One Song - Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love"

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

Thieving magpies or just pioneers of interpolation?  Join Diallo and Luxxury as they unpack Led Zeppelin’s legacy of musical borrowing through the lens of “Whole Lotta Love.” They touch on a few other major cases of accused plagiarism from the band, from “Dazed and Confused” to “Stairway to Heaven,” break down the legendary guitar solo from “Whole Lotta Love,” and discuss why the Muppets’ Animal is the best drummer to learn from. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney.com/onesong today. Have you ever dreamed of starting a business? Go to tailorbrands.com/podcast35 for 35% off all Tailor Brands services today. Get to Insurify.com to compare car insurance quotes in real-time and start saving today! Songs Discussed: “Whole Lotta Love” - Led Zeppelin “Whole Lotta Love” - Ike & Tina Turner “Dazed and Confused” - Led Zeppelin “Dazed and Confused” - Jake Holmes “Dazed and Confused” - The Yardbirds “You Need Love” - Muddy Waters “Hoochie Coochie Man” - Muddy Waters “You Shook Me” - Led Zeppelin “I Can’t Quit You Baby” - Led Zeppelin “Stairway to Heaven” - Led Zeppelin “Taurus” - Spirit “Chim Chim Cher-ee” - from Mary Poppins “Turn the Heater On” - New Order “Why?” - LUXXURY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Luxury Today's song by a group of blues indebted Englishmen is a classic rock staple. Opening with a guitar riff that was voted the number one guitar riff of all time by BBC Radio 2 listeners, this song helped bring the band's success across the pond to the United States, becoming their first gold certified hit. That's right, but amidst all that success, there has been some controversy around the song, writing credits and inspiration, not just for this song, but nearly all of the songs by one of my favorite bands. let's not get it twisted, but part of their heritage and part of their history is about where did they borrow, where did they pilfer, where did they steal from? And was it even borrowing, pilfering or stealing to begin with? We've got the stems, we've got the original songs they're derived from. And we'll decide, is it plagiarism or just plain old inspiration? Today on one song, we're showing a whole lot of love to whole lot of love by Led Zeppelin. I'm actor, writer-director, and sometimes DJ Diallo-Riddle. And I'm producer, DJ, DJ.

songwriter and music college is luxury, aka the guy who whispers. Interpolation. And if you want to watch one song, please go to our YouTube channel and watch this full episode. And while you're there, please like and subscribe. All right, luxury, we hinted at it at the top of this episode. But today, we're going to take a slightly different approach and talk about Led Zeppelin's very important place in the history of interpolation.

That's right. They are pioneers in the art of interpolation. Or are they? What we're going to do is we're going to get really specific. Because I think what happens with these conversations is they're very broad, and you can focus on certain areas and miss other areas of when something is borrowed versus when it's transformed. It's a really big and important question.

And it matters from song to song. It's a little bit different across their catalog. And it should be said right up top that Led Zeppelin are one of my favorite artists. So I'm going to give them a fair shake, but it's coming from a deep love when I was a young musician starting out. Led Zeppelin was my band. John Bonham was my drummer. Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, Robert Plant.

These guys were a big part of my young musicianship in terms of learning from them. These are some really core. To this day, if you go jam with another new musicians in a rehearsal space or a, you know, get tried out for a band, you're probably going to play Led Zeppelin songs. You might play rock and roll.

You might play a whole lot of love. It's just a big part of musicianship in the modern era comes from learning a lot of these songs. So love this band, a big fan, of them. What about yourself? Are you a Zeppelin fan? This is going to be an interesting episode for me because this is one of those few times that we've done the show and I can truly say

maybe because I respect music nerddom I don't know anything about Led Zeppelin. I really don't and I know that might come as a surprise to y'all because I loved the Beatles. I loved 90s Brit Pop. I love indie rock of the 2000s. Led Zeppelin is just that weird blind spot

in my musical repertoire. Everybody has them. Let's be fair. So it's interesting on this episode will kind of be representing both sides of that. Well, here's the deal. The first time I heard a whole lot of love, it was the Icantina version. And I was like, this song is amazing. And then when someone's like, yeah, there's a Led Zeppelin version, I was like, but I like the original Icantina version. I really never heard it. Can we hear that? Oh, this is wonderful. You couldn't tell me that that wasn't an Ican Tina Turner song. I thought Led Zeppelin was covering

them. But lo and behold, I had much to learn. Oh, my God. But what a history lesson too, because in her voice, she's emulating Robert Plant, who's emulating. People like Tena. It's a full circle moment. How wonderful. I love music, man. That's beautiful. So that's the degree to which I just don't know the Led Zeppelin catalog.

I'm going to be learning today on the behalf of everybody who doesn't know Led Zeppelper. You've heard the name of the band. And maybe you know. It feels ridiculous because it's like, who hasn't heard Led Zeppelin? Right, right. It's almost like I've been avoiding it. I tell you, I have not been actively avoiding Led Zeppelin. I have not.

Look, let's set up the conventional. The conventional wisdom a little bit culturally is that Led Zeppelin are rip-off artists or thieves, in addition to being mighty and some of the greatest musicians and songwriters. You're going to get so much hate in the comments. I cannot wait. Listen, if there's hate in the comments, that means that people aren't listening to the episode, because we're going to be exploring in detail each of the kind of claims against them, and we're not necessarily taking sides until we're going to discuss at the end of each of that. What's really happening?

For the third or fourth time, you are a Les Eppelin fan. And I'm a huge Led Zeppelin fan. So Rolling Stones article, big headline, Led Zeppelin's 10 boldest rip-offs. There's even a Wikipedia entry that says, it's its own entry. It's not within Led Zeppelin. It's list of Led Zeppelin songs written or inspired by others.

And then perhaps most wonderfully and famously, we've got Homer Simpson saying this. There's Big Ben. There's Piccadilly Circus. There's Jimmy Page, one of the greatest thieves of American black music, whoever walked the earth. But there's a kid.

No, but so, like, It's almost gospel, no pun intended, that like Led Zeppelin's prowess comes kind of at the potential expense of the erasure of the preceding artists. And it's hard to disagree with that notion in some cases as we're getting into. But as I also want to talk about with you, they've also contributed new transformations to some of this material in really important ways. So let's true, tell me what you think is what Led Zeppelin doing enough to be considered stealing? That's such a great question.

What it requires you to do is a few things. First of all, we have to define, when we say rip-offs and plagiarism, it begs the question, what does it mean to own music? And it always comes back to that old line, like, good artists borrow and great artists steal. Which wonderfully is a quote that no one has, like, definitively attributed. Like, some people say it's Picasso, some people say it's Nietzsche. Some people say it's Steve Jobs. Like, clearly, the public domain now. It's better that no one.

You can all steal it. All of this stuff is ideas exist in the ether. And we as humans, we grab, we borrow. we take what's out there and we recombine it, we transform it. That's important to this story. And as we get specific to each of the songs we're going to talk about in the moments and the specificity about what came from what, you start to realize, wait a second, is this something that this person came up with first?

