January 28, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Stephen Davis, author of Hammer of the Gods, and Kirby Furgeson of the podcast "Everything a Remix" tell the story of how Led Zeppelin found themselves in a courtroom over a few of their songs...and why there are so many "copycats" and so-called "rip-offs" in the music industry.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we return to our American stories. And now it's
time for another Rule of Law story, which is a
part of our Rule of Law series where we showcase
what happens in the absence and the presence to the
rule of law in our lives. And we love music
on this show too. It's a big part of our lives,
all of our lives. Here's our own Monte Montgomery with
(00:30):
the story of how one of the biggest bands in
the world had to pay an influential musician from the
Deep South a bit of money.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Here's a question, how do a Southern blues man and
a lot of English rock bands from the sixties and
seventies connect. It turns out, in the case of Led Zeppelin,
at least a lot of ways, including in a courtroom.
Here's Stephen Davis, author of Hammer of the Gods, with
more on that Southern man in question.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Robert Johnson was considered by Jimmy Page and Mick Jagger
and Eric Clappton, all English guitarists of that period to
be the founder of rock and roll basically, and is
indeed the founder of recorded blues. I mean, he wasn't
by any means the first blues guy. To be recorded,
but Columbia Records sent down a producer called Don Law
(01:24):
to Arkansas in nineteen thirty eight or something, and he
made these twenty or thirty recordings with Robert Johnson. That
is the bedrock of the blues, of R and B,
of rock, of rock and roll. And so it's interesting,
you know that from a Southern perspective, at least Mississippi, Arkansas,
the delta that you know, this is where led Zeppelin
(01:46):
comes from in the first place. So it's not surprising
that later in their career they would be charged with
plagiarizing blues artists like Robert Johnson and a Book of
White and Willie Dixon.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Here's Kirby Fergus, creator of the documentary series Everything Is
A Remix with More.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
So Zeppelin is a great band, but they do have
this unusual history of copying from other artists, not transforming
the things that they copy, and then not attributing them.
So this was something that plenty of artists did something
kind of like that, usually just in the form of
cover songs, like all the bands of their era, like
(02:28):
the Beatles and the Stones and such. So led Zeppelin
were unusual in that day. They were a jam band.
They would play these long songs. Sometimes they would improvise
them on stage, and they'd be like sections to the
song where you do in this thing and then you
do something else, you do something else, rather than just
being a nice, compactive three minute song. So they would
(02:48):
take recognizable pieces from other musicians, and sometimes more than that.
Sometimes it would be, you know, basically an entire song.
But they would take pieces from other people, they would
incorporate them into their songs and they wouldn't switch them
around enough.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
And Muddy Waters and his band and Willie Dixon came
to London to give shows. One of the songs that
Muddy Waters did was written by Willie Dixon called You
Need Love, and I guess Jimmy Page was listening very
carefully because three or four years later he turned it
into a song called Whole Lot of Love, which was
one of the biggest radio grenades in America in nineteen
(03:23):
sixty nine nineteen seventy.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
And it sounds nothing like You Need Love, the Willie
Dixon song, but it's got a bunch of the same
lyrics like this is Robert plant Nick and lyrics when
when he should be writing new lyrics and instead he's
copying them from somebody else and dumping them in.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
And the credit on the led Zeppelin album reads plant
and page, meaning that they didn't give Willie Dixon any credit.
And this would cause problems for them immediately because the
rock critics of the day realized that led Zeppelin was
pilfering Willie days material. But nothing happened for a long time.
Willie Dixon died and eventually his I think his children
(04:06):
filed suit, and today if you buy a led Zeppelin album,
the credits read plant page bottom, Jones Dixon. The family
is being compensated. So you know, the system worked years
and years later.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
So they've made amends. It's something that young young artists do,
you know, they take from other people and they don't attribute,
like I don't think we should be too hard on
these people they copied. It wasn't just blues artists. It
was all sorts of different artists. It was folk musicians
and rock musicians, and it was all different types of music.
But that it kept going on is kind of the
odd thing, and the one that Zeppelin took a stand
(04:41):
on that they refused to just give a portion of
the songwriting to another artist was the case of Stereoay
to Heaven. It was a group called Spirit that wrote
a song called Taurus, and Spirit nobody knows who they
are anymore, but back in that era, everybody, any young
ambitious band, would have known who Spirit were, and Zeppelin
(05:02):
opened for them a few years before Stairway to Heaven
came out, so they perhaps were exposed to this song.
