Top 5 - Rock N Roll Plagiarism Suits
There are songs that sounds so familiar, you might even say they are the same. Tweak a bass line here, add a riff there, speed up the tempo and change the lyrics, wham, bam new song! But, giving credit to the originator is essential, and not doing so can force an artist to pay out some cash, sometimes a lot of cash. Here are my Top 5 Plagiarism Suits in the world of Rock N Roll:
5. John Fogerty plagirizes…himself! Deep in his feud with his former record label, Fantasy, John Fogerty released the album Centerfield with the hit Old Man Down the Road. Since he had relinquished his rights to all of his old CCR songs, the record company sued him for plagiarizing his old songs. Thankfully, the court ruled in his favor.
4. Vanilla Ice steals a bass line from Queen & David Bowie from the song Under Pressure to use in his song Ice Ice Baby. Ice claimed that he added or change a note in that bassline to make it his own. The musicians and the rapper settled out of court.
3. Randy California sued Led Zepplin for climbing his stairway to heaven. The Estate of Randy Wolfe, the late-guitarist for the band Spirit claimed that Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven copied a musical motif from his own song Taurus. The case began in 2014 and was originally in favor of Randy Wolfe's Estate, however appeals in the 9th Circuit were just released in March 2020 in favor of Led Zeppelin.
2. The Verve released the song Bittersweet Symphony in 1997, and the Rolling Stones sued the band claiming it contained a sample from their song The Last Time. Originally, the Verve had licensed the use of 5 notes from their song in exchange for 50% of their royalties, but the Rolling Stones claimed that they used a larger portion than was originally agreed upon. The court ruled in the Stones favor and, as a result, the Verve forfeited all of their royalties and publishing rights. They were sued again later for their mechanical rights. Verve had to give up all their rights to the song until May of 2019, when the Rolling Stones, in a change of mind, signed over all their publishing rights for that song to the Verve.
1. Roy Orbison sued 2 Live Crew saying that their use of his song Oh Pretty Woman in their song just called Pretty Woman was infringement. 2 Live Crew did use the full recording of his song, but they rapped over it and changing the meaning to something humorous. The Supreme Court ruled that the 2Live Crew version was a parody, which is transformative and often a form of criticism, therefore a fair use. This decision is a precedent that protects all other parody artists like Weird Al Yankovic
