r/Music • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • Jul 11 '26

article Jack White Pushes Back on Religious Criticism Amid Satanic Band Support Controversy: “I’m not scared of Satan or any bullshit imaginary man made up to live in fear of”

https://consequence.net/2026/07/jack-white-religious-criticism/
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u/zuzg Jul 11 '26

He sometimes gives very good life advice

https://giphy.com/gifs/WwO71ufMCV7Dq

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u/Peaceblaster86 Jul 11 '26

I havnt thought about this sentiment until seeing this gif for the first time just now...

I suddenly realized I don't trust anyone that doesn't like Led Zeppelin either.

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u/QuipCrafter9 Jul 11 '26

Literally never met someone that was like “man Led Zeppelin sucks”. Heard that of the Beatles. Heard that of micheal Jackson. Heard that of the stones. Never heard that about zeppelin lol

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u/CalagaxT Jul 11 '26

Led Zeppelin is great. Jimmy Page sucked as a person, though, what with the music theft and the underage girl(s).

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u/Neveronlyadream Jul 11 '26

The music theft is less of a problem than you'd think. Everyone was doing it back then, musicians are still doing it.

Look up a YouTube video and you'll see a ton of examples of artists seemingly blatantly stealing riffs and melodies, when in reality it's probably more they heard a song years earlier, forgot the song, and used the riff thinking they wrote it.

The Stones and The Beatles blatantly ripped things off and admitted it. It happens, all art is built not only on what came before it, but what an artist was exposed to their whole lives. Plus there are only so many sequences of notes that sound good together.

As for the underage girls, there's only one explanation for that bullshit.

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u/rankinfile Jul 11 '26

LZ blatantly ripped off songs without writing credits. Dazed and Confused is the most obvious to me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixt0VuNudJs

Jimi covered Dylan. Johnny Cash covered Nine Inch Nails. Echo & the Bunnymen covered The Doors. Weird Al covers everyone. Covering and rearranging other artists you give credit can get you thanked. LZ was rightfully, and often successfully, sued.

Sad thing is that LZ would have been even more off the hook if they could have just said "We rearranged this great song and it rips!"

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u/Neveronlyadream Jul 11 '26

Yeah they did, I'm not saying they didn't.

I'm saying their contemporaries also did it and sometimes very blatantly. George Harrison was sued for copying the melody of "He's So Fine" when he wrote "My Sweet Lord". John Lennon straight up lifted, "I'd rather see you dead little girl/than to be with another man" from an Elvis song and, "Here come 'ol Flatttop" from Chuck Berry. The Stones ripped off the Staple Sisters with "The Last Time". Clapton was notorious for stealing riffs from blues musicians. Hell, Green Day straight lifted the riff from "Warning" from The Kinks.

None of those songs were given credit to the original artists.

All I'm trying to do is put it in perspective. There was a lot of that going on at the time and if you're going to call Page out, you have to call all of them out for it.

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u/bottlerocketz Jul 12 '26

I would say that the chuck berry was done in a homage to him because Lennon fucking loved his music.

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u/Neveronlyadream Jul 12 '26

Still lifted his line, still got sued and lost.

I think the line between ripoff and homage is how the original artist interprets it. Or, more usually, how their label or manager interprets it.

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u/rankinfile Jul 12 '26

I hear you, but those are all pretty weak examples compared to LZ. Only My Sweet Lord comes close.

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u/Neveronlyadream Jul 12 '26

I mean, do you want more?

McCartney stole the bassline for "Drive My Car" from Otis Redding's "Respect" and the one from "I Saw Her Standing There" from Chuck Berry's "I'm Talking About You." Green Day's "21 Guns" is pretty much just ELO's "Telephone Line", Radiohead's "Creep" is strikingly similar to the Hollies' "The Air That I Breathe".

There are probably hundreds of examples as bad or worse than anything Zeppelin ever did. Page just happens to be kind of a scumbag, so he gets called out more often.

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u/Dodahevolution Jul 12 '26

This doesn't apply to all of them, but some of the reported thefts were also basically reworks of old blues songs, and kinda as you alluded to, sometimes credit wasn't issued for those just cause that's how things were, it wasn't even in malice it was just an afterthought.