Is it invented? What is it exactly? The lyrical combination of these three words, these three notes, whatever it is, that's part of how we can make a determination if these guys really deserve the reputation as thieves. That's fair. And look, it's really important that we. also point out that Led Zeppelin are working in the idiom, this is blues and folk music, which is

a shared tradition going back generations and centuries. Now, they're modernizing it. They're bringing it into rock. They are also white musicians in a copyright era. So there's a lot of complicated things in the mix where they're coming from a tradition where everyone's borrowing kind of the same chord progressions and a lot of the same simple melodies. A lot of what blues and folk are about is storytelling and a lot of the stories are being retold. So you have to, one really important thing on minute one of talking about Led Zeppelin and asking the question, are they borrowing, or are they transforming or are they stealing? Is, you know, what tradition are they coming from? In blues and folk, that's kind of what everyone was doing to a certain degree.

But I think the big question we want to answer today is at what point in the creative process does something go from just inspiration to just something totally original? And that's the question. And it is, there isn't, people sometimes mistakenly believe that you can acceptably use somebody else's four notes in a row or four seconds for a sample. None of those things are true. It really is a case by case basis. And the idea that I want, or the word I want to introduce to date, as we think about Led Zeppelin, think about them through the lens of transformation. Have they transformed it? Have they added something new to something that existed? And just to be specific, this is an era where arguably what Zeppelin was doing, they were synthesizing,

and transforming existing ideas. This is the electrified blues era. This is the era where Jimmy Hendricks is up there, hugely influencing Jimmy Page. We'll talk about that a little bit. We've got Bob Dylan is going electric. We've got the Rolling Stones. We've got recording and instrumentation

and arrangement changes to the blues tradition. In this song, which is ostensibly coming from some blues and folk tradition, it doesn't sound like anything you've heard before in the Muddy Waters catalogs. Because there's new production techniques. We have Jimmy Hendricks and we have the panning and the wah pedal and the crazy breakdown in the middle. So the transformation aspect is important because it's different from some of the material that was arguably borrowed or reused in the song.

It doesn't sound anything like it. Isn't anything like it. It's different. But is it different enough? All right, luxury, before we get into a whole lot of love, walk us through Led Zeppelin's history of musical borrowing. I know you've got a couple of examples. so why don't we start with days and confused because I'm still a little bit confused about Led Zeppelin.

Listen, when we were planning this episode, it did start, I did optimistically think we could get to all 20 or 25 examples. We narrowed it down to the three or four stories of Led Zeppelin songs that I thought might sort of illustrate the breadth and the scenario-specificness of what it means to determine if this is plagiarism or not. So we're going to start with dazed and confused. Okay. record, one of their first and big important songs.

Let's hear a little bit of Days and Confused, recorded in 1968 and released in 1969 on the first record. It's for so long it's not true. One that I want for you. That song is a very famous Led Zeppelin song to the extent that early performances in their early material, they would often play that for 30 minutes. It was a long, free-form extent of the jam. For a completely sober crowd. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, can you imagine, by the way, in 1969, 1969, 1968, being part of a Led Zeppelin show,

I mean, that would blow my mind to go back in time and see them, because they are such musicians, musicians. They are communicating amongst themselves to kind of twist and turn through many different ideas, many of which are borrowed or referential intentionally. That's where they're getting a lot of their repertoire. But in 1967, a man named Jake Holmes opens for a band called the Yardbirds in New York. And Jake Holmes's words, that was the infamous moment on my life

when dazed and confused fell into the loving arms and hands of Jimmy Page. And he plays this. He's raised it go. Bobby and shoes but just like to know. Hmm.

Yeah. The Ardbirds begin life. Eric Clapton is their first guitar player. He's replaced by Jeff Beck. And Jeff Beck is replaced by Jimmy Page. So three of the greatest white British guitarists of all time are in this band. It's Jimmy Page, however, who's in the band in 1967. Jake Holmes plays that song, Jimmy Page, hears it,

and then the yardbirds decide to add it to their repertoire. Sure. But they transform it, arguably. And it sounds a little bit like this. Page disbands the yardbirds around this time, creates what he calls the new yardbirds. He brings together John Bonham, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and then he decides or they decides that the band is going to be called Led Zeppelin.

So if it's understood that that's Jake Holmes's song, did at some point Led Zeppelin or Jimmy Page, did at some point, did they claim that it wasn't his song? Did they claim that their song was an original song? Listen, we have to get sort of speculate in the head of Jimmy Page. He claims 100% of the credit in terms of when it was released on the first record. It was credited solely to Jimmy Page, not even the entirety of the band, but it's just Jimmy Page 100% songwriting credit. All right, Judge Riddell, get out your gavel, get out your wig. You've heard the songs, you're the judge.

What is your verdict? Is this merely a case of inspiration, or do you think Jimmy Page might not be deserving of that 100% writing credit? Listen, I am a novice at this jurisdiction, but I don't think that's a coincidence. I think it is interpolation. It's the worst days and confused, which as far as I know was not like a thing before.

And then it's a, It's a slow dirge of a rock song and like, no, there's just too much. It's the tempo. It's the title. Let's talk about what's the same and what's different. Before I do that, though, up front, it's going to be really helpful to break this down. I'm going to really simplify what the rules are in copyright, in law. Like, if you brought this to court, there's two things.

There's access and similarity. So it's a two-prong test. Yes. And the access. The access test is undeniable. Undeniable. There is eyewitnesses that can place Jimmy Page at the scene of the crime. when Jake Holmes performed this song, which has some similarities.

The second part of it is where we get a little more complicated. Is it similar? Absolutely. And we know that it's, it can't just be a coincidence that we have the title. But what are the actual specific similarities? Let's get into that. So it's the same title. It's the same lyrics in so far as it's, I'm dazed and confused. But that's actually about it.

So just pause on that for a second. Lyrically, that's the only similarity. It's not nothing. They both have the three feel, but they're both in 12-8 time. They both have that descending, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, those four notes. But pause for a second. And think about this. I was alluding to a moment ago that there is no such thing as four notes or four seconds,

and that's the test you pass or fail based on. So right now, that may not be sufficient. They're definitely the same, and there are definitely similarities combined. But we're starting to get into this constellation of similarities territory, which brings us to that blizzard line. that we talk about a lot on this show? All the time. Yeah. The question is, are they similar enough? And should Jake Holmes be the owner of those words and that melody? Absolutely, he should. Here's the thing. You think he should? Here's the thing.

You should own it? My beef with blurred lines was that the notes were different. The drums were falling in different places. And the music was different. The vibe was the same. Here, it's not just the vibe is the same. It's the same lyrics. It's like if at some point, Farrell was like, you got to give it up. You know, like, it's just like, you know what I mean? Yeah, but I don't know. I would argue against that being enough to be owned. I don't think Marvin Gay should own give it up.

I think we could write a song with the words, give it up. What I'm saying is that there they said the blurred lines and got to give it up were similar enough. And I'm saying different notes, different drums, no shared lyrics. Here we've got same tempo. Yeah. As you pointed out, there's some similar notes in there. And you've got that lyric that says, I'm days are confused.

