Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

It was Page, mainly. I don't think the others asked questions or knew where the tunes in qestiong were coming from, save the Dixon song.

In that case, if the others were ignorant of it it really shows you they had no cred, save Page, as bluesmen.

And if they weren't, they were participants in the scam.

They must have known Glenn. Anyone who played blues in the UK (like me) gleaned their material from US records.

Page, yes. The other guys? It's tough to say for sure.

Look at how long that song was big, on the radio all the time for over a decade, for them to get caught. If anything, Dixon's publishers should have nailed them a week after the single was out (the other, more obscure thefts are easier to understand, how they avoided detection for a while.)

But if you look where 3/4s of Zep came from, studio pop guys (with Page having the only real penchant for blues prior to Zep, and even he wasn't that hard core...he'd play pop for $ in a heartbeat...you'd never catch Clapton doing that in that era, and psyche was his fav. of all) it's quite possible that ten years or so into playing, the other guys weren't really following where stuff came from, who wrote what (after all, they weren't the ones who put their names on Whole Lotta Love anyway, at least not Bonham, etc.)

It's not like Zep was a flat out R&B bar band playing a lot of blues (ala the Stones) before being signed and thus were by necessity R&B record junkies.

And Page said his favorite band of the 60s was Kaleidoscope- David Lindley's band (see the current issue of Vintage Guitar mag.), which was total psyche, world music, hybrid rock, hardly a blues band.

At the end of the day, it's all on Page. The band's rep should suffer for it. The other guys may have known, or were ignorant. But he's the major cheat. It's amazing it took the child of the writer to catch him (one wonder's what one pay's ASCAP dues for), and more than ten years on.

Matthew, yes. What's hard to understand is how long this has gone unknown by most and how many hear about song theft and immediately think one is talking about fragments of songs or style instead of entire tunes, words, music, arrangements.

Humm..Good read Glenn.I knew of several tunes Zep
recorded that had been done before however I never noticed the lack of credit.

Most people don't. I certainly didn't and woudn't have in Zep's case had I not heard they were sued and then later, heard the Muddy Water's tracked Willie Dixon song on the Chess Box set.

And even then I didn't know the extent of the violations on Page's part. But it made me a believer in the theories that he was way outta line. And I still don't think he's been revealed as he should have.

The Rolling Stone's of the world are too close to the industry to give this story the coverage it deserves.

How did that get on the TV?!?!?! Absolutely bloody awful!

Are you referring to the "Cadillac" track? If so, that was "Rock and Roll," not Whole 'Lotta Love, Dazed and Confused or Stairway, which are three songs he's been accused of lifting major parts or in whole.

If you mean me Glen, I was referring to the original clip posted on this thread. I only saw this late on so I'm a bit behind.....but what absolute dross!

I know page was only a kid and that's fine, but the whole act sucksamillion. and people say modern music is dross?!?!

Stairway was stolen? Doesn't sound like an old blues tune

You can rip anything from anywhere. Read the article.

I ripped one. Everyone made a mad dash to get out of the room.

>>Pretty cool to think of what a future he had ahead of him.<<

Music and alleged thievery aside, this clip shows he also went from a rather clean and innocent looking kid to, well, Jimmy Page.

Instead of doing biological research he ended up doing pharmacological and female human physiological research.

And, of course, if not developing a habit as strong as Keith Richard's, he does enjoy a ciggie with regularity.

I guess George Harrison's demise at 58 was met with denial by some.

And George Burns' demise at 101?

(...of course, Burns was never stabbed in the chest by an intruder...)