Defend the Indefensible: Artists claiming other artists ripped off their steez...

So apparently Andy Gill of Gang Of Four has been quoted as saying that Red Hot Chili Peppers are "a rip-off" and that they "owe [him] a career". I detest RHCP and love Gang Of Four, but really?? So they both had some funky basslines and stuff, but... just?

This reminds me of when Mariah said some shit about Christina ripping off her image and music, which is kind of hilarious IMO.

Is this ever justified? Shouldn't artists be flattered to see they've spawned imitators? Should they all just GTFO their high-horses or wut?

Isn't this something that Spacemen 3 used to throw at Loop?

my copy of Entertainment! has a short introductory essay by Flea in the notes, talking about how disgraceful it is that Go4's influence on the music that followed them is so underacknowledged. Quality trolling from EMI?

RHCP have been pretty open about acknowledging their Gang of Four influence. I think Andy Gill produced their first album, right? I've never heard a Gang of Four song, other than "I Love A Man In Uniform", so no idea how closely RHCP rips them off.

there are degrees. gill's accusation is ridiculous, apparently predicated on the idea that anyone combining punk and funk owes him a check. even the early RHCP stuff that gill produced sounds almost nothing like GO4. is he fuming about fishbone, too?

on the other hand, i half understand spacemen 3's initial peevishness towards loop. the bands moved within similar/overlapping circles at the same time, and loop was said to have swiped S3's entire game - sound, style, aesthetics, etc. but after a year or two, they'd both moved in different directions, so it became a moot point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-zS17dQ5Ac

I can't believe that Mariah would suggest that xtina ripped her off when Mariah is so talented and glamorous. She's a sensitive woman, I guess. I have only <3 for xtina btw.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_MuLccl4t_UE/S01OTBnQ4eI/AAAAAAAAAWI/hYPnk25UNsI/s400/Kat%2BBjelland%2B%2BCourtney%2BLove%2Bbit24.jpg

Flea said verbatim the liner notes to the Entertainment reiusse that they owe everything to GoF. I think Gill was saying it like a little jokingly, but the ECHO CHAMBER put a little internet-age blogstank on it

Like, I dont think its an ACCUSATION, more of like a lighthearted thing, where he's glad a generation of kids ran with it and RHCP would be the first to admit it too

that's exactly what it was I think - christ is this really being posted about on blogs? I read it in the Metro yesterday :/

So apparently Andy Gill of Gang Of Four has been quoted as saying that Red Hot Chili Peppers are "a rip-off" and that they "owe (him) a career"

Unless this is from a different interview to the one that I read this week in Metro those aren't quotes.

From http://www.metro.co.uk/music/853528-andy-gill-major-labels-will-rip-you-off-unless-youre-coldplay-or-u2

What do you think when you hear yet another band who seem to have copied your sound?
I’m used to it now. The Red Hot Chili Peppers have obviously based their career on Gang Of Four and they’d admit that. The guitar on their single Can’t Stop was directly from one of our early songs and when I heard it I thought ‘that’s going a bit far’. I bumped into their bass player, Flea, a few years back at a party and he said: ‘Andy, I just don’t understand why you’ve never sued us.’

not sure why being ripped off by one of the worst bands on the planet is something to brag about

i'd hope it went unnoticed myself!

because they're "not Colin Newman of Wire"?

'shark niggas (biters)' skit makes this practice 100% defensible

I've heard things about The Black Eyed Peas and Beyonce.

Mariah is so talented and glamorous

Yes because Songwriting = Credible. Too bad she ruined her famous range in the oh-so-coveted Butterfly era by doing the hissy cat thing thinking it came off as sensual. On occasion her full range will make a comeback but quickly retreat.

speaka engles?

The indefensibility of this or not I would think depends on a/ whether the other artist/s actually DID rip off the originating artist/s steez and b/did they make shitloads more money out of it than the originator? If you are the originator and you can tick both a and b, then yeah, I think you could be justified in being angry about it and kicking up a fuss. I'm sure it must have happened, more than once, but I can't think of a specific example, the only thing that comes to mind is 23 Skidoo's "coup" but that's a track, not an entire sound/steez/whatever.

Alice Cooper re: Marilyn Manson

justified and also kinda funny

I wish Stevie Wonder had spoken in Weird Al's defense when Coolio threw that hissy fit over "Amish Paradise"
I feel like "you don't get to whine about someone else ruining your music when it's actually my music you ruined first"
is an honorable use of the "you ripped me off" card.

there's some weird 70s interview w/ tom verlaine where he claims roxy music ripped him off. not just like borrowed ideas, but he had this whole conspiracy theory, like eno played bryan ferry a demo tape and ferry stole everything. seemed really paranoid.

helluva drug

ah found the interview
TV:
(re the Eno/Island Records-funded demo fiasco)

-the only thing I can tell you about it would be bad! I mean I like Eno, I like his records... The bad thing about it is there was a very uncool A&R guy who took the tapes back to London and played 'em for every fucking artist on Island Records, so-& like I tell that to people but they don't believe it, it happens a lot, especially with the English... I mean they ripped off a whole fucking artform from Americans. And their whole esthetic is like if they hear something that's good it just sorta comes in their ear and goes out their mouth y'know-and most of 'em have the means to like set something on vinyl really quickly, crank out the stuff, so yeah, so there's a lot of lines that are on our record (MM) that might strike some people as familiar even though the songs are like 4 years old...specifically, a lot of the lines turned up on Roxy Music's SIREN record-at least a dozen! Some I got so distressed about I said 'Well FUCK! -if he's gonna take THESE lines! I mean how can I prove it, I can't prove it, right? But you know...

