Does Link Wray get royalties from Richard Thompson's Shoot Out the Lights?

Jack-Flash-Jr

Cause really, he should. I was listening to a Dylan's Theme Tune Hour comp and I thought cool! Rumble! But no...
I liberate riffs as much as any other guy but wow.

Squonk

He is dead... ???

Bob-Dubery

Jack Flash Jr wrote: Cause really, he should. I was listening to a Dylan's Theme Tune Hour comp and I thought cool! Rumble! But no...
I liberate riffs as much as any other guy but wow.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I was assisting a friend of mine who was managing a band in Durban. He wanted to know about copyright. I toodled off to Gallo records and ended up speaking to Peter Lotis about this matter. He said that what gets copyrighted is what is referred to as "the bottom line". Roughly that's the main melody line. I think by that standard, which would have been in force when Thompson wrote that song circa 1980, there's no real problem. And how much do those songs REALLY have in common?

The song of Thompson's that actually raised more eyebrows was "For The Sake of Mary" which, some said, pinched the riff from Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl".

I think in both cases the similarities are superficial, and that's going to happen in music sometimes.

Anybody heard Dylan's last two albums. They certainly had that same quality, bits that were kind of like something you'd heard before.

Bob-Dubery

PS: Got a copy of Donald Fagen's The Night Fly handy? Take a listen to the piano solo on "Ruby Baby" and then get hold of a copy of "You Really Got Me".

Wizard

I'm not actually sure that originality exists.
We take what we know ... re-arrange it ... and add a bit.
Sometimes people recognize the underlying influence, sometimes they don't.

Jack-Flash-Jr

Squonk wrote: He is dead... ???

No he's not!

It's not just the riff though, it's the whole vibe of the intro... it didn't just remind me, I actually thought it was Rumble, for at least 10 seconds... legal? fine... moral? sure... annoying? Every time I hear it now!

Jack-Flash-Jr

He's on a tea pot circling earth....

8)

Renesongs

PS: Got a copy of Donald Fagen's The Night Fly handy? Take a listen to the piano solo on "Ruby Baby" and then get hold of a copy of "You Really Got Me".

??? I don't get it I can't hear "You Really Got Me" anywhere in Ruby baby either you talking about another "You Really Got Me" or you smoked all the tea out of Russell's pot.

singemonkey

All those obituaries I read must have exaggerated.

Bob-Dubery

Renesongs wrote:
PS: Got a copy of Donald Fagen's The Night Fly handy? Take a listen to the piano solo on "Ruby Baby" and then get hold of a copy of "You Really Got Me".
??? I don't get it I can't hear "You Really Got Me" anywhere in Ruby baby either you talking about another "You Really Got Me" or you smoked all the tea out of Russell's pot.

I refer specifically to Greg Phillingane's piano solo, and the first couple of bars thereof. Some folks assert that he's taken "You Really Got Me", forced it into the structure of the song he's recording and then built his solo from that. I'm not saying it's so, but you can certainly make yourself believe it with a little bit of effort. Some folks hear "Blue Moon" in the start of Clapton's solo on "Sunshine Of Your Love".

Jack-Flash-Jr

singemonkey wrote: All those obituaries I read must have exaggerated.

He's dead like Elvis buddy.

?

Bob-Dubery

I did some reading and googling RE this matter. I came across the original single of "Rumble" and it's certainly striking if, like me, you heard SOTL first but knew that Wray had recorded "Rumble" 25 or so years earlier. I also read claims that Deep Purple had lifted the chord sequence of "Rumble "for "Child In Time". I'm not sure they did, but there are similarities - how much you make of them is up to you. I think there are rhythmic differences between the Thompson and Wray compositions, though I'm not sure how much weight should be given to that.

Thompson's clearly playing tribute to Wray on SOTL, with the power chords and the tremolo effect. It'd be interesting to hear how he originally recorded it (on an album produced by the late Gerry Rafferty and never released) but I'd be surprised if it's that far away in it's broad strokes from the Joe Boyd produced version (the version that was eventually released on vinyl).

When does "tribute" become imitation? And how many similar chord changes do you need before it's plagiarism?

Thompson's had occasional gripes about being ripped off compositionally or stylistically but I don't recall him ever publicly fingering the culprits. He's alluded to it in songs though.

I also don't recall serious trouble between him and Wray or Wray's estate. The album Shoot Out The Lights got massive publicity when it was launched in the USA in 1982 (including the cover of Time Magazine) and there wasn't a stink about it then. Maybe they only come after you when you've had a platinum album.

Jack-Flash-Jr

Since there's no way he wouldn't have heard it I'm going with tribute... and that's ok. My larger issue is that Thompson's pretty cool song is tainted listening pleasure wise for me because I can't help hearing Rumble during the intro. I'd have preferred SOTL to stand on its own... purely subjective!

Bob-Dubery

Jack Flash Jr wrote: Since there's no way he wouldn't have heard it I'm going with tribute... and that's ok. My larger issue is that Thompson's pretty cool song is tainted listening pleasure wise for me because I can't help hearing Rumble during the intro. I'd have preferred SOTL to stand on its own... purely subjective!

Exactly. He'd have heard "Rumble" growing up so must have known what he was thinking of. Was it plagiarism?

Lennon had an interesting view on the stink surrounding George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord." He said he didn't believe it was deliberate plagiarism but that Harrison knew the song that he was accused of plagiarising well and that he shouldn't have recognised the similarities, seen what was coming and thus should have made a change before the album was released.

Bob-Dubery

X-rated Bob wrote: Thompson's clearly playing tribute to Wray on SOTL, with the power chords and the tremolo effect. It'd be interesting to hear how he originally recorded it (on an album produced by the late Gerry Rafferty and never released) but I'd be surprised if it's that far away in it's broad strokes from the Joe Boyd produced version (the version that was eventually released on vinyl).

