Beatles lyrics and melodies borrowed from other songs

"Oh Darling" sounds a lot like "Please Come Home For Christmas" by Charles Brown from 1960.

 

Yeah, I've noticed that too.

Regarding the similarity to the Brubeck piece, I think it's more likely just a coincidence. The chords sound the same (just a standard minor II / V / I ), it would be easy to 'accidently' come up with a similar melody, IMO.

 

A quote from Paul: "We were the biggest nickers in town. Plagiarists extraordinaire."

 

Absolutely. As I said earlier: If Paul heard that Dave Brubeck song, and then picked up on the little 8/9-note riff, which is not repeated elsewhere in the song, and then wrote a whole song around it, I'd be even more impressed with Paul. To me, that would be more remarkable than him just thinking the whole song up himself. Arnie

 

Guess we can "blame" Billy Preston for this one. He obviously would have known the gospel-sounding version of Love Letters and just comped it for God. Ron

 

opening line of There's A Place - I Want A Guy / Marvellettes

 

The beginning of the guitar solo in -I feel fine- sounds a little like Chuck Berry's- Memphis-...The song riff sounds like the Buck Owens song -Buckeroo-

 

I was wondering how long before somebody mentioned "Sorrow"/"It's All Too Much". Both are great songs. One thing I find funny is that "Sorrow" features the line "...she's always playing her high class games" which is pretty much a crib from "It's All Over Now" . It's like some endless game of cribbing! lol

Also, if we're doing solo, George's "Give Me Love" has quite similiar melody to Dylan's "I Want You"

 

Yea, 1963 is just TOO early for Paul to have taken 8 or 9 notes played ONCE in a song and turn it into the main melody for an original song. I agree with Steve that it's fairly easy to come up with those notes using the chord sequence. Paul was always afraid he was nicking riffs, melodies and lyrics. It's the primary reason he didn't record Yesterday for more than a year after writing it, fearing it was an old song that he recalled from the distant past. Supposedly he drove the cast and crew crazy during filming of A Hard Day's Night playing the tune on piano to anyone nearby asking one and all if they knew what song he was playing. Such a lad. Ron

 

I like the part "..I just believe in me/Priscilla and me/That's reality"

 

I don't remember where I heard this, but I remember reading/hearing that Paul's inspiration for GDS was a combination of the Lovin Spoonful's DAYDREAM and the Kinks' SUNNY AFTERNOON.

 

Yeah, the Bells of Rhymney/If I Needed Someone crib is really quite blatant. The Byrds didn't write the folk song, but McGuinn did come up with that 12-string riff. Someone could probably do a good YouTube mash-up of the two songs.

 

- especially when the melody is just the ascending major scale of the tonic, starting on the second note of the scale.

I've always assumed that they nabbed the ending of "Don't Blame Me" by the Everly Brothers for "It Won't Be Long" - the Everly's song finally ends on a '2nd' chord whereas the Beatles song ends on the 'major 7th', otherwise it's basically the same:



[this clip has the song running about a semi-tone fast - I wonder if that 45 was pressed like that or the deck is running fast? Either way, this is one song that always sounded a little s..l..o..w.. so this makes for a pleasant alternative ]

 

Bryan MacLean and his bandmates managed to squeeze some more life out of it through their psychedelic lens for "Old Man" on Forever Changes - at least, it sounds like it to me

 

McCartney copped the title to P. S. I Love You from an older song by the (now forgotten) 50's vocal group The Hilltoppers.

 

Ahh, that's like saying Bruce Springsteen copped the title of Dancing In the Dark from an old Bing Crosby song. Lots of songs share titles. Ron

 

How did that never dawn on me?

 

Too early? He admitted to borrowing the bass line/riff from Chuck Berry's "Talkin Bout You" for "I Saw Her Standing There" and that was 1963. And there's a difference between not recording "Yesterday" because he thought it was an already existing song, and taking 8 or 9 notes and turning that into a song. I think it's just too much of a similarity.

 

Comping the bass line (more or less intact) of an old rock & roll song is much different than taking 8 or 9 NOTES of a melody from an instrumental jazz recording. I don't think Paul, or the other Beatles, were into this sort of music in 1963. It's telling that no one made mention of the similarity until recently. You'd think a reviewer may have noticed it back then, but I don't recall this happening. Ron

 

I think Paul was totally into this kind of music through his father. In addition, I find it very easy to imagine that little bit of melody getting stuck in his head. Didn't he write the words first for this one? If so, he was playing around with fitting melodies and maybe those few notes just crept up from the unconscious. He most probably wasn't remotely aware of that.

 

I don't think Paul was influenced by Dave Brubeck or knew his material in 1963. I've never read that he ever owned the Time Out album, now or then. I may be mistaken, but I think his dad was a Trad Jazz fan, something very different than what Dave Brubeck was recording in the 50's. Ron

 

First off, I cited "Talking Bout You" because you said "Paul was always afraid he was nicking riffs, melodies and lyrics." The bass line in "Talking Bout You" is essentially the song's main riff. Secondly, in 1963 "Talking Bout You" was not "an old rock & roll song". It was all of two years old. Thirdly, Paul wouldn't have to have been "into" Dave Brubeck to have heard the instrumental in question at a party and then follow up on it. And lastly, whether or not the similarity was noticed early on has no bearing on whether or not Paul borrowed the melody.

 

Yes he did write the words first (the first time he'd done that), on the bus during a tour. He composed the music on piano when he got to the venue. He was going for a 'country-and-western' thing.

 

John, it very hard to steal a bass line. Thousands of songs share the same basic rock & roll pattern... same for blues too. The nick from Talkin' Bout You is not the main riff of I Saw Her Standing There... anymore than the pattern in Roll Over Beethoven or Johnny B. Goode. It IS prominent. I just don't think Paul would have remembered a line of notes from an instrumental jazz recording and worked a song around the structure back in 1963. You think otherwise and your point is no more or less valid than my own. I like and admire all opinions Ron

 

Fair enough, Ron. But just to clarify, when I said "The bass line in 'Talking Bout You' is essentially the song's main riff", I was talking about "Talking Bout You." And while it may be hard to "steal" a bass line, Paul acknowledge publicly that he did steal it from Chuck's song. Being a bass player, I do know a little about bass lines. The bass line in "Talking Bout You" may not be unique, but it is pretty distinctive.