It's the opening acoustic guitar bit at the start of
Stairway to Heaven that resembles this similar guitar line from Taurus.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Written by a man in Spirit named Randy California.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Years and years later, his estate soon led Zeppelin on
the same grounds as the Willie Dixon estate, and Plant
and Page were concerned enough about this to respond in
court in California and testify.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
So Jimmy Page, in his testimony, claimed that he had
never heard the song Taurus.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
But when I was researching Hammer of the Gods and
I interviewed Robert Plant, he talked about how much he
loved the California bands when he arrived on the West
Coast in nineteen sixty nine, and he mentioned Spirit. Now,
I'm not here to accuse anyone of lying on the
stand but I was a little shock that they would
say that they had never heard of Spirit.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
I tend to think it would be hard for person
to remember if they did hear a song fifty years later.
But they are they're different as well, and the song
overall is nothing like Stairway to Heaven, but it is
some sort of derivative work.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Zeppelin beat the case in twenty sixteen, but it was
appealed in twenty eighteen revived, and then the US Supreme
Court could have heard it, but they decided not to,
effectively killing the lawsuit. There are countless other examples of
court cases like this, Katie Perry's Dark Corse case, Robin
Thinck's Blurred Lines case, Code Plays Viva LaVita case. So
(06:41):
that brings up a question, why are there so many copycats?
Speaker 4 (06:47):
We like copying. There's always tons of copying going on.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Right.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
People don't want to hear an entirely new kind of
song every time they fire up Spotify or whatever. Right,
they want something that's kind of like the stuff that
they already know. That's why we have genres, right, Like,
people want to hear kind of versions of the stuff
that they already like.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
And music is mercurial. I go back to bebop music
with Charlie Parker and Disney Gillespie. Charlie Parker would play
a lick and Disney Gillespie would play the same lick
and argue about you know who would get credit over
the songs.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
And it's sort of the cost of success, right, Like,
if you become big, people are going to copy you,
people are going to rip you off. So at first
it was Zeppelin that was copying people, and then in
time they went from the copier to the copy because
they became a big, successful band, and in particular the
beats to their song when the levee breaks, those got
(07:42):
used all sorts of times in early hip hop. It's
this famous Reverby drum beat that they did I Believe
in like a stairwell or something like that. It's got
a really distinct sonic quality to it, and hip hop
artists loved it and sampled it a lot early on.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
To be exact, the drums are sampled in over two
hundred and twenty songs from Doctor Dre to the Beastie
Boys to be York. They've all copied. It seems everyone
is copying, So what's the point of copyright law.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Without copyright law, artists can't make a buck, and the
big guys can steal from the small guys as much
as they like. It does help smaller artists because sometimes
smaller artists they're very influential, right, Like, they aren't necessarily
heard by everybody, but people in the know. Musicians know
who they are, right and they can get copied from
by dozens, hundreds, whatever, you know, lots and lots of
(08:37):
different musicians and potentially not make a cent from that.
So copyright is definitely a boon for people like Little Richard.
One of his early hits was Tooty Fruity, and I
don't believe it quite connected with white audiences. It was
too it was too much, too soon, So Pat Boone
did a cover of it.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
It was a hit.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
But at the same time, Little Richard made a bunch
of money, so it was a win in a lot
of ways him and I'm sure Willie Dixon made a
lot of money off of led Zeppelin.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
The interesting thing about Willie Dixon's family's copyright victory against
led Zeppelin is that it shows that in a civilized society,
the rule of law can actually work. I mean, these
were children of a deceased Chicago bluesman, basically suing the
biggest band in the world, and they won. So you know,
it's just in terms of the rule of law. One
(09:26):
of the good things about art system is that David
can go up against Goliath and sometimes David can win.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
And a great job is always by Monty Montgomery, terrific
storytelling about the rule of law and how it affects well,
even the things we love dearest. Check out Stephen Davis's
book Hammer of the Gods on Amazon. A terrific exs
of Jesus on rock and roll and modern American music.
Check out Kirby Ferguson on YouTube or his podcast Everything
(09:58):
Is a Remix on Spotify. And again, what terrific storytelling.
In the end of that story said at all that
these intellectual property rights protect the little guy from often
the big guy also can protect the big guy from
somebody smaller stealing. But the idea is, these are your
ideas and they're protected by law. The rule of law
is the reason our arts are so great, because our
(10:21):
artists are so free and protected by courts and by
property rights. The story of Led Zeppelin versus Willie Dixon,
and so much more here on our American story.
