If You Like Led Zeppelin, Read This....

- Jimmy page and Robert plant stole nearly every major song, melody or lyric from blues artists and less popular english artists like the small faces and Jake Holmes.

- Jimmy page openly denies this.

- Several artists are pissed, several more are taking action against led zeppelin.
 
haha, exactly.

other than their blues songs (which- every blues song you'll ever hear sounds more or less the same, its the nature of the genre), i don't believe this.

"gallows pole" was pretty much stolen straight up from lead belly, though. which they prob should have acknowledged somehow
 
I always thought Zeppelin was overrated. Not back in its era, but nowadays I mean. I could've told you that half that shit was ripped off from Blues artists. Anybody who understands musical notation knows that.
 
half? i dont think so. what do they have, maybe one or two blues flavored songs per album? most of their shit was pretty original.
 
You do realize that rock and roll IS blues...? They definitely had more than two songs that were from blues.
 
so every rock song ever written is just an unoriginal rip-off of some old 1920's blues song? i dont think thats fair. rock CAME from the blues- along with other influences- but it is not necessarily always classifiable as "blues music."

blues is a specific rhythm and type of chord structure.

and i said probably 2 per album, not in their whole catalogue.

trust me, i think we are pretty much in agreeance here- they definately ripped off some of their stuff. i just dont think it was a large portion of their repertoire.
 
rock wasnt just influenced by blues it was built on blues music. pretty much ever solo you hear is built off of a scale which originated from the blues. i can understand why it would sound similar, but when its the same note for note, melody for melody , its copied.
 
Fuck that shit man, listen to the album Presence. Who cares if they ripped off some melodies they added their own emotion to it. John Bonham is definately one of the best heavy drummers of all time.
 
i heard somewhere that theyre music is inspired by a mix of blues and irish. theres noway they copied songs
 
Inspired isn't the key word here...they copied blues. That's what rock music is. The original blues artists copied blues as well. It's all just the same scales, rhythms, and chord progressions.
 
Every musician in the world is influenced by musicians of the previous generation. Those dudes were rediculously talented, and actually played the instruments themselves (obviously) every white rock band jacked influence from black blues artists, white people didn't see it at the time because they weren't listening to jazz. how you gonna try to talk down on them when you got bitch ass pussy farts like kanye west stealing 8 or16 bar loops, putting hard drums behind it and calling it his own without even claiming the samples?
 
Who said I liked Kanye? I hate modern popular music more than anything. It's all just shit to my ears.
 
yeah I wasn't trying to say that you liked kanye, I was just giving an example that there's bigger fish to fry. I definitely know what your'e saying- but if you go after zeppelin, than you'll probably have to include just about every band that came out of every era & genre that came after 1940. Wer'e all a product of what we hear or see.
 
Yeah, nothing is original; everything manifests from inspiration or influence...that is a given with any art. I'm just saying that people should quit freaking out over whether or not music sounds similar or not.
 
no offense, at all, dude, but im still having trouble with this statement.

is reggae ska?

is country bluegrass?

i would, personally, say no. there is an evolution of musical genres which occurs naturally over the years. the end product is not (IMO, obviously) classifiable as the beginning product.

or, to take it even further back, "mento" is a native, jamaican music, which is pretty much accepted as the first root of reggae music. its a crazy, staccato upbeat kind of music. if you listen hard, you can hear where that developed into the ska beat, into rocksteady, into reggae. but i really dont think anyone is going to listen to "3 little birds" and say, "fuck that. unoriginal. they jsut ripped off some mento."

now, granted, lots of rock music is probably closer to being blues- based than any reggae still having much mento influence. but i honestly think its the same concept.

end rant, ++++ to all for a good discussion
 
I don't know much about the similarities between other genres. All I know is that any rock and roll song is a blues melody, progression, and rhythm. Same exact music only with distortion and groupies.
 
I don't agree with your statement but maybe it's because I don't really know much about music I just listen to it. Either way, Led Zeppelin is sick and I love Jimmy Page's riffs. I'm not going to even bother reading that article.
 
from wiki

Dave Headlam, in an article entitled "Does the song remain the same? Questions of authenticity and identification in the music of Led Zeppelin", suggests that "...in the course of studies on the music of Led Zeppelin, it has become apparent that many songs are compilations of pre-existent material from multiple sources, both acknowledged and unacknowledged." He contends that "...songs like 'Whole Lotta Love' and 'Dazed and Confused' are on the one hand not "authored" by Led Zeppelin, but [rather are] traditional lyrics..." [91] However, noted blues author and producer Robert Palmer states "It is the custom, in blues music, for a singer to borrow verses from contemporary sources, both oral and recorded, add his own tune and/or arrangement, and call the song his own".[92][93] Folklorist Carl Lindahl, refers to these recycling of lyrics in songs as "floating lyrics". He defines it within the folk-music tradition as "lines that have circulated so long in folk communities that tradition-steeped singers call them instantly to mind and rearrange them constantly, and often unconsciously, to suit their personal and community aesthetics".[94]

In an interview he gave to Guitar World magazine in 1993, Page commented on the band's use of classic blues songs:

“ [A]s far as my end of it goes, I always tried to bring something fresh to anything that I used. I always made sure to come up with some variation. In fact, I think in most cases, you would never know what the original source could be. Maybe not in every case -- but in most cases. So most of the comparisons rest on the lyrics. And Robert was supposed to change the lyrics, and he didn't always do that -- which is what brought on most of the grief. They couldn't get us on the guitar parts of the music, but they nailed us on the lyrics. We did, however, take some liberties, I must say [laughs]. But never mind; we did try to do the right thing.[95] ”

led zep was and is the father of heavy rock. dont be jealous
 
I don't see why someone shouldn't be able to take parts of existing music and use them in their own music. If the result is good, go for it. Not really something you can avoid anyways.
 
Led Zeppelin sounds like Led Zeppelin, so it's fucking Led Zeppelin. If you like Led Zeppelin, who the fuck cares if they didn't always give credit where credit was do? I am all for giving credit, but if you enjoy the music, just enjoy the music. They certainly had an original sound and that's exactly why they were innovators.
 
Exactly... Case in point:

It's all recycled. That's what drives human artistic progression. If people didn't build upon old styles and slowly adapt what they learned from other people, portraiture would still look like this:

220px-Justinian.jpg
 
Not to mention that the Staple Singers song is a blues version of a traditional Gospel song that was written MANY years earlier
 
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