GE
Quote some, I'm very familiar with that album...

TV:
One of them is 'My heart stopped' and the whole band stops...

GE: (quoting Ferry)
'Will it stop?' (Sentimental Fool)

TV:
Right, which is a move we used to do in 'Venus de Milo' ...which I got bored with and changed anyway. Another thing is 'This case is closed' at the end of - see, I only heard the album twice, I got so like pissed off when I heard it I took it out and sold it (laughing) didn't want to hear it again!... And there was this thing about little birdcalls I think on one of the songs.

GE:
"Nightingale"

TV:
Right- we used to have like a (chirp-whistles imitating a bird) kind of effect on a song called 'Prove It'...another thing is on the tape I did for Eno I did a certain style of playing piano-a certain kind of harmony with two hands- which showed up in their keyboards on I believe the second song on the first side ("End of the Line") just a certain way like- but I can't claim originality for that, it was just curious that even THAT showed up... and then we had, the song 'Venus de Milo' the whole SUBject of it is Love is a drug, I mean there's even a line in it "It's all just like a new kind of drug" -and then there's this Roxy song (chuckling) on SIREN 'Love is the Drug'! ... Bryan Ferry's known as a thief y'know, everybody sort of knows it...

talking heads were playing "take me to the river" live and planning to record it (with eno) when it turned up on a brian ferry record

Maybe they both got the idea from Foghat

Mark E Smith's beef w/ Pavement was pretty well documented
(the artwork and Malkmus' little vocal squeals were pretty obvious lifts...)

*gough* TWO STATES *cough*

er I meant Conduit for Sale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anyvPX0NjFk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eckzjxXvcQ4

I mean come on this is really blatant

almost as blatant as Elastica biting Wire

the funny thing about stealing from the Fall is that Mark E. Smith doesn't really seem like someone you would want to provoke with yr petty theft

LA punker Black Randy claimed James Chance ripped him off in one of his songs. I don't know where they fit in time-wise relative to Gof4, but they were doing the punk/funk thing too.

From memory:
"James Chance, pull down your pants.
You stole my act, and that's a fact."

(re the Eno/Island Records-funded demo fiasco)

Vaguely knew about this years ago, never thought to research. There's a version of "Venus De Milo" on youtube that sounds like Sparks circa "Woofer In Tweeters Clothing!" Which is a great thing, but I'm happy that's not how the song ended up.

yeah and on early versions of that song, there is the "STOP!" part verlaine talks about

yeah, but there isn't that "chirp chirp (whistles)" bit

that's on the eno demo of "prove it" isn't it?

I love love love Spacemen 3, but the idea of them accusing anyone of ripping them off is pretty quaint, given that the majority of their early stuff is just The Stooges tweaked a bit. (Tweaked a bit in a wonderful way that I actually prefer to the Stooges, but still...)

Regarding Gang of Four, I've long been interested in finding out if there's any link between them and DNA. Both bands recorded around the same time. The start of "At Home He's A Tourist" and "You and You" are awfully similar, as far as the way the guitar scree/one-note bass is approached.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX5GGf3CIAU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoaqxjTRo04

Hmmm, same key too. Weird. I hadn't noticed that before...

it's a pretty tenuous thing to claim given how communal music is.

Yeah, I just don't know. It's weird that they were both doing this at the exact same time, albeit in different countries. Maybe just a zeitgeist thing...

I don't know how "communal" DNA were at the time of their single though...

lol my post was more a disembodied response to the title of the thread, only just now saw what you wrote above me.

Fair enough...

LA punker Black Randy claimed James Chance ripped him off in one of his songs
East Coast vs West Coast!
(i think i preferred Black Randy...)

I see no reason not to defend if if they are actually right about it, like the original writers of "He's So Fine" for instance. But some people gotta study copyright laws better, and realize copyright laws are really all about tunes and not so much about arrangement details or grooves or riffs or whatever.

This isn't really a case of anyone accusing anyone, but I've always wondered about it... In 1995, U96 had a big hit tune in Europe called "Club Bizarre":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTS087kq-KU

Which quite obviously takes its melody and some of the lyrics from Carlton's "Do You Dream" (which came out in 1990):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcLFuXGpeKQ

Now, I have the U96 album with "Club Bizarre", and it doesn't give any credit to the people who wrote "Do You Dream", i.e. Carlton and Smith & Mighty. On the album sleeve "Club Bizarre" is credited only to the producers behind U96. So I've been wondering, was there some backstage deal between U96 and Carlton + Smith & Mighty, or did U96 really rip them off so blatantly? AFAIK "Do You Dream" wasn't a big hit, but it wasn't an unknown tune either, and Smith & Mighty had a pretty big profile in the early 90s, so it seems unlikely U96 could've just gotten away with it.

Club Bizarre! I bought this album in France when I was about 14. Whoa, nostlagia!

The most blatant exampleI can think of, ...

The Doll, of "Desire Me" hitness back in the late seventies (in fact, this is off that double 7")

and The Cars, you know...

"Burning up like a fire" by The Doll has the exact same first verse 'structure' (and a bunch of lines too) that match the first verse of "Just what I needed" The Cars.

It's not the most original bunch of lyrics/tune, but.

(of course, it's too obscure for everyone but me (and Marcello, prob))