A hazard of having a huge hit song is that someone else will claim plagiarism - it happened to George Harrison with his song "My Sweet Lord" which is a similar to a the Chiffons song from 1963, "He's so fine".
A strange case with many twists and turns where the plagiarism was ruled to be "subconscious" and where George Harrison's manager became the plaintiff when he became owner of the song publishing company which initially bought the suit. Eventually George Harrison bought the publishing company from his manager and the only people who prospered from all of this were the lawyers.
Anyway it has happened to Men at Work with their song "Down Under". An Australian Judge has ruled that two bars of the distinctive flute solo were pinched from an Australian song called "The Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gum Tree".
The original composer of this song is long dead, but she died after "Down Under" had became a hit and as never as far as is known commented on the similarity of the contested two bars.
However the song publisher who now owns the rights to "The Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gum Tree" has taken Men at Work to Court and won.
This is bad - every musician, every composer that has ever lived is influenced by songs and music they have heard. Hardly anything if anything at all is built entirely from scratch.
Often when you hear a piece of music you know where it comes from, what influenced it.
The opening arpeggios in "Stairway to Heaven" quite clearly come from "Taurus" by an American band called Spirit. Nobody sued. Likewise the Bass Line from the Beatles "I Saw Her Standing There" comes from a Chuck Berry song. Openly used and acknowledged.
A melody line of four bars with two bars similar to another work written in an entirely different setting is now plagiarism? What next? Is someone going to claim ownership of stock chord progressions, cadences or even the chords themselves.
The thing is of course it is never the creatives who are behind these court cases, rather it is the hangers on seeking easy money from things they cannot themselves create.
A strange case with many twists and turns where the plagiarism was ruled to be "subconscious" and where George Harrison's manager became the plaintiff when he became owner of the song publishing company which initially bought the suit. Eventually George Harrison bought the publishing company from his manager and the only people who prospered from all of this were the lawyers.
Anyway it has happened to Men at Work with their song "Down Under". An Australian Judge has ruled that two bars of the distinctive flute solo were pinched from an Australian song called "The Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gum Tree".
The original composer of this song is long dead, but she died after "Down Under" had became a hit and as never as far as is known commented on the similarity of the contested two bars.
However the song publisher who now owns the rights to "The Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gum Tree" has taken Men at Work to Court and won.
This is bad - every musician, every composer that has ever lived is influenced by songs and music they have heard. Hardly anything if anything at all is built entirely from scratch.
Often when you hear a piece of music you know where it comes from, what influenced it.
The opening arpeggios in "Stairway to Heaven" quite clearly come from "Taurus" by an American band called Spirit. Nobody sued. Likewise the Bass Line from the Beatles "I Saw Her Standing There" comes from a Chuck Berry song. Openly used and acknowledged.
A melody line of four bars with two bars similar to another work written in an entirely different setting is now plagiarism? What next? Is someone going to claim ownership of stock chord progressions, cadences or even the chords themselves.
The thing is of course it is never the creatives who are behind these court cases, rather it is the hangers on seeking easy money from things they cannot themselves create.