Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One Before
Of all Australia’s ‘unofficial’ national anthems, ‘Down Under’ is the one from which there is no escape. If something not quite so ‘girt by sea’ as our actual dismal anthem is called for, the omnipresent Men At Work monster is first port of call. So, what should we make of the recent accusation by music publisher Larrikin that the signature flute riff integral to the never-ending pandemic ‘Down Under’ contagion was lifted from one of our more historical cork-hat classics, ‘Kookaburra (sits in the old gum tree)’ – that tune about the merry, merry king of the bush … laughing.
Larrikin have founded their plagiarism argument on just two bars of the song, a motif that pops up prior to the vocals and then returns a handful of times afterwards, in between the Kombis and the Vegemite sandwiches.
‘Kookaburra …’ was written in 1934 by a woman called Marion Sinclair, as an entry in a Girl Guides talent quest. Larrikin reckon they bought the rights from a trustee who took possession of the song when Marion died. Sony BMG and EMI are arguing that the song was never properly assigned and is, therefore, up for grabs to be twisted, mangled, dismantled, or copied note for note. No charge. These are the legal battlelines, but what will happen when the songs are actually compared in court?
Some might say that Colin Hay and Ron Strykert from Men At Work, as well as the lawyers at their behemoth record company, know very well that bits of ‘Kookaburra …’ were nicked so as to stir a bit more classic kitschy Australiana into ‘Down Under’s foul mix. In fact, if you watch the video for the song, flautist Greg Ham can be found sitting IN A GUM TREE, next to a KOALA on a string, while playing the (allegedly) RIPPED-OFF BIT.
Still, the contentious riff is fleeting; not much more than an interlude. Also, it took an episode of Spicks and Specks for the tunes to be compared and Larrikin to be alerted (by some guy sitting in front of his telly while eating dinner) to the similarities of the two songs, even though, presumably, a lot of people recognised the homage on first contact with ‘Down Under’, decades ago. For this daftness, and ignorance of their own area of business, Larrikin don’t deserve any credit or reward at all. As for Men At Work, their primary misdemeanour, as far as I’m concerned, is writing the fucking thing in the first place.
Copyright case failures from the past have tempered the enthusiasm of music business complainants to point the finger. Even in these joyfully litigious times.
Coldplay were accused last year of filching large blocks of music from guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani’s instrumental ‘If I Could Fly’ for the title track of their last album, Viva La Vida. The melody, rhythm, speed and inflections are, indeed, identical. And, since only one song features vocals, and because they’re both in the key of G, it sounds quite cool when you play them simultaneously in a mix (refer to YouTube).
The Coldplaygate case (or Colgate, as I prefer to term it) was chucked out, and the band were cheeky enough to suggest afterwards that Satriani’s song ‘lacked originality’. No, I don’t get it either. Interesting then, that Chris Martin, the one married to that hippie actress, had already confessed long beforehand that the debut Coldplay LP was forty minutes of borrowing without asking: ‘Listen to the album more and more it’ll become apparent just how much we’ve plagiarised,’ said the stripey-handed singer, happily adding, ‘To me, at the end of our album we should have had a bibliography, or a discography, or references.’ Oops.
Back in 1985, John Fogerty released his debut solo album, Centerfield, and was promptly sued by Asylum Records heavyweight Saul Zaentz, who owned most of the rights to Creedence Clearwater Revival stuff.
Saul and John don’t get on, so there was a bit of malice aforethought at play here. Zaentz claimed Fogerty’s ‘Old Man Down The Road’ was a cynical rewrite of Creedence’s ‘Run Through The Jungle’. When the defendant took to the stand with his guitar and played both songs to the jury, Zaentz must have known the jig was up. It was pre-Twitter, of course, but had it not been, messages along the lines of ‘OMG!!! John Fogerty is playing a gig in the courtroom!!!’ might have been posted by elderly fans of proper rock’n’roll. Fogerty, to no one’s surprise, won the suit. He was, however, instructed to alter the title of his song ‘Zanz Kant Danz’ to ‘Vanz Kant Danz’. Like that was going to bother him, when he’d just destroyed his loathed ex-boss’s claim for 140 million dollars.
George Harrison famously defended himself in court against ex-Beatles manager Allen Klein when ‘My Sweet Lord’, the first post-Beatles solo hit, whiffed a bit too much of The Chiffons’ fifties doodle-wop pop song ‘He’s So Fine’ – a song owned by publishing company Bright Tunes. The irony here is that, although he was initially batting for Harrison, Klein actually bought Bright Tunes while the case was being heard and, having done so, promptly crossed the floor. Not a popular move with the presiding judge.