When does "tribute" become imitation? And how many similar chord changes do you need before it's plagiarism?

I'm not sticking up for Thompson here. I'm asking the questions more generally. Every now and then I hear a piece of a song that reminds me of something else, and I wonder where the line gets drawn. Also I often find myself thinking that with only so many notes and so many useful chord changes something is bound to get unconciously repeated at some point.

This happens a lot when I listent to recent Dylan albums - they sound like a mishmash (OK... a collage) of things that I've heard before, but then Dylan has always been a bit of a musical magpie.

Reinhard

Cool song, I have to find a mp3 of that one. Yeh, the first 10 seconds is rumble.
I wonder what happened to the whole Coldplay and Satriani (or was it Vai?) debacle.

Squonk

Jack and Bob , this is very interesting!

Jack I understand exactly what you are saying, I cant listen to The Doors "Hello I love you" without thinking Kinks "all day and all of the night" and I am sure The Doors did not rip off the Kinks at all.

I find in my puny attempts at songwriting that I finish what would be in my mind a great song, only to figure "Hey I have heard that before" and then I 'can" the whole thing.Maybe I should work on these a bit more!

Is it plagiarism, I dont think so, Is it all these tunes that are in my head from listening to vast amounts of music , do some of them creep into my own songwriting, it's possible, Is it Deliberate, I dont think so!

Tribute - that's also a strong word, and I am sure that most people dont get it. I remember when Tull released Crest of a Knave and there was this hugely Dire Straits sounding "Said she was a Dancer". I remember friends all commenting that Tull were now stealing Dire Straits riffs. I'm sure Ian Anderson didn't have this in mind ?

People seem to only understand Tribute if you put it writing on the CD Sleeve.

Richard Thompson seems to have integrity and I am sure this was no deliberate rip off.

Bob-Dubery

Squonk wrote: Tribute - that's also a strong word, and I am sure that most people dont get it. I remember when Tull released Crest of a Knave and there was this hugely Dire Straits sounding "Said she was a Dancer". I remember friends all commenting that Tull were now stealing Dire Straits riffs. I'm sure Ian Anderson didn't have this in mind ?

"Tribute" can also be a euphemism for "cashing in on a sound that somebody had a big hit with." I heard quite a lot of Knopleresque guitar in the 80s (including on a Santana single).

Reinhard, the version that Dylan played on that radio show is the original album recording from the abum of the same name and released in 1982. There are several good live clips of the song on youtube - not identical but close enough.

I posted a link to one a while back, from a TV show in 2001. He breaks a string in the middle of his first solo - this seems to put a burr up his butt and the second solo is pretty good. There's a very good one of him doing SOTL with Elvis Costello and Costello's band, though for some reason the solos are truncated. A couple from the early 80s.... The Elvis one is perhaps quite useful in this case because Elvis has a great tremolo sound on his rhythm guitar which really highlights the similarities to "Rumble".

Bob-Dubery

Squonk wrote: Jack and Bob , this is very interesting!

Jack I understand exactly what you are saying, I cant listen to The Doors "Hello I love you" without thinking Kinks "all day and all of the night" and I am sure The Doors did not rip off the Kinks at all.

I find in my puny attempts at songwriting that I finish what would be in my mind a great song, only to figure "Hey I have heard that before" and then I 'can" the whole thing.Maybe I should work on these a bit more!

Everybody has influences now - even if they don't overtly manifest themselves in their compositions. Thompson and Dylan are actually both great musical magpies, soaking up all kinds of things and then using them in new and usually novel ways. I think that's what all creative people do, or it's part of what they do.

I really must lend you my DVDs of the first series of Elvis Costello's "Spectacle" TV show. On one episode the guest is Elton John, and Elton happily takes some of his old songs apart and shows where there are bits of Laura Nyro and Leon Russell lurking. Not plagiarism, I think it safe to say in this case, but certainly inspiration and admiration.

The best laid plans can go wrong as well. There's one obscure Thompson song that he says was an attempt to write something like the Rolling Stones, but then he had distractions when making that particular album and the rhythm section took the song off in another direction and any remaining resemblance to the Stones is quite well hidden.

Warren

I think you have more options with your melodic content than your harmonic content. Isn't this also borne out to some extent by the legal rules: your song's melody and lyrics belong to you but the rest does not?

Adding a new melody line over existing chord progressions is called a contrafact, and is how I imagine most of the world's pop music is created. You can also disguise the chord progression by changing the instruments used, or the style of articulation, or the rhythmic structure etc. and suddenly it all sounds very different. A gentle, fingerpicked I-VI-IV-V on an acoustic would sound nothing like the same progression using heavily saturated distorted rock guitar, especially with fresh melodic lines and a change in tempo. Yet somewhere underneath the songs would be "the same."

Riffs and licks are somewhat more grey, for me, because there are songs where the riffs are signature things (like Under Pressure by Queen) but they're not really part of the melody line, so I don't quite understand how that works. I, for one, would try to avoid using a well known riff in my own songs, but others don't worry about it.

@Squonk
I know exactly how you feel. I'm busy on a new song which sometimes reminds me of Dreams by the Cranberries, or something by Keane (and I don't even own a Keane album). I think you should try and avoid chucking stuff until you've put the whole thing together, because you might find that a small change toward the end could give it that unique character you're looking for.

Robert Smith famously was paranoid about the melody line of Friday I'm In Love, being sure that he'd ripped it off from somewhere. I find that soooo interesting, because the first time I heard that song I also thought the melody sounded so familiar. 8)