And we return to our American stories. And now it's
time for another Rule of Law story, which is a
part of our Rule of Law series where we showcase
what happens in the absence and the presence to the
rule of law in our lives. And we love music
on this show too. It's a big part of our lives,
all of our lives. Here's our own Monte Montgomery with
(00:30):
the story of how one of the biggest bands in
the world had to pay an influential musician from the
Deep South a bit of money.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Here's a question, how do a Southern blues man and
a lot of English rock bands from the sixties and
seventies connect. It turns out, in the case of Led Zeppelin,
at least a lot of ways, including in a courtroom.
Here's Stephen Davis, author of Hammer of the Gods, with
more on that Southern man in question.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Robert Johnson was considered by Jimmy Page and Mick Jagger
and Eric Clappton, all English guitarists of that period to
be the founder of rock and roll basically, and is
indeed the founder of recorded blues. I mean, he wasn't
by any means the first blues guy. To be recorded,
but Columbia Records sent down a producer called Don Law
(01:24):
to Arkansas in nineteen thirty eight or something, and he
made these twenty or thirty recordings with Robert Johnson. That
is the bedrock of the blues, of R and B,
of rock, of rock and roll. And so it's interesting,
you know that from a Southern perspective, at least Mississippi, Arkansas,
the delta that you know, this is where led Zeppelin
(01:46):
comes from in the first place. So it's not surprising
that later in their career they would be charged with
plagiarizing blues artists like Robert Johnson and a Book of
White and Willie Dixon.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Here's Kirby Fergus, creator of the documentary series Everything Is
A Remix with More.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
So Zeppelin is a great band, but they do have
this unusual history of copying from other artists, not transforming
the things that they copy, and then not attributing them.
So this was something that plenty of artists did something
kind of like that, usually just in the form of
cover songs, like all the bands of their era, like
(02:28):
the Beatles and the Stones and such. So led Zeppelin
were unusual in that day. They were a jam band.
They would play these long songs. Sometimes they would improvise
them on stage, and they'd be like sections to the
song where you do in this thing and then you
do something else, you do something else, rather than just
being a nice, compactive three minute song. So they would
(02:48):
take recognizable pieces from other musicians, and sometimes more than that.
Sometimes it would be, you know, basically an entire song.
But they would take pieces from other people, they would
incorporate them into their songs and they wouldn't switch them
around enough.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
And Muddy Waters and his band and Willie Dixon came
to London to give shows. One of the songs that
Muddy Waters did was written by Willie Dixon called You
Need Love, and I guess Jimmy Page was listening very
carefully because three or four years later he turned it
into a song called Whole Lot of Love, which was
one of the biggest radio grenades in America in nineteen
(03:23):
sixty nine nineteen seventy.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
And it sounds nothing like You Need Love, the Willie
Dixon song, but it's got a bunch of the same
lyrics like this is Robert plant Nick and lyrics when
when he should be writing new lyrics and instead he's
copying them from somebody else and dumping them in.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
And the credit on the led Zeppelin album reads plant
and page, meaning that they didn't give Willie Dixon any credit.
And this would cause problems for them immediately because the
rock critics of the day realized that led Zeppelin was
pilfering Willie days material. But nothing happened for a long time.
Willie Dixon died and eventually his I think his children
(04:06):
filed suit, and today if you buy a led Zeppelin album,
the credits read plant page bottom, Jones Dixon. The family
is being compensated. So you know, the system worked years
and years later.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
So they've made amends. It's something that young young artists do,
you know, they take from other people and they don't attribute,
like I don't think we should be too hard on
these people they copied. It wasn't just blues artists. It
was all sorts of different artists. It was folk musicians
and rock musicians, and it was all different types of music.
But that it kept going on is kind of the
odd thing, and the one that Zeppelin took a stand
(04:41):
on that they refused to just give a portion of
the songwriting to another artist was the case of Stereoay
to Heaven. It was a group called Spirit that wrote
a song called Taurus, and Spirit nobody knows who they
are anymore, but back in that era, everybody, any young
ambitious band, would have known who Spirit were, and Zeppelin
(05:02):
opened for them a few years before Stairway to Heaven
came out, so they perhaps were exposed to this song.