The case went on for years. I’ve read through some of it: the preposterous arguments; the evidence of musicologists called on to technically dissemble note v note; the mutual spitefulness of both sides; the interminable nitpicking. George was eventually adjudged guilty only of subconscious plagiarism, or cryptomnesia, which is the term, apparently, for a person who composes or steals music in their sleep. The judge ruled that ‘My Sweet Lord’ and ‘He’s So Fine’ shared ‘fragmented literal similarities’. George got little more than a slap on the wrist, but the verdict effectively allowed that if you could prove beyond a reasonable doubt (or just artfully pretend) that you were asleep when you came up with a strangely familiar melody, you got off with a warning and a packet of NoDoz.
The Chiffons went on mischievously to cover ‘My Sweet Lord’ themselves and gave it a spot on their greatest hits LP. More peculiar still, and not long after the case was closed, Harrison bought the rights to ‘He’s So Fine’ and wound up coining it for both songs.
Last year, veteran indie power-pop band The Rubinoos trained their crosshairs on Avril Lavigne for allegedly thieving considerable sections of their 1978 single ‘I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend’ for her 2007 hit ‘Girlfriend’. As The Rubinoos sat down to strategise, they were contacted by The Rolling Stones, who advised both parties to cease and desist, pointing out that each song suspiciously echoed their own sixties hit ‘(Hey You) Get Off Of My Cloud’. The Rubinoos were politely warned to pull their heads in, or else. And when the Stones talk, you listen. Avril Lavigne, you’d imagine, might have phoned Mum to ask who Mick Jagger is.
When The Flaming Lips released their Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots album in 2002, many older folk noticed that the melody to the song ‘Fight Test’ was spookily similar to that of Cat Stevens’ 1970 hit ‘Father And Son’. The Lips’ Wayne Coyne pleaded that he hadn’t ever heard ‘Father and Son’, and I don’t think he was being disingenuous, but the trouble was brief, in any case. Both parties had a convivial chat and royalties were thereafter split between Sony (Cat – or Yusuf Islam) and EMI (The Lips).
It only takes a clever tweak for any band to easily put you off the scent. The Ramones built a career on one song. It was a good song, mind you. Oasis are flagrant lifters of Beatles songs. But their best effort was, in fact, when they had a crack at ‘Get It On’ by T.Rex and called it ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’.
Chuck Berry was the maestro of the just-different-enough-from-the-last-song approach. It’s why he never employed a permanent band; any bunch of pick-up musicians capable of playing one Berry song could, theoretically, play the lot. This also cost Chuck less, and for a man who demanded cash in a briefcase before he took to the stage, it was win-win.
‘Blue Suede Shoes’ and ‘Jailhouse Rock’, and dozens of early rock’n’roll tunes, were unashamedly the same. No one cared. Rock was only expected to last as long as the hula hoop. Was it even supposed to have any delineations?
It was Led Zeppelin, however, who will forever be the unchallenged kings of plagiarism. ‘Whole Lotta Love’ is a slightly noisier upload of ‘You Need Love Woman, You Need Love’ by Willie Dixon. Not until 1985, did Dixon have his day in court for overdue recognition and royalties. ‘Babe I’m Gonna Leave You’, was written by blues singer Anne Bredon but she wasn’t acknowledged or paid royalties for decades. The uncredited borrowing by Zep of ‘Bring It On Home’ and ‘The Lemon Song’ also resulted in legal wrangling and expensive settlements. Quite a few songs ‘written’ by Page/Plant during the seventies are now credited on sleeves as Page/Plant/The person who actually wrote it.
Led Zep’s zenith in its perpetration of all of these copycat crimes, though, was undoubtedly ‘Dazed and Confused’, a bona fide classic and a piece recognised by any self-respecting rock fan from the moment its lumbering bass line sounds off. Great song. Thank Jake Holmes for that. He’s the dude who wrote it. Jimmy Page heard the song when Holmes supported The Yardbirds (of which Page was a then-member) one evening in London. ‘Dazed and Confused’ surfaced eighteen months later, credited to the Zep lads, as … ‘Dazed and Confused’. No confusion at all, then. No subterfuge or fudging. No renovation or blurring. Just pure daylight robbery.
