgren also once accused George Harrison of stealing his production credits on some album (don't remember which one, the quote was in Guitar mgazine though)

(xp) and the chiffons totally ripped off jake holmes.

Steered clear of this thread for a while but it was worth clicking on to read about "The Weight."

I've always maintained that Page is a lot more interesting as a producer than he is as a guitarist.

Todd Rundgren also once accused George Harrison of stealing his production credits on some album (don't remember which one, the quote was in Guitar mgazine though)

Must've been one of the Badfinger records.

ahh yes that's who it was

xposts - And Jake Holmes' "No Time Or Space" was totally ripped off without credit by Bernie Krause before Harrison ever had a chance to rip it off the uncredited Krause without credit

Still, you have to give him credit.

ZEPPELIN RULES!

this was a good thread

been in a led zep kinda mood lately, it still happens to me every couple of years or so

Basically I think it diminishes them as people that they didn't give co-writing credits in at least some of these cases. About 10% of them or so are really egregious cases of stealing, e.g. Dazed and Confused. At the same time, Jake Holmes's version kind of sucks compared to Led Zeppelin. So they're diminished as people but not as a kick ass band.

What was the response to Led Zeppelin's "plagiarism" at the time? Were there astute critics who pointed it out in the press? Was the public attitude toward such things different back then?

the press were already pretty adversarial towards LZ at the time, and it had little impact on their success, so I'm guessing if it was pointed out it was also ignored.

Would be interesting to read more about it -- I imagine there was a strong strain of blues/folk nerdery in GB at the time and Zeppelin probably sounded to them like Blues Hammer to Steve Buscemi's character in Ghost World

I remember when Michael Jackson's "Will You Be There?" controversy (ie the one with the foreign artist who claimed it ripped off his song before it was discovered that both ripped off a 40s tune), MTV did a shitty segment on it and then at one point, brought out a band who wrote a song that sounded somewhat similar to "Kashmir" and brought Page/Plant out to comment.

They, of course, were very ambivalent (comments like "I dunno, songs occasionally have similarities"), but I felt like MTV was trying to back them into a gotcha moment so they could go "OH? LED ZEPPELIN HAS A PROBLEM WITH SONG APPROPRIATION? REALLY?"