So it's not just the vibe. similar. There's like a litany. And I would literally use the word litany of similarities. I don't disagree with you. My conclusion is actually, I think we're kind of aligning that there should be some Jake Holmes credit to this. And I'll get to that in a second. But just to finish off on the transformation thing, because that's another question that I think is important for people to ask themselves. The transformation is real. There are things in the yard birds to Led Zeppelin. Transformation, for example, the fact that it's electrified. We've got drums. We've got bass. We've got guitar, there's an entire section of the song that doesn't exist that they've added, which is this

sort of double time. So there's additions, enhancements, electrifications, it's different. I don't disagree with your conclusion, but I do want to point out that that's an important consideration in this court of law. Well, let me also say that, again, I think let the artist cook, you know what I mean? Like, don't, I hate that we have to tiptoe around like what influences us and what, even what songs we want to make other songs like i hate that i'm not with that at all in this case i don't know how jimmy goes from one band where a guy's got a song called i'm daze and confused with this tempo

and this general sound and then goes to his other band and makes another song called dazed and confused with that tempo and those i just you know it's a little bit of a bridge too far with the 100% thing but look i'm not the judge deciding this so i got to ask you how did this end up in court At what point did Jake Holmes decide to take legal action? So for decades, as Holmes himself puts it, quote, I said, what the hell let him have it. Really? Yeah, I wasn't, he quote, I wasn't.

I wouldn't have done that. First of all, I wasn't paying attention to rock and roll at that time. And I had no idea, okay, they've stolen what they. I had no idea the song was as successful as it was. A lot of lawyers told me it was too late to do anything. That's interesting because that reminds me of the Jimmy Jam conversation we had, where we were talking to Jimmy Jam about like, okay, we've got a lot of people in the world

who love your music and who have gotten pretty close to it and we played him some cases. And his answer was, was it a hit? Right? Remember that? Yeah, I do.

I think that's really funny because I'm sure that attitude is certainly relevant. It's like, look, that goes back to this idea of like the shared tradition in blues and folk music. Like a lot of people are going to like,

look, we're all kind of borrowing stuff. We're all kind of using existing tropes and ideas unless you've really broken out of the pack and made lots of money from it. If you're an 80-year-old mega billionaire like some of these LeBlin members, then it's easy to say, hey, pay Jake Holmes. If we were going

after, you know, muddy water is over something that he took from some unknownness. You'd be like, okay, first off, money's dead. But the success factor is kind of it's relevant a little bit. That's from the person being ripped off's point of view, I think maybe that's the part where they go from being like, hey, it's shared tradition, man, we're all musicians

in it together to like, wait a second, you're making money? You own three houses in Wales? Exactly. No, I do have a question. What? Here, did these lawyers tell him, oh, it's too late. Like, was it just like 1972? As Holmes tells the story, he tried to contact Jimmy Page in the 80s and Jimmy Page didn't respond. It's like, you got better things to do. That's before cell phones. Like he was like leaving like infinite on an early answering machine. Now that sounds like a terrible way to try to contact somebody. So in 2010, he finally files a lawsuit where he claimed that page knowingly

copied the work. And in 2011, there was an undisclosed settlement out of court. But now if you do buy a new like a new printing. It was 40 years after the. the fact. It's 40 years after the fact. If you buy a new printing, a new version of Led Zupplin one, it says, there's a credit. It says changed to, the credit has been changed to Jimmy Page, comma, inspired by Jake Holmes. Interesting. And he got paid an undisclosed settlement. So just a chunk of cash, but no royalties, no publishing, but this sort of like, maybe slightly shameful and deservedly so credit in these sort of future editions that says, you know, Jake Holmes was part of the process too, man. Let's give the last word of Jay Holmes who says,

the way I see it is Jimmy Page took my song and made it into transformation something really cool. I wish he hadn't changed the words because my words were hipper than his words, which I thought was kind of funny. But the page version is inspired by me, but my version is inspired by nobody, which is interesting thing to say. Yeah. How is something inspired by nothing? That's tricky too. Yeah, that is tricky. I think it's really wonderful to kind of show all the sides of this story and all the steps in the process and realize it's really messy stuff.

And no one is borrowing from nobody. Exactly. But Page is definitely borrowing from Jake Holmes. Even the most complex computer working in AI is taking from whatever has been fed into it input-wise. So everything is inspired by something. But you know what? This is going to be a short episode because while that is one example, I'm sure that this is not a pattern of behavior. We're just going to have to end the episode early.

There are a dozen, perhaps two dozen more stories just like that one. We're going to get to one of them now, which is Whole Lot of Love, but rest assured, there's a whole bunch of other songs that have similar stories of when you break it down, there's a lot of complexity underneath the surface. Well, that brings us to today's song, which is Whole Out of Love. Luxury, what can you tell us about where Led Zeppelin got their inspiration for A Whole Lot of Love? Well, let's start with the story of the song beginning on Jimmy Page's Houseboat. He's already got a houseboat in 1966.

Is it the first yacht rock song? It might be the first Yacht Rock song. We, as we mentioned up top, we're doing this episode a little bit differently where we're not going through the full backstory of the band. But Jimmy Page brings this band together and he's made a little money because he's one of the biggest and most well-known, like first-call session musicians in London at the time, along with his cohort in the band, John Paul Jones. So the two of them are on a bunch of sessions together. They fall in musical love with each other, guitar and bass. And the new band comes together bringing John Bonham on drums and Robert Plan on vocals. there's the entirety of our telling you the back story of the band.

So Page is on his houseboat. He claims that he came up with the riff. But John Paul Jones has a different story about where the riff came from. But let's just play the riff and then we'll talk about it. There's some conflict about that because John Paul Jones thinks that it came out of a live improvisation of that song, Dazed and Confused that we heard earlier. I mentioned that they would riff for 30 minutes sometimes on stage and they would just sort of play around. Like anyone who's been in a jam situation, there comes the time.

It's like, I've been playing this one for a while. We play this riff for a while. Let's move to something else. What do you got? And then the bass player will play something. Anyway, Paige denies that that's how it started. There's beef within the band about the origin of the riff. But we do know that, as we mentioned up top, it's voted the number one riff of all time, not just by BBC 2, but also guitar world, total guitar magazine. And at number two is back in black and number three is crazy train. This is the best riff of all time. So when Robert Plant heard the riff, they were all listening to the to Jimmy Page, basically, riffing. And they're all like, this is something special. What do we do with this? riff. And Robert Plant goes, well, what am I going to sing over that? So he decided to sing some lyrics from this. And just to like point out the similarities, um, uh, lyrically, it's you need coolin, baby, I'm not fooling. Going to send you back to schooling in the Zeppelin version. And then in the, the Muddy Waters version, it's, I ain't fooling. You need schooling. Baby you know you need cooling. A little different. A little different. Little different. But it's all the nuance, right? Yeah. Maybe. Maybe. maybe. But here's the twist in this whole thing. Plant didn't sing that version of the song. He

actually sang something a little closer to this one. So that's small faces from 1966. The song is called You Need Levin. I mean, listen, when I first heard that version, I started, I kind of cracked up because I'm like, Robert Plant's, like his vocal phrasing basically, like even the kind of grit in his voice, like literally the placement of pauses at the end of the line, like all these really specific things about... If you were to put it into an Ableton grid, you would see... Yeah, it would sort of line up.