Writer Chris Welch, author of a song-by-song biography of Led Zeppelin, has arced up and claimed that a) everyone was doing it, so who cares?; and b) it’s only because the band became so popular that anyone made a fuss. He’d have a re-think, you’d imagine, if he found large chunks of his own work, uncredited, in a different book.
I don’t envy new bands questing to write original music these days, because most great music has been written already. Are there any riffs left? Any angles? New bands encounter a weighty postmodern dilemna at their first practice. Where do you go? How do you minimise derivation? Ah, stuff it … steal as much as possible from Led Zeppelin and see how they like it.
Stop, Thief?
Influence? Confluence? Stolen goods?
‘Taxman’ by The Beatles v ‘Start’ by The Jam
Paul Weller never tried to pretend that The Jam single was anything but a masterly ‘homage’. It was a pretty accurate one too, because the jagged George Harrison riff in the ‘Taxman’ intro is one of The Beatles’ most ubiquitous and quirky moments, and not the sort of thing just to pop into the head of a modish young man years later.
‘All Day And All Of The Night’ by The Kinks v ‘Hello I Love You’ by The Doors
It’s one of those baffling cases, where, with only a few years between the records, the laughingly obvious similarities didn’t prompt litigation. Primarily, it shows that The Doors were lazy. And that the Kinks were somewhat charitable.
‘In The City’ by The Jam v ‘Holidays In The Sun’ by the Sex Pistols
Punk was about energy, attitude, aggression, and, in the Pistols’ case, the dishing up of sharp social satire. In his book, The Jam’s Bruce Foxton claims to have had a conversation with Sid Vicious in which he admitted that ‘Holidays in the Sun’ was ‘heavily influenced’ by ‘In The City’. Allegedly, there was then a bit of a punch-on.
‘Are You Gonna Be My Girl’ by Jet v ‘Lust For Life’ by Iggy Pop
Yeah, it’s legendary already but Jet don’t deserve quite as much vitriol as they’ve received. The beat is too good to be used for just one song and Jet’s own contributions justify their having a huge hit record. Yes, they must have known. Not to worry. It’s the sort of three-minute pop explosion that could kickstart an eight-year-old’s lifelong love for rock’n’roll. In my mind, however, aside from that single, Jet are still a quite forgettable band with a very good singer.
‘Watching The Wheels’ by John Lennon v ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ by Oasis
I don’t know why people think the intro to Noel’s epic tune sounds like ‘Imagine’, because it’s much more like this later song from Lennon’s last album. Also, it’s an E chord to A chord, like a million intros to a million songs. The first two chords you learn when you open the cheat sheet.
‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ by The Beatles v ‘If You Want My Love’ by Cheap Trick
Cheap Trick were not uninformed about the pop music that had preceded them, especially the best of British. Welding Beatlesque melodies onto hard rock à la The Who saw them create some of the best no-wave albums of the seventies. They were shit in the eighties, sadly, but this single reached a number two position on the Oz charts in 1982. Perhaps the joke here was that poor old George Harrison had been so exhausted by the ‘My Sweet Lord’ affair that he didn’t have the energy to fight. That portion that goes ‘Lonely is only a place/you don’t know …’ is an identikit of the ‘I look at you all see the/love there that’s sleeping’ verse pattern of ‘While My Guitar…’
‘Three Girl Rhumba’ by Wire v ‘Connection’ by Elastica
Elastica are a bit notorious for some of the ‘influences’ at play in their music. The cited example is the most celebrated, but go YouTube-ing and have a listen to their song ‘Waking Up’ and then compare it to ‘No More Heroes’ by the Stranglers. I mean, really.
Every hip-hop band ever v every song ever written…
The thing here, of course, is that sampling these days is very, very scrupulously attributed to the original artist. The Australian cut-and-paste post-modernists The Avalanches listed on the sleeve of their album Since I’ve Left You every song they had appropriated for their songs. If you didn’t have a microscope, it was, simply, impossible to read. But the list was there and they were happy to pay at the source rather than hope they could get away with it. Madonna wrote a personal letter to Benny from ABBA asking if she could use the instrumental riff from ‘Gimme, Gimme, Gimme (A Man After Midnight)’ for her song ‘Hung Up’. Benny framed the letter, apparently … oh, and, yeah, he was cool with a 50–50 royalty split. Perhaps the ageing star should be similarly polite when she steals people’s children.
Michael Witheford is a Melbourne-based writer and hack bass player, whose new band, The TV Set, debuts at the Marquis of Lorne in Fitzroy on Sunday 8th August from 6pm-8pm. He blogs sporadically at ‘Thought Crimes’.
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