Saw this earlier today on Facebook, and it's very clever.
I never liked Zep much when I was younger, but I've changed. We play "Good Times, Bad Times" in my band, and the bass line is a bear! One of our guitarists is the biggest fan ever, I think.
Saw this earlier today on Facebook, and it's very clever.
I never liked Zep much when I was younger, but I've changed. We play "Good Times, Bad Times" in my band, and the bass line is a bear! One of our guitarists is the biggest fan ever, I think.
Page/Plant have admitted taking liberally from the blues greats, and you can go on Youtube and find several examples of alleged plagiarism. His argument is that Zeppelin enhanced them and changed them into something totally different - your opinion may vary. Some are credited properly now (but not all), for example "The Lemon Song" now includes a credit to Howlin' Wolf (from "Killing Floor"). Plant took liberally from the blues lyrics canon in their early days. Given Zeppelin's overall quantity of songs, it's a very small percentage that "copy/steal" from some classic blues songs.
But this allegation from Randy California (and now his heirs) seems like a large stretch to me - that descending bass line can be found in tons of songs. And that's about all the similarity I can find to "Heaven", is that 5 note line.
Anyway, opinions vary. Anyway, if anyone's interested, here's a good "neutral" article that gives some other examples.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/25/did-led-zeppelin-steal-stairway-to-heaven.html
walrus
The blues tradition involves heavy use of same and similar lyrics in lots of songs. You take a song and make it your own. Lifting lyrics from a blues song and putting them in a rock song does seem a little odd but whatever.
"the woman that I love, stole from my best friend.
one night he got lucky, stole her back again."
I've seen this in at least two different songs.
"Veddy Interesting"...I lo-oved 'em for a couple of years in high school (first 5 albums) 'till I heard the "Live on Blueberry Hll" bootleg which was full of playing flubs. The final straw was "Physical Graffiti" which I disliked intensely..however in the spirirt of keeping an open mind I gave "Presence" a listen and consider "Achilles Last Stand" to be a masterpiece and gifted a copy to my then 13-year old younger brother.Same here. I've really developed an appreciation for the creativity in Jimmy Page's body of guitar work. Simply awesome.