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Historical Title: Plagiarists Or Innovators? The Led Zeppelin Paradox Endures Fifty years ago in September 1968 the legendary rock band Led Zeppelin first performed together, kicking off a Scandinavian tour billed as the New Yardbirds. The new, better name would come later that fall, while drummer John Bonhams death in 1980 effectively ended their decade-defining reign. But to this day, the band retains the same iconic status it held back in the 1970s: It ranks as one of the best-selling music acts of all time and continues to shape the sounds of new and emerging groups young enough to be the band members grandchildren. Yet, even after all this time when every note, riff and growl of Zeppelins nine-album catalog has been pored over by fans, cover artists and musicologists a dark paradox still lurks at the heart of its mystique. How can a band so slavishly derivative and sometimes downright plagiaristic be simultaneously considered so innovative and influential? How, in other words, did it get to have its custard pie and eat it, too? As a scholar who researches the subtle complexities of musical style and originality as well as the legal mechanisms that police and enforce them, such as copyright law, I find this a particularly devilish conundrum. The fact that Im also a bassist in a band that fuses multiple styles of music makes it personal. For anyone who quests after the holy grail of creative success, Led Zeppelin has achieved something mythical in stature: a place in the musical firmament, on its own terms, outside of the rules and without compromise. When Led Zeppelin debuted its eponymous first album in 1969, theres no question that it sounded new and exciting. My father, a baby boomer and dedicated Beatles fan, remembers his chagrin that year when his middle school math students threw over the Fab Four for Zeppelin, seemingly overnight. Even the stodgy New York Times, which decried the bands plastic sexual superficiality, felt compelled, in the same article, to acknowledge its enormously successful
electronically intense blending of musical styles. Yet, from the very beginning, the band was also dogged with accusations of musical pilfering, plagiarism and copyright infringement often justifiably. The bands first album, Led Zeppelin, contained several songs that drew from earlier compositions, arrangements and recordings, sometimes with attribution and often without. It included two Willie Dixon songs, and the band credited both to the influential Chicago blues composer. But it didnt credit Anne Bredon when it covered her song Babe Im Gonna Leave You. The hit Dazed and Confused, also from that first album, was originally attributed to Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. However in 2010, songwriter Jake Holmes filed a lawsuit claiming that hed written and recorded it in 1967. After the lawsuit was settled out of court, the song is now credited in the liner notes of re-releases as inspired by Holmes. The bands second album, Led Zeppelin II, picked up where the first left off. Following a series of lawsuits, the band agreed to list Dixon as a previously uncredited author on two of the tracks, including its first hit single, Whole Lotta Love. An additional lawsuit established that blues legend Chester Howlin Wolf Burnett was a previously uncredited author on another track called The Lemon Song. Musical copyright infringement is notoriously challenging to establish in court, hence the settlements. But theres no question the band engaged in what musicologists typically call borrowing. Any blues fan, for instance, would have recognized the lyrics of Dixons You Need Love as recorded by Muddy Waters on a first listen of Whole Lotta Love. Should the band be condemned for taking other peoples songs and fusing them into its own style? Or should this actually be a point of celebration? The answer is a matter of perspective. In Zeppelins defense, the band is hardly alone in the practice. The 1960s folk music revival movement, which was central to the careers of Baez, Holmes, Bredon, Dixon and Burnett, was rooted in an ethic that typically treated musical material as a commons a wellspring of shared culture from which all may draw, and to which all may contribute. Most performers in the era routinely covered authorless traditional and blues songs, and the movements shining star, Bob Dylan, used lyrical and musical pastiche as a badge of pride and display of erudition Look how many old songs I can cram into this new song! rather than as a guilty, secret crutch to hold up his own compositions. Why shouldnt Zeppelin be able to do the same? On the other hand, its hard to ignore the racial dynamics inherent in Led Zeppelins borrowing. Willie Dixon and Howlin Wolf were African-Americans, members of a subjugated minority who were especially back then excluded from reaping their fair share of the enormous profits they generated for music labels, publishers and other artists. Like their English countrymen Eric Clapton and The Rolling Stones, Zeppelins attitude toward black culture seems eerily reminiscent of Lord Elgins approach to the marble statues of the Parthenon and Queen Victorias policy on the Koh-i-Noor diamond: Take what you can and dont ask permission; if you get caught, apologize without ceding ownership. Led Zeppelin was also accused of lifting from white artists such as Bredon and the band Spirit, the aggrieved party in a recent lawsuit over the rights to Zeppelins signature song Stairway to Heaven. Even in these cases, the power dynamics were iffy. Bredon and Spirit are lesser-known composers with lower profiles and shallower pockets. Neither has benefited from the glow of Zeppelins glory, which has only grown over the decades despite the accusations and lawsuits leveled against them. So how did the band pull it off, when so many of its contemporaries have been forgotten or diminished? How did it find and keep the holy grail? What makes Led Zeppelin so special? I could speculate about its cultural status as an avatar of trans-Atlantic, post-hippie self-indulgence and me generation rebellion. I could wax poetic about its musical fusion of pre-Baroque and non-Western harmonies with blues rhythms and Celtic timbres. I could even accuse it, as many have over the years, of cutting a deal with the devil. Instead, Ill simply relate a personal anecdote from almost 20 years ago. I actually met frontman Robert Plant. I was waiting in line at a lower Manhattan bodega around 2 a.m. and suddenly realized Plant was waiting in front of me. A classic Chuck Berry song was playing on the overhead speakers. Plant turned to look at me and mused, I wonder what hes up to now? We chatted about Berry for a few moments, then paid and went our separate ways. Brief and banal though it was, I think this little interlude more than the reams of music scholarship and journalism Ive read and written might hold the key to solving the paradox. Maybe Led Zeppelin is worthy because, like Sir Galahad, the knight who finally gets the holy grail, its members hearts were pure. During our brief exchange, it was clear Plant didnt want to be adulated he didnt need his ego stroked by a fawning fan. Furthermore, he and his bandmates were never even in it for the money. In fact, for decades, Zeppelin refused to license its songs for television commercials. In Plants own words, I only wanted to have some fun. Maybe the band retained its fame because it lived, loved and embodied rock and roll so absolutely and totally to the degree that Plant would start a conversation with a total stranger in the middle of the night just to chat about one of his heroes. This love, this purity of focus, comes out in its music, and for this, we can forgive Led Zeppelins many trespasses. Aram Sinnreich, Associate Professor of Communication Studies, American University School of Communication Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top Page Up Full Thread Page Down Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Deckard (#0)
I'd never heard that Jake Holmes performance. Pretty damn good. And I love my Willie Dixon amongst the few thousand blues tracks I've got on my server. Blew my bro-in-law away a couple years ago when I put on a couple Crossroads Blu-rays to show him how the roots of rock 'n roll are the blues. Thanks!
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