Did April Wine have to pay royalties Beatles and Stones?

BIG April Wine fan here. For those not familiar with their work, DEF check out their "cover" of "21st Century Schizoid Man" off that same album.

 

I forgot all about that.

 

There is also a section in I Like To rock that sounds like the baba o'reilly keybord thingy on top of the whole lotta love middle section hi hat pedal bit

 

Huge fan of the period before Harder Faster, give a listen to some of the stuff from On Record through to Stand Back. The Goodwyn/Clench years were better than the 3 guitar years IMO.

 

That's because Led Zeppelin called their bluff. They were after a settlement, which LZ/their publishers refused to pay as (for once) the charge of plagiarism against them was clearly bogus. So instead of settling (as they always do when legitimate claims arise) they fought it this time. Still pretty risky though given that it was a jury trial - but that is clearly indicative of how obviously weak LZ/their publisher consdered the case against them to be.

As far as the April Wine thing (which has been done several times by others both before and after they did it) seems brief enough and obviously an "homage" (which I would assume is protected in a similar way to parody in other mediums) to be "fair use".

Did they need to pay royalties? I doubt it, but I think its safe to assume that if they did it would have been an insignificantly tiny amount, considering (like I said above) how very many bands have done essentially the exact same thing a multitude of times in the decades before and since.

Plus unlike the many hip hop/rap lawsuits/settlements for "sampling" we've all heard of over the last three decades, I don't remember ever hearing of a single lawsuit (or a threat of one) based on this type of thing. Has there been?

 

I was watching the "I Like To Rock" video, and realized it was recorded in exactly the same place as the "Tom Sawyer" video in the demise of Le Studio thread. Spooky!

 

I just realized that myself

 

I always thought " Say Hello" would have been a great Fleetwood Mac song

 

Clearly bogus?

 

IMO, if that song made it as a "single" then royalties would probably have to be paid.

 

"I Like To Rock" was a rock radio staple in Canada for many years. An edited version that cut out part of the guitar solo became a major top 40 hit in certain areas such as Nova Scotia.

 

It's a bit of a gray area. Didn't Chuck Berry try to sue some artists for using that widely copied opening guitar lick from "Johnny B. Goode" and other songs of his only to be told that you can't copyright a lick? Bo Diddley also tried to get royalties on the many songs that used what has come to be known as the "Bo Diddley beat". It was decided that a beat can't be copyrighted, and it was mentioned in court that that beat was actually a variant of "Hambone" and "Shave and a haircut" which of course are in the public domain. The "Satisfaction" riff was used by Mac Davis in his song "One Hell of a Woman." Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love" riff was quoted in "Blues - Part II" by Blood, Sweat and Tears. The "Day Tripper" riff, on the other hand, has a melody that is a pretty essential part of the song, and actually an instrumental hook, so who knows?

 

Yes - it was based on no lyrical or melodic content - only a vaguely similar (nowhere close to identical) guitar arpeggio that is as old as music itself. It would be like trying to sue over a song with a Byrdsian "open D" strum where one finger moves around a bit.

So it would be like Roger McGuinn suing The Beatles (for 'If I Needed Someone') or perhaps even suing The Who (for 'Subsitiute') which doesn't really sound Byrdsian at all - but hey Townshend was changing one note of an open D-chord shape just like the Byrds did prior to him - so I guess he'd better lawyer-up!

PS - Once The Byrds undoubtably win that - totally legitimate and clearly not bogus at all lawsuit - I wonder who is going to sue them (and win) for having done the ""open D" strum where one finger moves around a bit" earlier than The Byrds did it and then who will sue the winner of that case for having done the ""open D" strum where one finger moves around a bit" even earlier than that.....

...and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on.....

 

I believe Wally Bryson successfully sued Eric Carmen for songwriting credit on "Go All The Way" for the guitar intro .

 

While I agree that the descending guitar arpeggio in question has been around far longer than Spirit or Zeppelin, the startling similarity between the recorded tracks -- to the point where, to my ears, they DO sound nearly identical -- is hard to deny. I say this as someone who considers "Stairway To Heaven" to be a crowning achievement in rock music, and as someone who's never been much of a Spirit fan. "Stairway" is obviously the superior song in every way, shape and form...but listening to "Taurus", there does seem to be a very strong basis for accusations of plagiarism.

It's not like Zeppelin doesn't have a long and sordid track record of lifting from here and there. Not difficult to really imagine that this was the source of "inspiration". I understand that there are no accusations of lyric or vocal melody theft -- and I do understand that it's a slippery slope when you get into guitar chords....but I do think "vaguely similar", and "nowhere close to identical" is way off the mark here. They're pretty much the same.

 

Really? If that's the case, then Lennon & McCartney should have sued for the "Come on (come on)" breakdown in the song!

 

I don't understand this stuff, honestly. Sometimes you can sue someone, sometimes you can't. It's like that song that Tom Petty sued someone (Sam Smith?) over, for sounding like "Won't Back Down". It did sound a bit like it, but enough to give him royalties? That seemed extreme. There are a lot of songs out there at this point that sound alike, isn't there? I guess it must be some sort of technicality that I don't know about.

 

They say RUSH is Canada's biggest band, but It's April Wine for me.

 

The Stones avoided the whole thing by just giving a credit to KD Lang because Keef's daughter thought "Anybody Seen My Baby" sounded like "Constant Craving"

 

So once a criminal - always a criminal.

The presumption should be Guilt - until proven innocent?

Um....OK....

 

When the Mayall/Clapton song was recorded, Day Tripper was still the Beatles' current single!

 

Fair use gives them a lot of room to use those quotes. The song isn't totally built on them. Also the effort and time the Beatles and Stones publisher would've expended wouldn't have yielded much of a payout.

Chris Spedding's "Guitar Jamboree"


and Scatterbrains "I'm Not Goung Down With the Ship"
Scatterbrain - Down With The Ship

are both a lot more "homagy". Scatterbrain even give the drummer some.

 

I think every artist has been paying royalties to The Beatles and Stones even if they aren't aware they are paying them...

But in all seriousness, I always have a hard time with this because, like anything, even song or melody borrowing can be in the ear of the beholder. For instance, I'm always amazed at how I'll hear a riff or intro and think, "wow, that reminds me of the opening to song X". And yet I never hear of anyone else bringing up the similarity. And yet, a lot of these cases that literally end up going to court, I would never have drawn the similarity between the two songs. It just seems so random, in many cases.

There's also the grey area of "all songs having origins in prior songs" to begin with. Artists copy artists, trends follow trends, innovations follow previous innovations. How can one really say whether the artist was "maliciously" using melodies or song fragments or simply crafting their own take built from them subconsciously as a byproduct of having loved or been exposed to the the song?

 

I think part of it has to do with prominence in the song.
In the April Wine example, it's at the end, so more clearly an hommage rather than trying to create a hit mainly off of someone else's idea.

Edit: Also Petty didn't go to jury. He may not have won if it went forth.

 

Whereas Foghat was a paper clip born and raised in rural Minnesota. #OMGdidyouseewhatIdidthereconfusingtwoentirelydifferentsensesofthewordstapleforcomiceffect

If you like interpolated Beatle riffs, altered to remain recognizable but not actionable, you might enjoy "Beatle" by Trip Shakespeare. It's got "Taxman," "Ticket to Ride," "Hey Bulldog," "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," "Birthday," probably some others as well.