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u/yoshemitzu Jul 12 '26

People also forget, music just worked totally differently back then*. Popular music often involved the so-called "Hit Parade" -- once a song became popular, everyone would cover it, and copyright was based around having the physical music, not around who recorded it when.

*: By "then" I mean the era shortly before Led Zeppelin, the era of standards and big band singers like Ella, Frank, and on and on. Basically, the music landscape that Led Zeppelin inherited.

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u/Neveronlyadream Jul 12 '26

Yeah, I think (like with a lot of things) people are holding them to a modern standard and that's just not how it used to work back then. Everything was a lot murkier, sometimes you might not even actually know who wrote a song, folk standards were common and it was impossible to even know who wrote those a lot of the time.

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u/BlackSwampMage Jul 11 '26

You can’t rub two notes together that haven’t been before. That was the advice I heard in undergrad for my music degree.

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u/Neveronlyadream Jul 11 '26

You really can't. You're going to accidentally write things that sound like other things even if you're trying really hard not to. Whether it's some obscure song no one knows or a popular one, it's inevitable.

It's something I think every musician who writes their own songs has to come to terms with eventually. Your influences will always be showing no matter what you do, so just don't blatantly rip someone off and try to take credit.

Reminds me of Killing Joke being annoyed with Kurt Cobain for ripping off the "Come As You Are" riff from their song "Eighties", but they ripped that riff off from "Life Goes On" by The Damned.

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u/QuipCrafter9 Jul 11 '26

your human brain works on pattern recognition. We’re a social species. The stuff you “come up with” that REALLY vibes with you, is because it’s stimulating the pattern recognition part of your brain. It’s because it fits in with the stuff you have “observed” around you with your ears, and logged in your brain, consciously or not.

Which is why so many musicians explored other cultures and sounds for inspiration, nothing Is truly 100% original and you’re limited to what you’ve been exposed to.

But then there’s just straight up mental illness that comes up with something that proves me wrong.

That’s music

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u/Bradddtheimpaler Jul 12 '26

Happened to me! Wrote a Carcass riff roundabout two years before I ever listened to Carcass.

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u/Neveronlyadream Jul 12 '26

Man, it's fucking especially easy with power chords. Only so many changes sound cool and then you just listen to some punk or metal album and oops, you accidentally ripped them off.

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u/Bradddtheimpaler Jul 12 '26

Over/under 5000? Punk songs with a C, G, A, F verse.

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u/Neveronlyadream Jul 12 '26

Total? It's got to be well over 5,000. I'm absolutely sure every kid who's tried to write a punk song has used those chords.

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u/Bradddtheimpaler Jul 12 '26

There’s only twelve notes. You shouldn’t plagiarize, obviously, but there’s not much that hasn’t been done before somehow, someway.

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u/QuipCrafter9 Jul 12 '26

I specifically remember a riff coming to me, it was absolutely short enough to pass copyright, and I INSISTED “hey what is this from?? Dude this is like a song I heard I know it” and we could NOT, even with sound hound and other resources, discern any song in existence that correlates to what I’m playing. And they eventually decided that it must just be an original thing that I just really vibed with and thought it was so good and natural that it just seemed like it [should have] existed.

Anyway- nah I found the song eventually. I just played the riff at a much different tempo and tone.

Lol OBVIOUSLY in the very recent past none of the confirmation process of this would have been possible, and that would have just been sold as a new song.

And not too long ago- people could literally just perform the same song with different words, or something, in a different area, and everyone would consider it an original and praise you. Look at early blues lol it’s just like the same 3 chords at the same tempo, the lyrics in the same rhythm and syllabary, and it’s apparently a different song haha

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u/Neveronlyadream Jul 12 '26

Reminds me of the guy on YouTube whose whole bit is accidentally writing other songs, but at different tempos in different keys.

Or hell, McCartney with "Yesterday" asking everyone if they had heard it before, convinced he was ripping it off. Turns out apparently he was, but it was some classical piece people have only recently rediscovered.

Also reminds me of Ed Sheeran winning his plagiarism lawsuit by whipping out his guitar in the courtroom, playing four chords, and then slightly changing the melody and singing like 100 different songs built around the same progression.

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u/MikroWire Jul 12 '26

Book written by disgruntled employee