One of the Artist Jimmy Page, the legendary guitarist of Led Zeppelin, once found himself unable to look a fellow musician in the eye due to feelings of guilt over his musical borrowing musician was..
Nothing’s created in a vacuum. One of the most joyous musical discoveries for any fan is to work backwards via the link of preceding influences of one’s beloved artist to arrive at a deeper and richer grasp of the genre or movement in question.
Perhaps your Nine Inch Nails obsession led you down the path of Ministry, Skinny Puppy, and ultimately industrial pioneers Throbbing Gristle. Or a fascination with the carnivalesque surrealism that leaps out of The Beatles’ ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite!’ inspired an immersion into the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s studio trickery and the musique concrète works of Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page was never shy about wearing his influences on his shiny sleeve. One of the most celebrated guitarists of rock and one-third of The Yardbirds’ triple-whammy guitar alumni, alongside Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, Page was more than happy to ‘borrow’ a riff or lick for some of his biggest numbers.
Long lauded as Led Zeppelin’s most mythic and defining cut, 1971’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ faced legal hot water 30-odd years later when a copyright infringement suit was launched by Spirit bassist Mark Andes, accusing Page of nicking their acoustic arpeggio introduction from 1968’s ‘Taurus’. Having opened for Spirit on their first American tour and known to cover ‘Fresh Garbage’, eyebrows can’t help but rise when considering the piece’s true authorship.
On the other hand, Spirit may have been emboldened by another plagiarism legal battle against Led Zep only a few years earlier. In 2010, folk-pop singer Jake Holmes reminded the music world that it was his ‘Dazed and Confused’ that more than inspired Led Zeppelin’s 1969 rework. Having been exposed to the song while in The Yardbirds, Holmes’ performance of the piece as a support act at New York’s Village Theatre saw The Yardbirds play their reimagining routinely live before cutting the immortal version on Led Zeppelin’s debut LP.
The two parties eventually settled out of court in 2012, and the matter was seemingly behind them until a new case was prompted by ‘Dazed and Confused’s’ inclusion in the Becoming Led Zeppelin feature.
Another artist with an axe to grind was Scotland’s Bert Jansch. A leading name in Britain’s folk revival and founding member of Pentangle, his distinct guitar-picking style won praise from Neil Young to Paul Simon, and Page was no exception. “At one point, I was absolutely obsessed with Bert Jansch,” he revealed in a 2006 biography. “When I first heard that LP, I couldn’t believe it. It was so far ahead of what everyone else was doing. No one in America could touch that.”
Naturally, monster Led Zeppelin cuts ‘Black Mountain Side’ and ‘Bron-Y-Aur Stomp’ bear a striking resemblance to Jansch’s cover of folk traditional numbers ‘Black Water Side’ and ‘The Wagoner’s Lad’. The credibility of Jansch’s claims is muddied when considering his pieces are renditions themselves, and he was on record for candidly professing to have “copied” Big Bill Broonzy, Davy Graham and Archie Fisher. Still, a credit and a slice of the royalty pie wouldn’t have gone amiss.
“The thing I’ve noticed about Jimmy [Page] whenever we meet is that he can’t look me in the eye,” Jansch revealed to Classic Rock in 2007. “Well, he ripped me off, didn’t he? Or let’s just say he learned from me. I wouldn’t want to sound impolite.”
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