His choice of melody... So in other words, what Steve Maria did from small faces in his version of the Muddy Waters written by Willie Dixon's song is there's a transformation of a transformation happening here. It's like an interpolation of an interpolation, or maybe it's a cover

of a cover. It's hard to say. Interestingly, that Muddy Water song is 100% credit. it to Willie Dixon who wrote it. Willie Dixon? Yeah. I'm going to guess the ethnicity of Willie Dixon. Willie Dixon is a big part of this story.

So we'll be hearing his name again. In the Small Faces version, however, there's no Willie Dixon credit at all. I mean, interestingly, just to get into the songwriting splits because we have this strange situation here, the song is in conflict, the small faces, if you go into the public records, there are credits for Willie Dixon and Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane from small faces. they're all on there, but other sites say that it's 100% Steve Merriott. What I think has happened is that in later days,

acclaim was made, but for decades, that was just a small faces song, and only small faces band members got paid off of it. Poor Willie Dixon, he's been gone since 1992, but he was born in 1915, and his legacy remains. Yeah, well, he's one of the unsung heroes, if not the unsung hero, of this episode. So I'm glad you bring him up. That makes me actually happy. I mean like, you know, Willie Dixon born in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

I feel like despite all the years having gone by, you can hear some Mississippi. You can hear some Delta, you know, in this song. Delta not being the airlines, folks, but being Delta Blues. Yeah, no, he's considered one of the major players in Chicago Blues. He wrote or co-wrote 500 songs, including standards like Hoochie Coochee Man. I ain't superstitious, little red rooster. I just want to make love to you. This is like Black Tin Pan Alley.

I love the fact he wrote 500 songs. Can we hear a little bit of hoochy-coochy man? Let's listen. And not unimportantly, he wrote no fewer than, there are no fewer than four Led Zeppelin songs with Willie Dixon songs in them. Really? Two of which they properly credit fully from day one.

Which are those two? On Led Zeppelin one, you shook me. And I can't quit you, baby. I can't quit you. you, babe. Both properly credited, but as we get into Led Zeppelin 2 and beyond, like the song, a whole lot of love,

the credits start being a little bit more flimsy. Between this song and Bring It On Home, there were disputes and stories that emerged out of Willie Dixon songs being used by Led Zeppelin. All right, Diallo, with three songs in the mix on this one. Maybe it's a little more complicated than the previous example. But what do you think? Is this an interpretation?

Is it an interpolation? Is it inspiration? Is it a cover of a cover? Is it something else? What's going on here? Judge Riddle? I think Judge Riddle, I think I'm going to surprise you with this one.

I think this one qualifies as inspiration. Just going by the Muddy Waters' recording of the Willie Dixon song. Again, I'm a sucker for the final vibe, the execution. Like, you know, it's a different tempo. It's a different vibe. You know, like, in other words,

I could see where if they like this song, but they're on some sweet 1960s drugs. Like they could want to build a song that, you know, might share some DNA with this? Obviously it does because nobody gives you something for nothing. Yeah. But this feels more inspiration as opposed to that days and confused example where it's just like, oh, come on. But I'm also happy that they gave Willie Dixon a credit because I think that if they know that they were channeling Willie, then that's good that Willie, you know, his estate gets something for that. That's sort of a surprising answer.

I know that I fully disagree, but let me just get some clarity here about what's similar to the muddy water. And let me be clear. I do hear similarities, but go ahead. Yeah, for sure. So let's get really specific. I've already pointed out the lyrical similarities. And again, there's similarities, but not the same. And that's important. I think that's like, that is the line maybe right there between inspiration and interpolation is like, okay, I know you heard this song, but you did something different to transform it. When I went through all those rhymes of cool and fooling and fooling and school in, you know, those words are used, but they're differently used. And the melodies are different and the phrasing is different. But really importantly, too, and what's kind of funny is how Jimmy Page really wants to make sure we all notice this. Quote, as far as my end of it goes, in other words, the music, I always try to bring something fresh, anything that I used. But Robert was supposed to change the lyrics and he didn't always do that. It's Robert's fault.

And that's what brought us most of the grief. So Jimmy Page throwing Robert Plant, young, he's only 20 or so, young Robert Plan under the bus, Plant hears this great riff. He's like, I don't know, I'm not a songwriter. I don't know and sing. So he brings in the, I don't know nothing about no book learning. He brings in the, he brings in the muddy water song that he knows and loves and he transforms it. But Page later on once they had to pay, I'm getting ahead of myself because, yes, there is a settlement. We'll talk about that. But, you know, page is clearly a little bit myth that Robert didn't do his part in hiding the origins of certain things that he used. after the break, we'll get into the stems and reveal exactly how the song credits got worked out. Plus, I think my pick for one more song today might be my best yet.

We'll be right back. Hey, One Song Nation, luxury here. I know how difficult shopping for car insurance can be. Trust me, I have been there. But Insurify is here to help ease the headaches. Insurify is an insurance comparison site where dozens of top insurers compete for your business, driving prices down. Insurify lets you compare real-time quotes from dozens.

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would be like, wait a second, is that that bad song? Why are we on this radio station? Yep. So she brings a suit. It is settled out of court. And the credits were added to subsequent versions. Wonderfully, Willie Dixon, used the settlement money to set up a program to provide instruments for schools. Oh, dude. When the government doesn't, Willie Dixon will. And once that happened, you start getting some, you know, different, some of, some of the interviews with Led Zeppelin band members get a little bit revealing, as Robert Plant says in musician mag, quote, at the time, there was a lot of conversation about what to do.

In other words, he's revealing after the fact that when they made the song, they kind of knew, they kind of knew what they were doing. So they decided that it was so far away in time and influence, mind you, the song was only six years old when Zeppelin recorded their version, Muddy Waters version was barely six years old. It was only six years old. It's like when they tried to reboot Spider-Man with Andrew Garfield. Like we all still remember the original guys. Spider-Man 3. It wasn't that old. Please continue. Quote, you only get caught when you're successful. That's the game. So I found that quote to be extraordinarily revealing. And I think that's a big

part of it with these guys. They're like, look, you know, if we hadn't been massive global rock stars, you know, we probably would have gotten by with this shared tradition thing. But I think that's part and parcel of the shared tradition thing. If we're all equally kind of traveling minstrels. Without this great music. Well, there was no money to be made. It's easy to call it a shared tradition. But as soon as there's mansions and million dollar contracts.

When you're coming up with the song on a boat. Yeah. You might have to play Jake Holmes. So like I said, the case was settled out of court so there's no public record as to the monies. But when you look at the credits and I had a conversation with my friend Claire McLeish, who's my publishing musicology, who kind of, we sort of... You've mentioned her on the show before.

