U2 is getting sued, accused of ripping off guitarist's song for "The Fly"

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Seems like the accusation is a stretch. I listened and MAYBE the guitar was sort of similar in parts, but honestly, I didn't think "The Fly" at all.
 
On the same subject I heard ZZ Top 'Legs' on the radio last week and reminded me a lot the (awesome) version of 'No Line On The Horizon' that didn't make the album... anybody else notice it or just me?
 
U2 is getting sued, accused of ripping off guitarist's song for "The Fly"

Plagiating :down:
 
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RoKKeR said:
I thought the Led Zeppelin lawsuit had way more weight than this. This is also seemingly zero evidence that any members of U2 would have even heard this song. With Led Zeppelin there were at least anecdotes of them watching Spirit perform live or something like that...
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there was also no evidence that george harrison had ever heard "he's so fine" before he wrote "my sweet lord", but somehow the judge managed to believe that he must have heard it once and then subconsciously plagiarized it seven years later (with the entire beatles period in between), so precedence says that sort of evidence is really not required in cases like this. fuck allen klein.

bono_212 said:
Yeah, they really did nick the song at the end of the day, the Verve did.
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if they'd released that song today nobody on earth would bat an eye at the use of that line. it's not even a sample, it's a reversed riff played forward with entirely different instruments, and a whole lot else layered on top of it. nowadays you can just sample huge portions of another artist's song straight up and not even credit them (eg kanye's "father stretch my hands" used "panda"s entire chorus outright and nobody knew it was desiigner at first until that song got popular in its own right). even way back when (1967), the song "mr. soul" by buffalo springfield uses the exact same riff as "satisfaction", played exactly the same over and over again. that was released less than two years after "satisfaction" and neil young has always admitted that he directly and intentionally stole the riff.

the verve did nothing unusual in the industry, they just were the unlucky ones to be fucked over by a greedy asshole who once the song got to #1 saw an opportunity to enrich himself off someone else's work. fuck allen klein.
 
I can't wait for Pink Floyd to sue U2 over Eclipse/Walk On.
 
DaveC said:
there was also no evidence that george harrison had ever heard "he's so fine" before he wrote "my sweet lord", but somehow the judge managed to believe that he must have heard it once and then subconsciously plagiarized it seven years later (with the entire beatles period in between), so precedence says that sort of evidence is really not required in cases like this. fuck allen klein.



if they'd released that song today nobody on earth would bat an eye at the use of that line. it's not even a sample, it's a reversed riff played forward with entirely different instruments, and a whole lot else layered on top of it. nowadays you can just sample huge portions of another artist's song straight up and not even credit them (eg kanye's "father stretch my hands" used "panda"s entire chorus outright and nobody knew it was desiigner at first until that song got popular in its own right). even way back when (1967), the song "mr. soul" by buffalo springfield uses the exact same riff as "satisfaction", played exactly the same over and over again. that was released less than two years after "satisfaction" and neil young has always admitted that he directly and intentionally stole the riff.

the verve did nothing unusual in the industry, they just were the unlucky ones to be fucked over by a greedy asshole who once the song got to #1 saw an opportunity to enrich himself off someone else's work. fuck allen klein.
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The only thing original about Bittersweet Symphony are the lyrics. I have no idea what you're talking about.
 
edit: i made a few errors in that post, but in any case the sample was cleared properly - klein only sued after the song became mega popular because he had dollar signs in his eyes.

and you're definitely wrong about your assertion. maybe you haven't ever listened to the song very closely. the bass, drums and the guitar overdubs in that song are all original. it's not like it was a beat they stole and just slapped different vocals onto.
 
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bono_212 said:
The only thing original about Bittersweet Symphony are the lyrics. I have no idea what you're talking about.
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Regardless of your opinion on that topic, it's not like it was a stolen piece of music. It was properly sampled, turned into something popular, and then attacked over money.
 
LuckyNumber7 said:
Regardless of your opinion on that topic, it's not like it was a stolen piece of music. It was properly sampled, turned into something popular, and then attacked over money.
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They absolutely stole the cover, how can you not hear that? It's exactly the same...
 
stole the cover...?

edit: like you mean they stole the "cover version" by the andrew loog oldham orchestra? that was the sample that was cleared properly. then klein arbitrarily decided that it repeated too many times and fired up his team of expensive lawyers who were highly experienced at this artist-suing thing.
 
