The highly anticipated documentary with never-before-seen footage of The Beatles recording Let It Be, was finally played on my TV over the weekend. Two conclusions I drew out of it:
A must watch for music fans.
What an amazing couple of months!
Alanis Morissette, Rage Against the Machine and Red Hot Chili Peppers, performed at the PNC Center, MSG and the MetLife Stadium to the very best of their abilities.
Each one in their own style gave an exceptional performance, worth the anticipation.
Will The Cure tour in America soon?
HR
A few days ago, I came across this interesting documentary about Terry Kath, which is hosted by his daughter.
Terry may be one of the most -if not the most- underrated guitarrist in the history of music. He drew praise from almost every one of his contemporaries and he gained the respect of hundreds of thousands of fans.
It’s a very personal documentary, which provides a little insight on Terry as a human being and the driving force he was behind the band Chicago. It’s currently free on YouTube, so feel free to catch it anytime.
A huge loss that left us too soon.
HR
A few days ago I was browsing the youtube comments of Deep Purple’s Japan’s live performance of Child in time. One of the people who posted claimed that “Deep Purple was/could have been better than Led Zeppelin, had they stayed together as Zep did.” This got my attention.
Speculating in sports is a bit easier because you can see the career’s projection of the person, therefore you can safely assume (to a certain degree) that similar results may keep happening in similar future contexts. IE: Monica Seles would have kept dominating the tennis cirquit throughout the 90s had she not been stabbed, because she had been doing so for the past three years and nobody had an answer against her game. In music though, it’s a bit different.
Regardless of either Deep Purple had kept its original line up (Giliam, Blackmore, Lord, Paice), Led Zeppelin was a great band, arguably second to The Beatles, or at least worth enough to be mentioned in the conversation of candidate bands for second place after The Beatles. Zep’s only “average” album is their last one, which is not that bad and it’s just that it’s not on par of its predecessors. I also know that Zep may have plagiarized a few songs and recorded them as their own without giving proper credit, but still it’s not like it was 80% of their songs.
As much as I love Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin’s songs cover a wider range with a variety of themes, than those of Deep Purple. I can listen to DP all day long and I know that it’s hard to believe they are the same band that play “Smoke in the water”, “When a blind man cries” and “Lazy”. Overall I think Zep was able to perform and demonstrate their talents on a more consistent basis than Deep Purple, and this is why I have to rate LZ over DP. The same logic applies to Uriah Heep: as much as I love “July Morning” (I can listen to this song in loop all day), “Rain” and “Gypsy”, UH also fell short to showing what they could have been.
HR
I’ve been pracising Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata over the past weeks and the one thought that pops in my mind every time I play it is: “This piece is perfect. Is Beethoven the greatest composer of all time?”
This a very difficult topic to address, not only because there are other candidates to claim the title, but also because you would have to set up a very long and detailed set of parameters to judge each candidate in the discussion. For me, Beethoven’s merit comes from several reasons. Take for instance his Fifth Symphony: the entire first movement -which lasts about seven minutes-,
is built entirely over just four notes, three of them are repeated. How did he get away with that? Essentially, it’s just one note repeated three times followed by a second note played on sustain, over and over again, and for some reason, the sublimity of its sound transcends everything we know. Needless to say seven of his nine symphonies are masterpieces, with the ninth being the epitome of his genius.
Then you have his chamber music, which is completely on a different direction from his orchestral work. And then of course you have his 32 Piano Sonatas, eight of which are memorable pieces of work: The moonlight, patetique, appassionata, les adieux, tempest, pastoral, waldstein, hammerklavier and the #32.
How can you argue against that?
HR
Last week, Led Zepellin surving members Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones were deposed for the suit filed by lawyer Francis Malofiy, who represents American rock band Spirit, who in the late 60s wrote an instrumental piece called “Taurus”, a song not many people are familiarized with. However I can confidentely say that you have probably heard Led Zepellin’s most famous song Stairway to Heaven, even several times, maybe as many times as Malofiy has listened to it.
Malofiy filed a suit against Page, Plant and Jones, under the premise that Stairway to Heaven shares a striking resemblance to Taurus, and that therefore Led Zepellin stole the main theme of Taurus and used it in Stairway to Heaven without “giving proper credit” to Spirit. Malofiy is seeking at least 50% of all of Stairway to Heaven’s royalties, which roughly amounts to half a billion dollars. Before getting into the specifics of the case, let’s take a look of the core problem.
This is Taurus:
…and well, in case you have been living in a cave in Afghanistan since 1962, or in say… an asteroid, and you have never listened to Stairway to Heaven in your life, well, enjoy:
Now let’s address the “giving proper credit” issue.
As I wrote last year, theoretical music is both easy and incredible hard at the same time. There is only a finite amount of notes and the odds of two pieces sharing a few notes in their basic structure is quite fair, meaning that it can happen every now and then.
The issue Malofiy is bringing is not that Stairway to Heaven sounds exactly or even similar to Taurus; it’s that Taurus may have served as the main inspiration to write Stairway to Heaven, and the fact there was no acknowledgement of this by Zepellin. Let’s consider the following example:
Seven years ago, Madonna requested ABBA’s permission to use the main theme of one Gimme, gimme, gimme, which you can listen to below:
…so that she could use its theme in one of the songs in her upcoming new album. The song was eventually launched as a single which became a huge hit:
It is safe to say that they both sound alike, right? Well, of course they do. One served as the inspiration for the other.
