Wednesday 8 January 2014

Another Classic Song Ripped Off

Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull once said he liked Hotel California and he wished that he had written it but listening to We Used To Know, i think he may well have done, the music anyway.
I do get disappointed when i hear great songs are just a rip off of someone else and even more when they deny it when anybody with a working pair of ears can hear it is blatant. 
The Eagles toured with Jethro Tull and Anderson, with much more dignity then i would be able to muster, agrees that it is the same chord progression but says he feels honoured that they may of possibly have been inspired by his song.
Maybe it was just a massive coincidence that the support band later came up with an almost identical song to the band they were supporting or more likely they just straight forward nicked it and changed the temp a bit.
Still a great song, in my top 5 of all time favourites but it does get up my nose when people blatantly rip-off other artists and then don't have the nuts to credit the real talent behind it.
I never got over the admission that The Sex Pistols 'Pretty Vacant' song is just a souped up version of ABBA's, 'SOS'.  

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Being someone that is inventor on 20 patents I guess this kind of thing should bother me.

But it doesn't

Q

Lucy said...

Read about Tesla and patents, that should bother you.

Anonymous said...

Seems like a pretty complex life with some bad luck, a lot of bad decisions, a big ego, occassional genius, occasional weirdness, and some controversial happenings.

Why would i be bothered?

Q

Lucy said...

He held a lot of patents which should have made him famous, radio for example, but despite holding the patents he got royally shafted.

Anonymous said...

lucy,

based on wikipedia (often unreliable) i would say he did more harm to himself than others did to him.

also, what few people seem to know is that patents do not give you exclusive control over a concept like radio. they give you exclusivity over one method for implementing the concept (there are many ways to skin a cat). so, in the case of "radio", if others can find a different way to send and receive radio signals they get their own patent and are not constrained by existing patents.

the people that get famous are rarely the inventors, the famous are usually the leaders of the company that takes the invention to the marketplace...

q

Lucy said...

I only discovered Tesla a few years ago, Mythbusters bought him to my attention i think. Probably the earthquake machine episode.