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
