10 Beatles Hits That 'Rip Off' Other Songs

this video is sponsored by solo contuti the free app that lets musicians play together over the internet the beatles always had a knack for taking ideas from their favorite songs and then spinning them out into new fresh sounding tracks however sometimes the beatles made their influences just a little bit too clear to the point occasionally that they actually wound up in legal trouble so today we're going to look at 10 examples of beatles hits that were based on other songs one of the beatles biggest influences was the rock and roll legend chuck berry now barry's influence can be heard on many beatles songs but no more so than their 1969 classic come together the first section have come together is heavily inspired by chuck berries you can't catch me [Music] paul actually admits that the band were aware of the likeness between the two songs before releasing come together and that they actually slowed down the tempo of come together to make it sound different from the chuck berry song john originally brought come together over as a very perky little song and i pointed out to him that it was very similar to chuck berry's you can't catch me john acknowledged it was rather close to it i suggested that we try it swampy swampy was the word i used we took the tempo right down despite the beatles efforts though just a few months after release chuck berry's publisher big seven music filed a lawsuit claiming copyright infringement the case was settled out of court four years later in quite an unusual agreement that actually required john lennon to record and release a cover of chuck berry's you can't catch me and to release it on his upcoming solo album as a way of financially compensating the publisher [Music] this wasn't the first time though that the beatles had borrowed from chuck berry the bass riff from i saw her standing there is directly lifted from berries i'm talking about you let me tell you [Music] however although it's the same essential riff in both songs the two songs have different chord progressions so paul has adjusted chuck berry's bass line to match his chord progression talking about you was a song that the beatles performed regularly during their time in hamburg so it's no wonder that it wound up serving as the inspiration for a beatles original [Music] paul has also made no attempt to hide the origin of saw her standing there's bass riff as you will see from this quote paul even goes as far as to say that the fact that so few people pick up on the likeness between the two tracks is proof that in his words a bass riff hasn't got to be original i played exactly the same notes as i'm talking about you and it fitted i saw her standing there perfectly even now when i tell people i find few of them believe me therefore i maintain that a bass riff hasn't got to be original the beatles often lifted from blues and rock and roll artists for example the opening guitar riff of pee wee creighton's 1954 blues track due on to others or was repurposed by the beatles for the intro of one of their classic tracks see if you can guess which one beyond this furious sounding guitar riff though the two songs are fairly distinct from one another so personally i wouldn't say that this instance of borrowing would constitute plagiarism another blues track though to have a big influence on the beatles was bobby parker's watch your step see if you can guess which beatles song was inspired by watch your step [Music] the beatles were quite open about the fact that they borrowed what's your steps guitarist but no royalties were ever paid to bobby parker and as you can see from this interview with parker although he was glad that the beatles were fans of his music he was less than pleased when he didn't receive any recognition or royalties for the use of his riff let's talk about the beatles what happened with the beatles mccartney was a good friend of mine he still is but they they should put a little leverage on um some of the you know the the songs that uh they stole your riff man yeah i know i know yeah you said it what's the riff what's wrong uh i feel fine what was it like when you heard that come out and you knew that that was yours i was just flabbergasted i said whoa the beatles like that song man you know something's got to be done about that was good you know but uh they just smile and shake my hand but they should put something else in here what's something in hand now whether parker is really juicing royalties for this usage is hard to say the i feel fine riff is certainly very similar to watch your step but it's not identical and as george harrison puts it in this quote many blues riffs sound quite similar the i feel fine riff was actually influenced by a record called watch your step by bobby parker but all riffs in that tempo have a similar sound also perhaps parker shouldn't be too frustrated about the beatles nicking his riff considering that he too had effectively lifted the rift from another song dizzy gillespie's manteca [Music] [Applause] [Music] as parker puts it i started playing the manteca riff on my guitar and decided to make a blues out of it now regardless of whether bobby parker was juicing royalties what is clear is that his track watch your step was hugely influential and not just on the beatles many other british bands in the late 60s and early 70s wrote songs based on the watch your step riff for example led zeppelin's moby dick [Music] deep purple's rat bat blue the yardbirds i'm not talking the iconic piano riff from the beatles lady madonna was seemingly inspired by bad penny blues by humphrey littleton [Music] littleton was aware of the likeness between lady madonna and his own track but as you can see from this quote he had no intentions of suing the beatles over it a number of idiots came up to me and said they've borrowed the introduction to bad penny blues what are you going to do they wanted me to sue them but i told them not to be so stupid you can't copyright a rhythm and the rhythm was all that they'd used anyway we'd borrowed it from dan burley i've never had any sympathy with the notion of here are some guys they're worth a fortune let's try and get some of it by suing them as littleton mentions in that quote bad penny blues itself was inspired by the piano playing of american blues pianist dan burley [Music] paul mccartney has often described how the melody for yesterday came to him in a dream and that initially he was convinced that he must have subconsciously taken the melody from an old jazz tune and i just woke up one morning with this tune in my head um i thought i don't know this tune or do i it's like an old jazz tune or something and i'd because my dad used to know a lot of old jazz stuff maybe i've just remembered it or somewhere so