The difference is that Madonna gave credits to ABBA as writers, as you can see here. So nothing’s wrong in that case, because ABBA receives royalties and cultural acknowledgement that they were co-writers of Hung up.
In the case with Spirit and Led Zepellin, a point can be made by Plant, Page and Jones, who declared earlier this past week that “their memories on the 60s and 70s were vague“, which kind of makes sense considering the amount of heroin and alcohol they were doing back then. Therefore, a case can be made by arguing that Stairway to Heaven and Taurus sound similarly simply because it is coincidence.
In my opinion, while both songs are not as similar as Hung up and Gimme, gimme, gimme, there is no question that Stairway to Heaven‘s intro sounds very similar to Taurus. Being completely technical, both songs begin with an A minor bass line that progresses descending a semitone per beat all the way to D. The key factor to highlight is that the bass line in both acts as the main theme. Does this mean Led Zepellin indeed stole Spirit’s Taurus to write Stairway to Heaven?
Plant, Page an Jones can certainly plead ignorance and swear happened to be a coincidence, like Nerf Heder did with D.O.F. Additionally, every respectable musician knows that an A minor descending bass line as a main theme is a very common musical structure in rock and pop music. However, that is not the only aspect where Stairway to Heaven and Taurus are similar. The phrasing -meaning, the way the guitar strings are played through the descending progression- is even more similar than the progression itself. The tempo in which the phrasing is played is -I would say- exactly the same. And then, there’s the knockout punch.
Nerf Heder can get away with claiming ignorance and swear that had no idea D.O.F. existed. After all, what are the chances of a teen pop punk band from Santa Barbara, California, knowing about a pop German band from the the 1980s? It’s a 50-50 shot at best in my opinion. But, can Plant, Page and Jones claim they had no idea of Spirit? Not at all.
Led Zepellin as a whole, not only knew about the existence of Spirit: they actually toured with them. And yes, Spirit played Taurus during these tours with Led Zepellin. This is a huge decisive element that does not play in their favor. Then there is also the kicker that Led Zepellin has already been found guilty of plagiarizing Dazed and Confused from Jake Holmes.
…and turn it into Dazed and Confused
All of this makes me conclude that in my opinion, Led Zepellin is guilty of at least subconsciously plagiarizing Spirit from Taurus, and use it as an inspiration to write Stairway to Heaven, in a similar judgement that was given to George Harrison.
What do you think?
HR
Last weekend my girlfriend stayed over with me at my place. We stayed up late playing cards (a game that may be called strip poker), and talking about everything and nothing. We always like to come up with new creative ideas to have fun, and eventually started playing this game in which we would both be blindfolded, and would have to guess the name of a song playing on a YouTube playlist (a game that may be called strip YouTube). At one point we both wrongly guessed the name of one and we were left startled and in disbelief that we had missed it considering our knowledge of music. It was an instrumental song that shared a remarkable similarity with a very popular and well-known rock song from the 1990s.
After removing our blindfolds, we were surprised that the name of the song was “The Last Time” by the Andrew Oldham Orchestra, with the writing credited to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. I thought to myself the same thing you are probably thinking as you read these words: “I don’t remember The Rolling Stones having an instrumental song.“
It turns out that in 1965, Andrew Oldham being the Stones’ manager -and a musician himself- embarked in a series of sampling projects of some songs of this clients, one of them being an early song of theirs called “The Last Time.” He adapted into an orchestra version resulting in the product that you just listened to. Now, which famous song of the 1990s sounds exactly like this? That’s right: thirty years later, The Last Time is now known as the “Bitter Sweet Symphony” by The Verve. The only noticable difference between the two pieces are Richard Ashcroft’s lyrics.
A few months after Bitter Sweet Symphony’s release and eventual success, Andrew Oldham and Allen Klein -the owner of the company that owns copyrights of all The Rolling Stones’ early songs-, noticed the coincidence and filed a suit against The Verve. Ashcroft and company alleged that they had requested permission to use a four-bar sample of the song. Needless to say, the court ruled in favor to the Stones, hence today the songwritting credits of “Bitter Sweet Symphony” read Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Richard Ashcroft. A few years later, Keith Richards was asked to give his opinion on the matter, to which he said: “I’m out of whack here, this is serious lawyer shit. If The Verve can write a better song, they can keep the money.”
There was another similar case that occurred in the 1990s -1997 to be more precise-, when the band Nerf Herder was questioned for writing a very famous theme song…
…that contained a very similar melody as the one heard in “Codo” a Austrian pop song from the 1980s that was very popular in Europe, written and performed by a band called D.O.F.
…is quite similar to this song.
Nerf Herder denied having heard of D.O.F. before. This means one begs to ask: what are the chances of a band of 1990s California teenagers being familiar with an Austrian pop bands from the 1980s? Is it an unbelievable coincidence or sample plagiarism?
I’ll let you decide.
HR
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