The Jake Holmes bit in there is ripping. Wow. I had heard all the others.

The creds thing is shady for sure, least they should've done was make sure those guys would never have to work for a living anymore or something. One of Holmes' bandmates apparently wrote "Hey Joe" and never saw anything from it. Properly compensated, they probably could've bought a small country between them. Standing military and everything.

Good piece on Perfect Sound Forever.

well, what would you expect from a guy who sold his soul to satan?


at least they didn't steal "Achilles Last Stand".

I bet that when they recorded these songs they said "we're led zeppelin. who's gonna try and say that these songs are his/her? no one". indeed no one claimed for the songs until after their break.

oh, the titles in this video are way too dramatic. "Here's what Led Zeppelin wants you to think", the guy is too dramatic. made me feel like it's a video about JFK or 9/11.

the selling-soul-to-satan was a joke, eh?

Don't forget Page's monicker was "Lead Wallet" for a while. A tightwad if ever there was one.

This is news?

Every band/musician on the face of the earth pilfers from another to some degree. I think I was probably seventeen years old the last time I listened to a song I really liked and didn't think hey, this sounds just like...

Nothing new under the sun.

Ace wrote:Well, yeah they stole stuff- but the extent to which they did came as a bit of a surprise to me. I mean, everyone has heard most of the willie dixon originals and stuff, but I hadn't heard the Spirit 'stairway to heaven' riff, or the yardbirds 'dazed and confused.'

I don't know, it came as news to me. I'm not the biggest Zep follower, so it came as a bit of a surprise.

I think the Yardbirds, which Pagey was in (but you already know that), actually ripped dazed and confused from some guy named Jake Holmes.

Anyway, yeah, you'll find no disagreement here. Zep really were a buncha thieves who happened to write some great songs. Some people try to go too far and say that Zep ripped from "Superstition" for "Trampled Under Foot," but that's bullshit. Just because two songs use a clavinet doesn't mean they sound the same.

Del75 wrote:This is news?

Every band/musician on the face of the earth pilfers from another to some degree. I think I was probably seventeen years old the last time I listened to a song I really liked and didn't think hey, this sounds just like...

Nothing new under the sun.

"Pilfering" is different to exploiting the copyrights on older songs to your own gain. How anyone could register The Lemon Song (for example) as their own without any shame is beyond me.

Right, that's it.

I'm stealing Immigrant Song.

chairman_hall wrote:Right, that's it.

I'm stealing Immigrant Song.

I think Nirvana beat you to it.

honeyisfunny wrote:

that damned fly wrote:if you remove the shit they stole, you still have an awesome fucking rock band. slightly better because there's no "stairway..." or "dazed and confused" in the catalog.

Or When The Levee Breaks

oh come now. the old blues versions of when the levee breaks don't sound like the zep version. sure, it would've have been more honest for them to have credited it as a cover with a new arrangement, and maybe royalties would have been divvied up more fairly. but old blues guys didn't have bonzo echoing up a stairwell or whatever.

honeyisfunny wrote:"Pilfering" is different to exploiting the copyrights on older songs to your own gain.

So had Zep remained just another club band rehashing old R&B standards and not graduated to being an arena rock band rehashing old R&B standards it would have been pilfering?

A song only sounds original when you are unaware of what it is ripping off.