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here's the tune, it was even used for a demo version of Bittersweet Symphony. I thought'd I'd read that the idea of even using samples was brought up much later when they were recording the proper track. :scratch: maybe not.

Either way, the sample kind of hurts them, because once you start linking the track to The Last Time it just makes you realise the vocal melody in the verses is lifted from it anyway, whether or not it was intentional.
If Alan had been so (puts on shades) ...inkleined, he could have easily gone after them for that alone if they hadn't used any samples. And knowing him he probably would have if the song had somehow been as big a hit without any.

It just sounds like a complete fucking mess, what happened after. They did everything by the book with the sample, then get fucked over because the song was so successful.

Such a same, because it's a fantastic track!
 
trevgreg said:
After that horrible Blurred Lines verdict though, I don't even know what would be safe anymore. :huh:
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Yeah, the fact that went to a jury was pretty stupid, I thought. Not to be a partronising arse but why on earth are a jury deciding on such a case? Surely it's for a judge to listen to testimony from musicologists and the like and decide on it.
Sure they borrowed the "feeling" of a Marvin Gaye track, and who's to say he invented that? But musically? Nah. An utter cash grab inexplicably validated by a unanimous(!!) jury.

Hopefully this U2 thing gets laughed out of court. Waiting 25 years to bring it up, uploading the tune on the day of the announcement to make the point, pretty silly.
There's obviously a slight similarity in parts, but again...did this guy single handedly invent this sound? Was he writing in a bubble? Influenced by nobody before him?

Also, what the hell's going to happen if it goes before a fucking jury? You'll have to dismiss five juries worth of people before the trial even starts when jurors say they'd struggle to be impartial after the SOI incident...
 
gareth brown said:


here's the tune, it was even used for a demo version of Bittersweet Symphony. I thought'd I'd read that the idea of even using samples was brought up much later when they were recording the proper track. :scratch: maybe not.

Either way, the sample kind of hurts them, because once you start linking the track to The Last Time it just makes you realise the vocal melody in the verses is lifted from it anyway, whether or not it was intentional.
If Alan had been so (puts on shades) ...inkleined, he could have easily gone after them for that alone if they hadn't used any samples. And knowing him he probably would have if the song had somehow been as big a hit without any.

It just sounds like a complete fucking mess, what happened after. They did everything by the book with the sample, then get fucked over because the song was so successful.

Such a same, because it's a fantastic track!
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Exactly! I agree with you.
 
gareth brown said:
Waiting 25 years to bring it up, uploading the tune on the day of the announcement to make the point, pretty silly.
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we've given 80,000 views in a day to a video that might otherwise have been lucky to get 80 ever, so i suspect paul rose probably accomplished what he set out to do.
 
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As someone pointed out on another forum I post at. Alex Van Halen never went after Larry for biting his drum part on Little Guitars for BTBS. That person also pointed out Zoo Station kind of sounds like Billy Squire's Everybody Wants You...
 
bono_212 said:
They absolutely stole the cover, how can you not hear that? It's exactly the same...
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Are you familiar with the suit?

Klein, agreeing to 50-50, at the last minute demanding 100% or saying the record won't come out... once with full rights to the song... selling it to every movie production possible to profit off of someone else's work? Klein didn't do any of that. Why was the song such a hit? The vocals and the strings. Two very original parts.

But let's not fall off track here. It wasn't "stolen." It was a legal wrangle of how much was borrowed. Based upon an arguably subjective measure. And it had nothing to do with he orchestral cover of the stones song (I believe that was a smaller suit) - it was about the stones song itself. Not to mention the main freaking point... The Last Time was barely even a Stones song! Read up on that bit if you haven't. It's eye opening. The whole thing was a way for some old turd to rip off bustling young artists. Through multiple loops of technicalities.
 
Let me clarify my stance: the song was taken from a cover. It absolutely was. But the lawsuit was cruel and bullshit. I am very familiar with it. Spent a few hours watching different YouTube videos explaining all the aspects a few years ago. It was so unnecessary to go to the lengths they did.

But the music WAS taken from the orchestral cover. It's hard to deny. But the stones own the rights to the original song, and via the cover was how they sued, to my understanding.

Bullshit, without merit, is what happened to Down Under by Men at Work. That was some twisted shit.
 
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