MSU Red Cedar Message Board

I think the biggest point I would make is again, the majority of everything that has ever been claimed as stolen by Zeppelin were lyrics. Lyrics never made them great anyway and were arguably a relative weakness.

Look at Babe I'm Gonna Leave You. One of my 5 favorite songs of theirs. Lyrics were taken from another song. People love that song for the guitar and how the vocals are phrased.

If you want to debate how much they stole, fine.

But saying they're not the greatest rock band ever because in their early days they were basically a blues cover band whose guitar player wasn't good with giving people credit...don't understand that.

They were doing the same things everyone else was, only they were much worse than most about giving credits on songs like I Cant Quit You Baby, The Killing Floor (Lemon Song), How Many More Times, that everyone else was covering. Not giving proper credit on covers is not really equaling "ACDC > Zeppelin" to me.

Off the top of my head I would have to disagree:

Music rips:
Some of Dazed and Confused
some of The Lemon Song
Moby Dick
Black Mountain Side
Drum into Rock and Roll

Lyrical rips:
Babe I'm Gonna Leave You
Dazed and Confused
You Shook Me
Communication Breakdown
I Cant Quit You Baby
How Many More Times
Whole Lotta Love
Bring it on Home
When the Levee Breaks

Or maybe this is just evidence that as a musician my opinion of what a musical ripoff is is much looser than most.

I don't believe I have argued that they haven't stolen alot of things.

My points the entire time have been

1) Being a blues cover band in the early days with a douchey guitarist doesn't in any way disqualify Zeppelin as the greatest hard rock band ever
2) The majority of what was stolen were lyrics. Lyrics never made Led Zeppelin.
Some of the songs (Babe I'm Gonna Leave You), Plant could have been singing "Purple Fudge Farts" and people would have loved it. It wasn't about the lyrics.
3) Anything they stole was made (with the except of Moby Dick and Black Mountain Side) into completely different things

If you take the beginning of Dazed and Confused and the beginning of Stairway from Zeppelin (I list these because these are the only two major songs of theirs where parts were taken from other songs), they have still done much much more than ACDC.

Okay, just for the sake of our respectful debate, and mind you I am well past my bedtime and need to get up at 6AM for work, so I'll be pardoning myself after this post.

Let's stop with the Led Zeppelin stuff because there is so much already documented on them. Let's agree that many artists or bands copy/incorporate/"sample" (as the term is used now with some many electronic musicians) other artists styles. I think that can be an established fact for the sake of our discussion.

Given that, how can one cry wolf over Led Zeppelin when ELP did the same thing? Examples? Incorporating works from Mussorgsky and Copland. Oh, but they're classical composers and that doesn't count? Copland was still alive when they did what they did. Certainly not public domain if so.

As for my discussion with Bach, a German composer... was it okay for him to steal a style from the French? Piratically steal the song as a whole? If you know the piece, he practically stole it verbatim and presented it in a German style... loosely speaking for the sake of our discussion.

We don't cry about those things, but when we speak of Zeppelin we bemoan how they were unoriginal? Who cares? They offered some great stuff in their style, just as the others did too.

Do you really want to go through all of the other musicians out there that took styles or songs and made them their own? Do you want to really discuss jazz musicians that took a song and made it better, so when we listen to that version we're compelled to smile and perhaps give a welcoming sigh, when in reality it might have been offered several years earlier and the original artist/composer is an afterthought?

Tell me who you think of when you listen to Elton John singing "But not for me"? Do you think of Gershwin? He's the composer. Do you think of Sinatra? Ella? Maybe Four Weddings and A Funeral?

Does it really matter?

The point is just enjoy the music the way the artist is presenting it. If they offer something more than what has come before, AWESOME!

Sorry to all the rockers out there about the Gershwin YouTube tune attached. It is a good tune though, and a very good version.

If ELP and Johann stole music and put their names on it, that's a big mark against them as well. It still doesn't excuse what Led Zeppelin did, and neither does Elton John's Gershwin cover. Did Elton claim to have written that themselves?

I also knock Van Halen because of an overdependence on covers through their career (combined with very short albums, it makes them seem less creative than other bands), but Led Zeppelin were thieves. They could've made up for it after they achieved such incredible success, but they've fought against that. It should always be considered when objectively weighing the merits of that band.

Count me as one who doesn't care that Zeppelin stole some shit. They made that shit incredible, I don't care who gets the credit. Songwriting credits aren't important to me, good music is important to me, and Zeppelin is way better than AC/DC.

AC/DC means one of two things. Either I'm about to change the station, or I'm about to cheer unreasonably loud for an animated statue. Or I'm drinking. That's three.

Greatest? Not IMO. But up there. Their early stuff, so rooted in the blues, is really incredible.

Angus Young is a guitar god and king of the power chord.

They dirty... Even their "masterpiece". Great blues/rock/hard rock band but they should have given those due their due their due in the first place.

I freaking love Led Zeppelin I, and seriously every single song is lifted some way or another.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurus_(song)

I'm not sure it's possible to play any music without it sounding like something else, let alone blues-based music.

The fact that ACDC's best song (Back in Black) would probably be about 6 or 7 on a list of Zeppelin's best, comparable to something like The Ocean, is all that needs to be said.