It's the opening acoustic guitar bit at the start of
Stairway to Heaven that resembles this similar guitar line from Taurus.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Written by a man in Spirit named Randy California.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Years and years later, his estate soon led Zeppelin on
the same grounds as the Willie Dixon estate, and Plant
and Page were concerned enough about this to respond in
court in California and testify.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
So Jimmy Page, in his testimony, claimed that he had
never heard the song Taurus.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
But when I was researching Hammer of the Gods and
I interviewed Robert Plant, he talked about how much he
loved the California bands when he arrived on the West
Coast in nineteen sixty nine, and he mentioned Spirit. Now,
I'm not here to accuse anyone of lying on the
stand but I was a little shock that they would
say that they had never heard of Spirit.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
I tend to think it would be hard for person
to remember if they did hear a song fifty years later.
But they are they're different as well, and the song
overall is nothing like Stairway to Heaven, but it is
some sort of derivative work.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Zeppelin beat the case in twenty sixteen, but it was
appealed in twenty eighteen revived, and then the US Supreme
Court could have heard it, but they decided not to,
effectively killing the lawsuit. There are countless other examples of
court cases like this, Katie Perry's Dark Corse case, Robin
Thinck's Blurred Lines case, Code Plays Viva LaVita case. So
(06:41):
that brings up a question, why are there so many copycats?
Speaker 4 (06:47):
We like copying. There's always tons of copying going on.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Right.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
People don't want to hear an entirely new kind of
song every time they fire up Spotify or whatever. Right,
they want something that's kind of like the stuff that
they already know. That's why we have genres, right, Like,
people want to hear kind of versions of the stuff
that they already like.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
And music is mercurial. I go back to bebop music
with Charlie Parker and Disney Gillespie. Charlie Parker would play
a lick and Disney Gillespie would play the same lick
and argue about you know who would get credit over
the songs.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
And it's sort of the cost of success, right, Like,
if you become big, people are going to copy you,
people are going to rip you off. So at first
it was Zeppelin that was copying people, and then in
time they went from the copier to the copy because
they became a big, successful band, and in particular the
beats to their song when the levee breaks, those got
(07:42):
used all sorts of times in early hip hop. It's
this famous Reverby drum beat that they did I Believe
in like a stairwell or something like that. It's got
a really distinct sonic quality to it, and hip hop
artists loved it and sampled it a lot early on.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
To be exact, the drums are sampled in over two
hundred and twenty songs from Doctor Dre to the Beastie
Boys to be York. They've all copied. It seems everyone
is copying, So what's the point of copyright law.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Without copyright law, artists can't make a buck, and the
big guys can steal from the small guys as much
as they like. It does help smaller artists because sometimes
smaller artists they're very influential, right, Like, they aren't necessarily
heard by everybody, but people in the know. Musicians know
who they are, right and they can get copied from
by dozens, hundreds, whatever, you know, lots and lots of
(08:37):
different musicians and potentially not make a cent from that.
So copyright is definitely a boon for people like Little Richard.
One of his early hits was Tooty Fruity, and I
don't believe it quite connected with white audiences. It was
too it was too much, too soon, So Pat Boone
did a cover of it.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
It was a hit.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
But at the same time, Little Richard made a bunch
of money, so it was a win in a lot
of ways him and I'm sure Willie Dixon made a
lot of money off of led Zeppelin.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
The interesting thing about Willie Dixon's family's copyright victory against
led Zeppelin is that it shows that in a civilized society,
the rule of law can actually work. I mean, these
were children of a deceased Chicago bluesman, basically suing the
biggest band in the world, and they won. So you know,
it's just in terms of the rule of law. One
(09:26):
of the good things about art system is that David
can go up against Goliath and sometimes David can win.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
And a great job is always by Monty Montgomery, terrific
storytelling about the rule of law and how it affects well,
even the things we love dearest. Check out Stephen Davis's
book Hammer of the Gods on Amazon. A terrific exs
of Jesus on rock and roll and modern American music.
Check out Kirby Ferguson on YouTube or his podcast Everything
(09:58):
Is a Remix on Spotify. And again, what terrific storytelling.
In the end of that story said at all that
these intellectual property rights protect the little guy from often
the big guy also can protect the big guy from
somebody smaller stealing. But the idea is, these are your
ideas and they're protected by law. The rule of law
is the reason our arts are so great, because our
(10:21):
artists are so free and protected by courts and by
property rights. The story of Led Zeppelin versus Willie Dixon,
and so much more here on our American story.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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