then and a little bit a little sort of guy went to the piano found the chords to it you know and ever since mccartney first started telling this origin story of yesterday beatles fans have wondered if yesterday is based on an old jazz song which jazz song is it well musicologist spencer lee suggests that yesterday might have been inspired by the song answer me my love made famous by nat king cole in 1954. not only does answer me my love feature a very similar lyric to yesterday yesterday i believed that love was here to stay but it also has a similar melodic contour often featuring the same appoggiaturas that we see in yesterday these notes that hang for a second before resolving [Music] yesterday however a spokesman speaking on behalf of paul rebuttled these suggestions saying to me the two songs are about as similar as get back and god save the queen of course even if yesterday was inspired by answering me my love i hardly think it qualifies as plagiarism but it is interesting to think that this old nat king cole song could have been the subconscious inspiration for yesterday musicologist walter everett has suggested that the opening phrase of hey jude was lifted from the choral piece to deum written by composer john ireland [Music] don't make as you can hear there's certainly a likeness between the two both pieces are in the same key and both briefly share the exact same melody and chords however although the two pieces begin in a very similar way they then develop off into distinctly different songs it is possible though that this opening phrase was the initial inspiration for hey jude in his youth paul mccartney was actually a choir boy and it's quite possible that t dayum was in the choir's repertoire at the time if you've ever wondered where paul mccartney got the expression well he borrowed it from nigerian congo player jimmy scott jimmy scott was an acquaintance of paul's allegedly scott had his own band called obladi obladar and as part of his act he would shout oblardy to the crowd and they would reply hoblarda and then scott would conclude by saying life goes on now once the beatles released obladio bladar scott claimed that he should receive writer's credit on the track for the use of the phrase mccartney argued though that the phrase was just an expression but scott insisted that it was not a widely used expression and was limited to just his family in an odd turn of events this dispute finally came to an end when jimmy scott who was now in prison awaiting trial contacted the beatles and asked them to pay his legal fees mccartney agreed on condition that scott dropped his claims for writer's credit on a bloody or bladder one of the beatles greatest idols was elvis and one of the clearest examples of his influence on the fab four is the beatles track run for your life the lyric is actually lifted from the 1955 elvis track baby let's play house it seems that john borrowed the brief lyric from the elvis track and then incorporated it into a whole new distinctly different song also fun fact one of the earliest surviving recordings of the quarrymen the band that would eventually evolve into the beatles is a cover of elvis baby let's play house [Music] no discussion of copyright infringement and the beatles would be complete without mentioning the infamous legal battle between george harrison's debut solo single my sweet lord and the chiffons 1963 track he's so fine when moved into the same key it's quite clear that my sweet lord and he's so fine use the same chord progression and more importantly very similar [Music] melodies [Music] [Music] the only elements that separate these two songs really are the lyrics and the style judge richard owens who presided over the case not only agreed with this but went one step further deeming that the two songs were in fact the same albeit with different lyrics it is clear that my sweet lord is the very same song as he's so fine harrison claimed that he had never heard he's so fine before and therefore did not copy it however unfortunately for harrison copyright infringement doesn't require intent to copy even if you accidentally copy a song that you've never heard of you could be liable for copyright infringement after a very lengthy legal process harrison had to reportedly pay almost 1.6 million dollars to the publishers of he's so fine but perhaps the true damage of this incident was that it shook harrison's confidence in songwriting it made me so paranoid about writing that i thought god i don't want to even touch the guitar the piano in case i'm touching somebody's note the experience didn't keep george from writing for too long though in 1976 after spending a week in court defending my sweet lord george actually wrote a song about the whole legal dispute called this song and thanks to solo contuti for sponsoring this video solo conteuti is a free app that allows musicians to play together over the internet if you've ever tried to jam with someone over a video call you'll know that the latency basically makes it impossible to stay in time with each other however solo contuti makes remote jamming possible by keeping latency levels super low and even if your internet connection isn't great solo contuti features a synchronized metronome so you can both stay in time solo contuti is available on ios android and on your desktop computer and it's completely free so if you're interested do go and try out thanks very much so that was 10 examples of beatles songs that to varying degrees rip off other songs if you can think of any other examples then do let me know in the comments and thank you as always to all of the wonderful people who support me on patreon including the names you see on screen right now and andrei science diageo andrew andrew brown andrew sussman austin barrett austin russell bob mckinstry brittany parker cameron oliveira colin aiken chris cabell christopher ryan david rivers donald howard dr darren wicks elena scorchenko s ben hansen eugene leroy fd hodor lamo latona hamesh brocklebank hugo miller james kao j.a kochensparger john dye josh sandolin justin vigor mark heit mark ziegenhagen max o'keefe melody composer squared melanie schoenert michael vivian nancy gillard nathan lawrence nathaniel park paul miller paul paisle peter dunphy pioche mirowski richard pride roger clay sam lin scott fendley sean kennedy steve daly stephen lazzaro tim beaker toma tricia adams tim payne toot victor levy vidad flowers vladimir kodakov and volte [Music] you

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 609,452

Rating: 4.8488798 out of 5

Keywords: based on, copy, analysis, music theory, plagiarism, sued, court, lawsuit, music, pop music, rip off, stolen

Id: 8pfJRTU6J1s

Length: 15min 59sec (959 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 08 2021