Yeah, because she is literally works for publisher, so her day job is like dealing with disputes and dealing with payments. So literally as a matter of practice, like if you were to try to license this song, like what would practically happen? It would still be, it's an equal four-way split

between the Led Zeppelin guys, but Willie Dixon is listed as a writer. And we've never seen that before. In other words, Willie Dixon won't get any new money from the use of the, this song. It seemed to have been a one-time settlement, but he's still listed as a writer. Unclear what's happening, but it's a strange situation. Maybe that protects his legacy and the bit of music of his that's out there. That's true. Maybe it's like the Jake Holmes thing where it's like,

at least there's no erasure of the connection to the original. But no new money will be added to the Dixon estate from this. Because we mentioned he is the young sung hero of this episode. It should be said that Willie Dixon went on to found the Blues Heaven Foundation to make sure that copyrights and royalties for exploited blues musicians would be paid. Right on. Because in 1977, Dixie and Muddy Waters sued Chess's publishing company. They were really unhappy with how little they'd been paid. And with the proceeds from that, they founded a publishing company and this foundation.

Listen, I'm just going to say, where's my camera? It's cool that you give, this is for people of all races, it's cool to give the props to a culture or even a specific musician. but if there's money involved, pay them! Pay them! Just, I'll get off my soapbox now. I'm with you on that showbox. We agree. All right, it's time for the stems luxury.

Let's start with the drums. I'm going to have a hard time restraining my body because this is such a body song. This is such a like playing along to every instrument song. But yeah, let's listen to these delicious stems. Now this record was recorded. Bonham plays the drums, right? How dare you ask that question? Yes, John Bonham plays the goddamn drums.

Dude, I don't. I don't know this band. Marvin Gay sings the song, right? I mean, what do you want me to say? Don't you get on gay. Don't you get on gay. John Bottom is my number one drummer of all time. Of all time.

He's the one. He's the guy. He's that when I, in no small part, because when I was learning to play, it was to these records. It was to these beats. I was learning all of these rhythms. I played the drums to Beatles songs. That was my choice. Oh, that's interesting.

The Beatles, I had a Muppets soundtrack. So it was me and animal. and then oddly enough the Star Wars sound You know Animal wasn't an actual drummer Right Stop your animal slander So this record Led Zeppelin 2 is recorded at Olympic Studios in London

In April 1969 Importantly there's two rooms There's one with an eight track And one with a 16 track They choose the one with the eight track Which is fewer tracks Which is less options in recording in theory Because they had 28 foot ceilings

And page is like Bonham, my boy He needs big reverberations He needs a big sound So what you're hearing right now... This is so spinal tap. It's so spinal tap. There would be no spinal tab without Led Zeppelin among a few others.

But boy, yeah, you're right. They're in the mix. So let's listen to John Bonham, aka Bonzo, playing the opening fill into the beat. The way he withholds that second snare, sometimes it's on the Andiphor, but sometimes it doesn't come in at all. Don't... Don't... Not this time, but... I love that.

And what you're hearing is... the huge sound of that 28-foot space. It is huge sounding. It sounds just massive. He's got some delicious fills. Let's play a few of those. Here's one of the legendary fills when we come back from the freak-out section,

which we'll be talking about in a second. Ah, man, you hear the ghost notes? On the snare. Yeah. It's so subtle. He's huge. It's like bigness and subtlety at the same time. And nowadays, we have,

We have programs. We have programs in the machine where you can try and duplicate that, but there's nothing like the good old analog of 20-foot-plus high ceilings. Of a giant man named John Bonzo Bonham with his giant sticks. They were so big that they had to make. They're called trees, legendarily. He would have these giant drumsticks, big man, big kit, big room, big sound. Another funny thing is that you can hear him.

When he plays, he kind of grunts and shouts. So there's some really fun moments here where you can hear him. doing that. He's like, Ah! That sounds like a crazy Englishman right there. That's animal right there. That's animal. This has to be animals. Obviously, this is... I thought animals was based on Keith Moon.

I think he's Keith Moon. He's a little Keith Moon. He's a little bit. John Bonham with the crazy... First time I saw Travis Barker live, I was just like, oh, that's animal. One more thing I need to play because we have this... The format of this song, let me just back up for a second, is also unusual. It's got this really long intro with no drums.

30 seconds of you need cool in, baby, I'm not fooling, just guitar. And then the drums come in, but only for 45 seconds. And then at minute, basically, 115, we have a minute 45 of just crazy freakout section. And we'll be getting into that when we get into the guitar part. But it's unusual format-wise that we just have a really short section with drums, the main beat. Yeah. And then it goes away.

Comes back briefly. We have another break. Comes back again. Definitely not your typical radio song. And Jimmy Page refused to. he was really opposed to having this five and a half minute song get cut down for radio. Fortunately, somebody at his record label said, look, we'll just do it for America, so you'll never have to hear it or rarely.

So famously in the freakout section, he's keeping the high hat going and he's playing the ride kind of periodically. This is meant to just sort of evoke a vibe. It's a lot of sound swirling and Bonham is playing this. And there's a lot of bleed. What is that sound? So that's Jimmy Page, sonically experimenting. with a lot of cool toys, not the least of which is a theramine.

Ah, that's a theramine. Yeah, he's got a theramine in the mix there. But the theramins with a delay and it's got the guitar. A lot of sound is mixed together in those sounds that we're hearing. That's an instrument you always hear about, but you rarely hear it executed in a song. Right. Of any notes. To say nothing of a rock song.

Yes, exactly. There's also a percussion section, which is Bonham and John Paul Jones gets a bongo credit. So you hear a little bit of this in the background, too. kind of chaotic. But Bonzo is somehow locking it in, even though he's, it's that high hat that kind of locks it all together. And again, this is a minute 45. We'll be hearing more of those sounds in a moment. All right. Tell us about the bass. This is John Paul Jones, born Mr. John Baldwin, and he is playing the riff, the Jimmy Page riff, and he's also doubling it. There's an octave

on the bass, and he's kind of just consistently repeating this pattern, simple and deliciously. repetitive, hypnotic, really just laying the groove underneath it. Again, this is just mirroring what Page is doing on guitar. There's a handful of fun variations. But for the most part, for five and a half minutes, he's playing that. Let's get into Jimmy Page's guitar. Well, we all know that riff because it happens at the very top of the song. So let's hear when it changes from a two-bar loop to a one-bar loop a few seconds in.

Again, just repeating that same riff, that iconic riff. the number one riff of all time, according to all these listeners and readers in England and America, I suppose. What's interesting when you hear that isolated to me right off the bat is it's dirty, messy, imperfect, wonderfully so. And that gives it some variety as it is the same riff from one moment to the next. The little imperfections help your ear stay interested, I think. I think Paige among guitar players is notoriously incredible, amazing, composer, producer, mastermind, and also wonderfully messy and sloppy and imperfect at times in a way that is kind of punk rock it's a lesson to the to musicians that perfection is secondary creativity sound innovation interestingness maybe it's

primary so i only noticed when i was listening to the stems that he has this variation when we come back at the very end for the final repeat where he makes a little variation on the riff and it's not always perfect i'll play it for you like that was a little fun And you can tell because this time he gets it right. He's going for that major third. And the first time, he was a little flat. But it's in the final version. And that repetition, da-da-da-da-da.

