C&L's Late Nite Music Club - Friday Night Ripoffs (?) with Red Hot Chili Peppers and Tom Petty
By MaxMarginal Friday Sep 04, 2009 7:00pmIt's Friday, and that means it's time for our weekly dose of plagiarism speculation, Friday Night Ripoffs (?), though I must say that the question mark barely belongs this week.
Tom Petty has a respectable row of great songs well past his career's 15 year mark, and Mary Jane's Last Dance (1993) heads the list. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, on the other hand, have had a barrage of mostly tossed off, derivative and sterile Grammy-winning drivel since 1991's Blood Sugar Sex Magick, and "Dani California" heads that list. If you think the similarity of the first verses of these songs is merely coincidental, please inquire about the bridge in Brooklyn I am trying to sell.
Anyway, good artists borrow and great artists steal, and without a healthy dose of both, we would've missed out on a lot of great songs over the years. I can hardly fault the Peppers for wanting to build on Petty's gem. Leave some suggestions for next week's finger-pointing in the comments.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHiZ15x6Vt4
Petty did rip off Sebadoh though. His "You don't know how it feels" or whatever it's called is a complete ripoff of a band he figured not one person who buys his shit albums would know! "Skull" by Sebadoh is the song he ripped off completely. Sad Tom. Sad. Why could he not just rip off the Byrds and keep indie out of his sad world? Hell, I don't know.
The Heartbreakers just added boring old-rock nonsense like um, boring 70's white boy swagger to the Sebadoh tune and turned it into a sad mindfuck!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRnmcqQgMWQ
and the sad old guy ripoff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HNMpd4tR6c
Not one of my favorite Sebadoh tunes but..
I don't have your musical ear, Max, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to compare the two.
Nothing From Nothing
Man I just watched that Billy Preston video a couple days ago. He rocks.
Isn't Tom Petty sort of poppy Bob Dylan lite anyway?
Check this out for influence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQwm1v1R-qM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqlY0VOFtyA
But I think the MIA song samples The Clash's song.
Don't You Worry 'bout A Thing
Going Out Of My Head
Hurt So Bad
Nothing Takes The Place Of You
I have to say that in 1983 the absolute last band that I would have suspected would morph into bloated corpo-starz (as opposed to flaming out in some spectacularly grisly fashion) was RHCP.
REM, Huey Lewis, 90% of the graduating class in Pop that year - no problem, their lips were pre-puckered for the rancid teat of fame. But I didn't think the Peppers would go out that way.
Nice mansion though, Flea.
;)
Oh! Sweet Nuthin'
Tonight's The Night
LoL, Don't break your arm reaching Max.
INTERPOL's "c'mere"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaDw4CAcXVE
and
This Mortal Coil's "not me"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVH3vrOCeJI&fe...
coincidence?
I know the author of this article is obviously biased against the RHCP, but anyone who plays guitar and has seen Mike Campbell and John Frusciante play these riffs or at least has a decent ear for music knows they are not playing the same chords (in the songs' respective intro and verses).
Campbell even starts out "Mary Jane"'s riffs with an open G chord not present in "Dani" that you can not ignore. Without tablature, it goes like this: open-G-major chord hammer-on to A-minor (first type), hammer-off the A-minor chord back to open-G-major, D major (but with an open high E string), back to A-minor. Then Campbell plays the whole sequence again but starts the second go-around by adding a high-G note to the A-minor chord. And when he gets around to the D-major chord, Cambpell adds a hammer-on from open high E to F-sharp each time instead of leaving that E open.
"Dani California" on the other hand, besides having a faster rhythm, is much simpler than that and basically uses bar chords. First, Frusciante does an A-minor chord (fifth position, meaning around the fifth fret and using all six strings to make it a bar chord), then G major (again, a bar chord that frets six notes), D-minor (fifth fret, fifth position and different-sounding than the D-major of "Mary Jane"), back to the A-minor bar chord.
I know it sounds like subtle differences but when you actually play these riffs to these songs, especially "Mary Jane," you know as a guitarist that one of these songs isn't really too much like the other.
Try listening to Here Comes My Girl and then Here Comes The Night by Them without going "Hmmmmm....."
The RHCP admitted a while ago that they used some stuff from Last Dance With Mary Jane. Tom Petty laughed it off because they admitted it and said, "Good for them".
Unless you can provide me with a quote from the RHCP, I'm calling BS on that one. I just googled all kinds of relevant terms to find such a quote and couldn't find anything other than a blogger or two who said that. Again, no quotes from John Frusciante or anyone else for that matter.
I think (actually I KNOW) you (and other bloggers) are referring to Petty saying THE STROKES admitted to using/ripping off "American Girl" for their first hit "Last Night." Petty them said "Good for them" (for admitting it). But the RHCP don't have to admit to anything cuz they didn't rip Petty off.
Here's the link to Petty talking about The Strokes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Petty
And one more thing (I'm talking to Max now): Rick Rubin produced both tracks. I don't think he would've let the RHCP write and record "Dani" if HE thought it ripped off Tom Petty. No way, no how.
After listening to both all I can say is thank god for Tom Petty.
Actually, Tom Petty ripped off "Waiting for the Sun" by the Jayhawks for "Last Dance." The group had opened for him a year before he wrote that song and played that song regularly in their set. The opening riff is almost identical but just sped up a little.
Coincidentally, Rick Rubin produced both the Petty and Chili Peppers songs and had some role with the Jayhawks as well.
Another Petty steal: the line "Rebel without a clue" taken from a Replacements song. The Mats just happened to be openers for Petty before he included the line in one of his songs.
was the title of a Bonnie Tyler song released in 1982.
And I can't give you the exact first usage of the phrase, but it probably didn't take long after the film Rebel Without A Cause was released in 1955 before someone waggishly turned it. My first suspect is MAD magazine, after that I'd think it might be some film critic.
I do love the Mats, but Westerberg was an idiot to think that it was his own creation.
With crediting the artist on sampling their work...
I have always respected ELP for crediting the work they included
but I never recall seeing the credit from Jem...
tell me if you hear Bach...
JEM:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSLvcJ4I1mw
Bach:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN9WG4ROh3s
I guess Disney doesn't own the rights to Bach yet...
But if she is giving tribute to Bach...
how about a tribute to Mr Young...
JEM:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWS3EiLDql4&fe...
Neil Young:(with some help from CSN)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v5E27Fp59c
Joey can't bullshit me. Listen to Alice Cooper sing "Elected" (I wanna be) in 1972 and rip-off Joey doing " I wanna be Sedated" in 1978.
The Beatles - Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXVkFTUdRzM
The Offspring - Why Don't You Get A Job?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqHkuHy39eA
At least it was ripped off from the best!
i agree with max and its really funny. its the lyrics that give it away in the first verse. how funny. the chords aren't particularly special in the first place, nor the melody. its the story telling - petty is telling a story, the chili peppers (a fine band) are choppin' broccoli. still laughing - what an awful first verse for chili peppers song. nicely spotted.
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