September 23, 2010

Plagarism? You Decide

I truly love Led Zeppelin, but they have constantly been accused of plagarism. You decide after viewing this video.



My opinion is they were "inspired" by many different musical sources. Even if they blatantly took chords and words, they truly made their own music.

Let me know your opinion.

8 comments:

Perplexio said...

Did they give credit where it was due or did they claim credit for themselves? Plagiarism is after all when material is taken without proper acknowledgement or credit being given. If proper credit was given then it wasn't plagiarism it was taking source material, acknowledging it and improving upon it. If proper credit wasn't given it was indeed plagiarism.

That being said-- they took the source material to a completely different level but the creators of the source material deserve credit for their contributions to Led Zep's success.

Charlie Ricci said...

Oh, LZ are definitely thieves! They can't deny it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking Zep. I've always been a fan. They deserve the fame they won so many years ago and they gave most of their poached songs very special reworkings, most superior to the originals. If they gave credit where it was due nobody would care.

George Harrison must be rolling over in his grave that these guys have gotten away with these felonies and misdemeanors all of these years considering the drubbing he took over "My Sweet Lord," a theft job that wasn't quite as obvious to me.

Perplexio said...

The plagiarism thing is part of the reason I consider myself more a fan of The Who than Zep. They weren't plagiarizing like Zep was and Pete Townshend was/is a brilliant composer/songwriter. If anything, at times Townshend was a bit over-ambitious (the Lifehouse project-- The Who's "SMiLE" of sorts).

Both bands had tremendous musical talent but The Who gets the edge for their creativity.

Isorski said...

Wow, I had heard some of this but not everything. What is missing is all the stuff they took from Robert Johnson. Squeeze my lemon etc. Those are all right off his recordings. Would have been better had they given credit but at the same time, they were so epic that they made it all their own anyway. Agree that the Who never stole anything until It's Hard which is an exact rip off of Bruce Springsteen - can't remember the song but I bet Barbara knows!

Dan said...

I agree they had their share of riffs and words that were borrowed from the old folks, but they also credited many of the original songwriters on their albums. A few of these examples are credited on the album. I was not sure where this video came from but it was interesting none the less. Thanks for the comments. By the way Charlie, I agree George got a raw deal. He took it with grace though.

Sean Coleman said...

Led Zep stole this song from someone and SCTV took the time to steal it back :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QFDsUgjqIo

Maxi said...

just easy as...

If any band could become as great as Led Zeppelin just by copying some chords and lyrics from here and there... then there would be one thousand like them..

and as far as we know... there is only one..

JohnnyG said...

Gotta go with Perplexio on this one, at least the first comment. If they gave credit, its not plagiarism. If they didn't, shame on them.

That said, I have no problem with borrowing someone else's work. Music is inspiring by nature, and for musice to inspire more, similar music, is to be expected.

Come one, all genres by definition are just musicians copying and extending someone else's work.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...