That little variation of the riff that we're only hearing at the end of the song like that. He repeats that several times. It's clearly not copied and pasted or at the time it would have been flown in on the tape from the one right one. He just plays it a bunch of times. They're not all the same. and that's Jimmy Page for you. He's like, look, it sounds cool. It adds some variety.

So let's jump to the freak out because that's where stuff gets interesting, creative, and transformative, right? There's no minute and a half freak out, first of all, in the muddy waters, but maybe there's also no freak out without Jimmy Hendrix. Let's listen.

These kind of soundscapes that they're building. It's giving angry duck. It's got some angry duck noise. We got angry duck noises. What else do we have? We have this. That's, That's very big.

Giving Daytona 500 Freeway. I'm hearing a lot of Jimmy in that too. Oh, he once it got there, but at first it definitely sounded like NASCAR. They're creating a soundscape, and by the way, the they in this case, to give credit. So the song was recorded, the recording engineer,

is George Tichan, as I believe how you pronounce his name. And he, interestingly and importantly, had also recorded Jimmy Hendricks prior to recording the song. But the mixing engineer, Eddie Kramer, was another former. engineer for Jimmy Hendricks. So it's very interesting and makes a lot of sense to make

this connection with Jimmy Page clearly being a fan of Hendricks, hiring two Hendricks engineers to make some Hendricksy sounds in the middle of this track. I've heard a lot of disturbing things about Jimmy Page's behavior. This whole band has sort of a notorious reputation when they're on tour. But

I will say that hearing Jimmy Page's isolated guitars, you understand the appeal. Like it sounds like you're in a dark pub and there's just you're being hit by bass, you're being hit by Bonham's drums, and you're being hit by this crazy guitar, like it feels like an audio assault, but also like if you've been drinking, you know, beer all night. You know what I mean? There's nothing appealing to that

if you've ever been in those environments. I'm so glad you brought this up because I, especially listening back to the stems in isolation, but also just thinking about this, the catalog and who they are as people in the lyrics and the presentation and and the sort of imagery on the album covers. There's a lot of Englishness about them. Yeah. Which is so specific. And to me, because I'm not British myself, it seems very mystical and far away and kind of oldie-timey.

So there's like a pub culture thing, but there's also like misty mountain hop and the olden days. And there's, you know, there's lyrics about Gallum and the evil one. So Middle Earth. There's something about this band which is evoking another time in Great Britain before it was great Britain, which is very mystical and mysterious. And that really shines through for me, in addition to borrowing from the blues and borrowing from Hendricks, the transformation idea is really a big part of this to me because it is synthesizing a lot of different things, not simply the lyrics, and again, not the guitar parts, but not just some of these words from this Willie Dixon song.

There's a lot going on here, which is new and transformative, and kind of bringing it into the 70s. You know, this is the turn of the decade. we are creating in a lot of ways a new genre. Hard Rock is starting with maybe Sabbath at the same time, but it's starting with these new sounds coming together in this new way. So this solo, Guitar World, 2013, number 17 solo of all time, or I should say greatest wah solos of all time. I mentioned before it.

They're innovating with sound. They're building on what Hendrix has already started to innovate with sound, famously with Wa pedals and such. A lot of what's happening in this freakout section is panning, which is kind of new, the stereo image, going from your left ear to your right ear. We sort of take for granted, but that was a new technology to take advantage of.

So people are listening to like, what? It's over there. No, it's over there now. It seems simple, but at the time... That was when you would smoke a J and lay down on the floor with both speakers pointing from opposite ends and then you just get lost, man. But it's still exciting now.

It's underrated. I was listening to this in my living room on vinyl in the middle of the room, and it's still cool. It's like, what is? Page is over here. No, he's over there now. What's happening? Whoa, crazy.

Let's listen to what Jack White calls. the greatest guitar solo ever recorded. We all know that note for note, a Zeppelin pedd out there. We all know it. We all know, except for this tone. This might have been one of the times where I actually did not know

where in the world in the song we were, except I was look at your foot and you were doing the bottom kick drum. Let's hear some vocals. I will say, even if I didn't know Led Zeppelin, I felt like I knew Robert Plant's voice because it is so distinct. I mean, it's up there with Freddie Mercury

and like some of the best, voices in, you know, classic rock music. Robert Plant, one of the greatest all-time vocalists, not just for his range, but for his cock rock stylings. You got to understand that this is a man who gets on stage and is a sex god in the most 70s sense of the word. You know, he's got the open shirt. He's got that pre-fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nix look going on.

I mean, you know, kind of hippie, flowery. Going back to the Englishness thing, there's an Englishness about him to me. I don't know why. but he's on there and then he just lets loose with this enormous range of a voice with so much power and emotion. And we'll hear that in a second, but let's start with verse one. You need I'm not fooling back to school. I've got to piss a lot of people off, but when I hear that voice, I also hear his influence on Stephen Tyler. Oh, definitely.

100%. That's the voice that I hear of my head when I see Stephen Tyler's face. It has to be Stephen Tyler's favorite vocalist of all time, right, Robert Plant? Absolutely. Yeah, you're right. There's also a little bit of, I think, I think he obviously had a huge impact on Axel Rose. I think that's what Axel Rose was going for. I think Robert Plant is the er, white, heavy metal or hard rock vocalists for hard rock vocalists that came after.

He was the one in the same way that Bonham and Page and Don Paul Jones, frankly. Like you are, like, you are. Oh, I did never heard. It's a pretentious German sound. I didn't know. Like Uber, but ooh. Er, okay. Yeah.

Let's go to that epic chorus. Yeah. Is that two voices? Great question. Is that Robert playing somebody else or Robert playing doubling? It's actually Robert Jimmy and John Paul Jones on backing vocals. It's unusual that you would have kind of a three-part harmony in a Led Zeppelin song. It's not zero times across the catalog, but for the most part you don't really hear a lot of,

especially three-parters like that. And yeah, interesting that it's Jimmy and John Paul Jones on there on the vocals. You alluded to the fact that there's some whaley stuff in here. I like that term whaley. Let's hear some whale. I don't mean whale noises. I think Jimmy Page is taking care of that. We can spell.

There's some whale, weeping and whale and whales. Yeah, yeah. Maybe this is less of a whale and more of a yelp. And I'm just warning to our listeners out there, it's a little yelpy. That was a lot more like an actual whale, W-H-A-L-L-E than I expected. Maybe it was less yelpy than I thought. In my mind, I'm like, it's about to be yelpy. Are we sure he's singing?

What's going on in the studio? I think those are Robert Plant sex noises, is what we're hearing. Good Lord. It certainly made me. And by the way, I'm got him impressed because that does not sound easy to do. Yeah. I think he's on that note and go up in notes like that. Yeah, and intensity.

