JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Stairway Lawsuit

I actually think the opposite of what you're saying here, not on this specific case, but in general. If you're a drugged out dude partying and albums are due, you're not at your best remotely. So stuff pops into your head and you likely don't know WHY it does, but you go, okay this works let's use it. He might not have INTENTIONALLY stolen it, but it isn't unlikely that he picked it up while it was playing some night and it stuck in his head. I can't imagine you've never once started working on your own song, gotten most of the way done, listened back and realized you've simply played the melody of an existing song. I know I did that several times over the years. What I would usually do in those cases was to keep the lyrics but write a new melody often basing it off my own orchestration ideas and I would make the adjustments and laugh about it. I remember being really excited one time to play a song I had written for a band I was in and I played it and they all said "that was great when Depeche Mode did it" and sure enough it was the same melody and there was even a similar lyric idea. It wasn't intentional in the least, and we had a laugh and moved on. With all the writing you've done I would be shocked if you never once had that happen to you. Melodies or lyric ideas often just pop into your head and often you have no idea where they came from. It is similar to when McCartney wrote Yesterday but was CONVINCED he had plagiarized someone else but his bandmates insisted no, it was amazing and original. In that case he thought that it was so well crafted it must have come from elsewhere. Ideas come like that. Now and then it was clearly from another source, unintentionally. Additionally, most melodies have been written before. Patterns that work, work. With the number of songs crafted worldwide, it is rare to come up with something new. And with all the music we are exposed to, especially songwriters, picking up inspirations from what pops into your head is quite common. It isn't an elitist thing either. Just because someone is an opening act doesn't make them scum of the earth devoid of talent compared to the great Jimmy Page. He's notorious for lifting ideas from other sources by his own admission. Why not the "opening act?"

Brian