In intensity? That's crazy. That's what he does. That's why he's Robert Platt. That's why he said earlier. He's on stage. Sex-goding. Oh, sex gotting.

He's a golden god. Yeah. I am a golden god. You hear there's like distortion in the, the recorded version of that too. He's dirty. But when you hear that love, you have to hear the lua, lo, lo, la, la, la, a.k.a this.

These are some legendary Robert Plan sounds, my friends. I don't know if it's because we're more than 50 years removed from it. I can't take that seriously. Like, I respect it. It's fantastic. But I also don't know how they weren't all laughing at it. Well, okay. But to be fair in the mix, you know, it is more of a, you know, in context, you know, it makes a little more sense, right?

It makes sense. And listen, if they were. really chasing sort of like, you know, African-American Mississippi blues singers who are influenced by their religion. You're right with the African drums, too. I didn't even thought about it. Well, I was going to say, if they're influenced by the religion, then there's that tradition of speaking in tongues. And maybe he was just trying to channel that. Right. Again, I am here to give Jimmy, Robert, and the boys all the, all the benefit of the doubt because who can doubt with their resonance with the audience? They're feeling it. And they're spreading these ideas and these sounds. And by the way, they're, bringing a lot of people belatedly, perhaps,

but to the original artists, perhaps against their will and belatedly. Look, if you're trying to speak in tongues, which, you know, maybe that was, maybe that was Robert trying to speak in tongues, or maybe he was just feeling the moment. You know, sometimes something's really good, and you're like,

oh, ow, ow, ow, oh, oh, oh. One thing that our show does that I'm so proud of is that because we have the stems, we can play you sections of the song that you've never heard before, no matter how many times you've listened to the group because they're after the fade out. That's right.

And they were not on the track, so go ahead. A song fades out at about five minutes, 30 seconds. But it's a 30 minute track. They literally performed it for a half hour sometimes. So after the fade out, because at a certain point, they just had to stop performing as musicians playing. There are overdubs on the song, but for the most part, it is a live band. And you can hear that in this after the fadeout thing.

One song exclusive, a whole lot of love after the five minute 30 second mark. It sounds like this. Wow, that's sounded amazing. And that's the end. And that's the end. That sounded amazing. That little guitar part of the year? That's a live band. That's not amazing.

There's at least one guitar over-depth because we're hearing several guitars, but the drums, the bass, the rubber plan of it all. It's a live band playing a live song. Only on this show are you going to hear that? Only on one song. So it appears that these legal disputes are a big part of Led Zeppelin's legacy. And there was a case that was only recently resolved, I think it's late as like 2020. Yep. That set a bit of a precedent in the music industry.

Why don't you tell us about that case? All right. Well, perhaps you have heard a song called Stairway to Heaven, a song so famous that it's famously against a lot of play at Guitar Center. Careful. Hey, no stairway. Denied. One of my favorite movies, one of my favorite scenes. So Stairway to Heaven is arguably, if not Led Zeppelin's most famous song.

One of the most famous songs ever made on planet Earth. It's from Led Zeppelin 4, which is from 1971. and I say for him in quotes. You know it's roons. It's runes. It's unintelligible, non-soundable sounds. A lawsuit was brought in 2014 by the estate of Randy, California, on behalf of the song.

That somebody's name? Yeah. Randy California? Well, yeah, I think he was born with another name. The question was raised whether or not this. And then you have a song by a band called Spirit called Taurus from 1967, recorded in 1968 but written in 1967, which sounds like this. Judge Riddle, I got a question for you.

When you hear song A and song B, do you have thoughts? You play two different song? I'm sorry, song A. That sounds a lot like song B. Yeah. And song B sounds a lot like song A. You're not wrong. So tell us the story.

They do sound very similar. Well, so in 2014, a lawsuit was brought by the estate. That's important to me. is the estate of Randy California, who's the guitar player and the sole songwriter of that song, Taurus, by Spirit. And look, I just want to talk about this a little bit, because you heard what I heard, what everybody heard, which was two things that sound similar, right?

I mean, is that kind of the crux of it? Is that we hear? Yeah, they sound very much alike. So remember this two-prong test I mentioned earlier in the episode, the legal test for copyright infringement is, was there access? So we can answer that right away because Jimmy Page was a fan of the band's spirit. Oh, my God. Jimmy Page.

Yeah, I mean, there's evidence placing him at a lot of their performances. They even... Jimmy Plage? They even shared a few stages together, apparently, Zeppelin and Spirit. Or maybe it was the Yardbirds in Spirit. In any case, access, I think, is a yes. So then the question is, is there substantial similarity? Kind of, yeah, they're both what are called arpeggios,

which means that it's the notes of a chord. Played, ding, ding, ding. Those are the notes of that chord. That's an A minor, I suppose. And then the chords themselves. are descending. So what's happening is that we're hearing a melody quote unquote, which is comprised of the notes of a chord, and we're hearing the next melody comes from the next chord and they're descending. So those things are similar, but here's the rub is that nobody can own those two things.

They're in the public domain and they should be in the public domain. Nobody should own an arpeggio any more than as we've discussed on earlier episodes, no one should own chord changes. And that's all that's going on here that is similar. would before except that if I make a song that sounds as much like stairway to heaven as the song from spirit, I guarantee you I'm going to hear from Jimmy Page's attorneys. So if I got the sense that like these baby boomer rock stars weren't so litigious, it'd be like, okay, well, that's just the guiding philosophy. But it's like, oh, it's okay that I take from people in the 60s, but you better not touch it now. But what's interesting and important is that the fact of them sounding alike is

irrelevant because with musical copyright suits it's not about how they sound it's about the music that underlies them and whether those similarities are protectable the fact that they both kind of are acoustic guitar sounding even the key changes and the instrumentation it's irrelevant to the question of what's the name of the spirit song torus okay so i think you know the next time i go out and perform with my band which i do all the time uh we're going to play torus and i don't want to hear nothing from the estate of any Led Zeppelin person. Because to me, that's the problem, right? Yeah.

Like, you just played two songs for me. They sound damn near. You could have told me one was, you know, somebody playing a cover of Led Zeppelin. I would have totally believed you. I don't know, I haven't heard the whole song, Torres. So obviously it's different after that. Yeah, it might be different after that.

It's an instrumental for that matter. But we've seen people sued for way less. So again, Blurred Lines is a faulty decision. Blurred Lines is incredibly faulty, and I'm glad you brought that up, because this lawsuit tried to do a blurred lines, basically. They clearly had an understanding that what they had was an unprotectable. Like the similarities were not protectable. You can't legally say that this arpeggio and chord change combination with the sound instrumentation was enough.

So they decided to throw out at things like the lawsuit accused page of stealing, quote unquote, spirits, among other things, use of the theramen and other psychedelic audio effects. I mean, they're grasping for straws. They are grasping for straws. But literally in the lawsuit, it's interesting that they point out. that Randy California was also using a theremin, and they think that Jimmy Page got his idea to do that in a whole lot of love for him. That to me sounds like desperation because you know that Jimmy Page being a bazillionaire

is going to have really good attorneys. So you just have to make it as airtight as possible. But I think if I was an actual judge and I had that, I would say this is actionable. This spirit lads up one thing. The blurred lines thing is not actionable. So again, it kind of depends on which judge you get in front of because I would judge differently. So first of all, I'd probably be reversed in both cases. Right. I think I really want to make

this point clear, though. It doesn't matter that they sound the same because it's the underlying musical similarities that matter and whether those are infringements, whether those are ownable. In other words, the fact that what we just heard definitely sounded similar, the acoustic guitar, etc. Are you saying they're different notes? They are both arpeggios, which you cannot own, and they are both descending chord changes, which you cannot own. And that is the end of the similarity beyond these peripheral things that we agree are irrelevant. One last thing I will say is that in demonstrating the lack of ownership factor, the musicologists who were defending Zeppelin, they cited this song as evidence of prior art, which is how you prove that like, not only do you not own this,

but a lot of people before you have already done this from this song from 1964 called chim chim chimchim chrie. was one of dozens of songs that were cited, but I just thought that was the funniest. To prove the point that arpeggios, no one can own those, descending chord changes, no one can own those. People did it before you did Randy California.

I think we need common sense. You know, like the same way we heard something earlier from Muddy Waters and I was like, you know, that's inspiration. That's not interpolation. This is inspiration. To me, that is inspiration.

Me too. Chim, chim chim chimchree. But those other two songs, that's, it's just to, it's just too close. And I know that you might say that the law says something, but this is why we might need to change the law. So it's a little bit more common sense. I think that vibes should be protected, but we got to take this case by case because I just think anybody, again, to my ears,

those songs are way too similar. Well, we may disagree on this. We may or may not, we may actually end up disagreeing on this. Look, let me just say that the final result was that an L.A. jury ruled in favor of Led Zeppelin in June 2016. They said that, while page and plant clearly had access to the song, Torres, the two-step thing. The song's riff was not intrinsically similar. In 2020, the Supreme Court agreed. And in my opinion, this is good because the protected idea, you have to remember, a protected idea, if it had been found to be infringing, that would mean that no one could use these arpeggios or core changes anymore. That's the thing that I think people forget about these court cases, that what you're saying is,

this is no longer public material. This is no longer in the public domain to be used by people. That is where we agree is that I think it should be closer to this decision than the other decision, but because of the other decision, it just seems like the law is all over the map. Listen, I just want to give props as we close out this section and with some agreement and some disagreement, but I think mostly agree. We want music to be in the public. I just want one standard, not two. There's a quote from someone that I want to give props to Charles Cronin who teaches at the George Washington University Law School and it has this incredible archive where I've learned so much about all these court cases called the music copyright infringement resource. His philosophy on

this, and I think it's really well put, so I'll just directly quote him, quote, my belief is that unless a purportedly infringing work essentially supplants the first work in the marketplace, I don't think it should be considered infringement. In other words, if you're buying Starway to heaven and therefore not buying Taurus by spirit, that to me says everything, because what I think is probably more likely is that Stairway to Evan is going to lead you to Taurus. I think a lot of these songs are going to lead you to the originals. And that's true. We talk about it all the time in sampling where the new use of a song, the new use of an idea

often brings people back to its origins. That said, it should be fairly compensated. Yeah, there should be compensation. Right. And again, I don't think you can talk about vibe in the blurred lines case and not talk about vibe here. I think these are two similar vibes. So again, the problem isn't.

We agree on that. But that's not against the law. The problem is with the blurred lines decision. The problem is with the blurred lines. You're exactly right. And that one should not have gone the way it did. And it would be more fair and equitable. Maybe we can overturn that.

And Citizens United. All right. Luxury, it's time for one more song. This is the segment where we share a deep cut or a hidden gym with you, the one song nation and with each other. Luxury, do you want to go first? For my one more song this week, I want to talk about, I want to play for you, the song by New Order from Appeal session, so a lesser known new order cut.

John Peel. John Peel sessions. Yeah, from the BBC. This song is called Turn the Heater on. I love this song because it's a cover of a song by Keith Hudson, is a reggae song. And it apparently was one of Ian Curtis's favorite song. So after he passed, they decided to do a cover for the Peel session.

And it's very melancholy. I was going to ask, what new order period is this? Is it at the beginning of New Order? Yeah, very beginning. It's like 1980, late 80, early 81 kind of zone. where things were, they're just transitioning and they're not even sure who the singer is, as we talked about, on our Blue Monday episode, which you should go back and listen to. You might have to scroll way, way down, though. It's been a while.

Literally, one of the first episodes. And what about you, D.L.? What is your song this week? Today's song might surprise you. Okay. I am choosing a song that I heard, and I think it's really, really good. It's by this artist's name, Luxury. And the name of the song is why.

Did I surprise you? It's my new single. It's a really good song. Thank you. crazy. I really love it. I appreciate that, my friend. Oh, dude, I mean, like, we sort of came together because we share a love of like sort of

electronic music and with an indie edge and, and there's a lot going on in the song audibly. Do you want to tell me like what was the inspiration for why? I've just been in the mood to do some like weird stuff recently. So like this sounds different from some previous songs. I've done like, look, the song is called Why. I mean, when the song titles kind of come based on. the sound like that's what i heard from a sample that i buried and mixed up in there

nice and then i heard that sample in there it was very cool it ended up being so accurate because i like uploaded this right as chaos was being unfolded onto planet earth in the most recent iteration with fires and elections and everything so sometimes being a musician it's very gratifying for something you make to like address a situation in ways that i hadn't anticipated i didn't intend for it to be about this moment but it feels like this moment for me why i get i I can tell that the music's in your body. For those of you watching on YouTube, you can see, like, there's something that's, like, carbonated inside of him.

And I just, you know, it's a reminder once again that we have one of the gifted musicians, you know, here on the podcast talking about other people's music, but your music is outstanding, sir. Well, thank you, my friends. Very kind. As always, if you have an idea for one more song, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram at Diallo, DIA, L-L-O, and on TikTok. And you can find me on Instagram at Luxury with Two-Xes and on TikTok at

L-U-X-X-U-X-U-R-Y X-X. And now, One Song officially has its own Instagram and TikTok accounts. Go follow at One-Song podcast for exclusive content and all the music debates that you love. And also nudity, I kid, there's no nudity. You can watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube right now. Just search for One Song podcast. We'd love it if you like and subscribe. And if you've made it this far, I think that means you like this podcast.

So please don't forget to give us five stars. leave a review and share with someone you think would like it. It really helps keep the show going. That's true. Share with the one you love. Luxury, help me in this thing. I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist luxury. And I'm an actor-writer-director and sometimes DJ, Yala Rood. And this is one song.

We will see you next time. This episode is produced by Casey Simonson with engineering from Marcus Homme and Eric Hicks. Additional production support from Razak Boykin. The show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Wael, and Leslie Guam.