How Led Zeppelin Stole Their Way to Fame and Fortune

When Bob Dylan released his 2001 album Love and Theft, he lift­ed the title from a book of the same name by Eric Lott, who stud­ied 19th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can pop­u­lar music’s musi­cal thefts and con­temp­tu­ous imper­son­ations. The ambiva­lence in the title was there, too: musi­cians of all col­ors rou­tine­ly and lov­ing­ly stole from each oth­er while devel­op­ing the jazz and blues tra­di­tions that grew into rock and roll. When British inva­sion bands intro­duced their ver­sion of the blues, it only seemed nat­ur­al that they would con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion, pick­ing up riffs, licks, and lyrics where they found them, and get­ting a lit­tle slip­pery about the ori­gins of songs. This was, after all, the music’s his­to­ry.

In truth, most UK blues rock­ers who picked up oth­er people’s songs changed them com­plete­ly or cred­it­ed their authors when it came time to make records. This may not have been tra­di­tion but it was eth­i­cal busi­ness prac­tice. Fans of Led Zep­pelin, on the oth­er hand, now lis­ten to their music with aster­isks next to many of their hits — foot­notes sum­ma­riz­ing court cas­es, mis­at­tri­bu­tions, and down­right thefts from which they prof­it­ed. In many cas­es, the band would only admit to steal­ing under duress. At oth­er times, they freely con­fessed in inter­views to tak­ing songs, tweak­ing them a bit, and giv­ing them­selves sole cred­it for com­pos­ing and/or arrang­ing.

A list of ten “rip offs” in a Rolling Stone piece on Led Zeppelin’s pen­chant for theft is hard­ly exhaus­tive. It does not include “Stair­way to Heav­en,” for which the band was recent­ly sued for lift­ing a melody from Spirit’s “Tau­rus.” (An inter­net user saved the band’s case by find­ing that both songs used an ear­li­er melody from the 1600s.)

Dur­ing those recent court pro­ceed­ings, the pros­e­cu­tion quot­ed from a 1993 inter­view Jim­my Page gave Gui­tar World:

“[A]s far as my end of it goes, I always tried to bring some­thing fresh to any­thing that I used. I always made sure to come up with some vari­a­tion. In fact, I think in most cas­es, you would nev­er know what the orig­i­nal source could be. Maybe not in every case – but in most cas­es. So most of the com­par­isons rest on the lyrics. And Robert was sup­posed to change the lyrics, and he didn’t always do that – which is what brought on most of the grief. They couldn’t get us on the gui­tar parts of the music, but they nailed us on the lyrics.”

The blame shift­ing was “not quite fair to Plant,” the court found, “as Page repeat­ed­ly took entire musi­cal com­po­si­tions with­out attri­bu­tion.” He stood accused of doing so, for exam­ple, in “The Lemon Song,” lift­ed from Howl­in’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor.” After a law­suit, the song is now co-cred­it­ed to Chester Bur­nett (Howl­in’ Wolf’s real name). For his part, Plant read­i­ly blamed Page when giv­en the chance. In his book Led Zep­pelin IV, Bar­ney Hoskyns quotes the singer’s thoughts on the “Whole Lot­ta Love” con­tro­ver­sy:

I think when Willie Dixon turned on the radio in Chica­go twen­ty years after he wrote his blues, he thought, ‘That’s my song.’ … When we ripped it off, I said to Jim­my, ‘Hey, that’s not our song.’ And he said, ‘Shut up and keep walk­ing.’

Led Zeppelin’s musi­cal thiev­ery does not make them less tal­ent­ed or inge­nious as musi­cians. They took oth­ers’ mate­r­i­al, some of it whole­sale, but no one can claim they didn’t make it their own, meld­ing Amer­i­can blues and British folk into a tru­ly strange brew. The Poly­phon­ic video above on their use of oth­ers’ music begins with a quote from “poet and famous anti-semi­te” T.S. Eliot, express­ing a sen­ti­ment also attrib­uted to Picas­so, Faulkn­er, and Stravin­sky:

Imma­ture poets imi­tate, mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into some­thing bet­ter, or at least some­thing dif­fer­ent.

As far as copy­right goes, Zep­pelin didn’t always cross legal lines. But as Jacqui McShee said when Page reworked a com­po­si­tion by her Pen­tan­gle band­mate, Bert Jan­sch, “It’s a very rude thing to do. Pinch some­body else’s thing and cred­it it to your­self.” Maybe so. Still, nobody ever won any awards for polite­ness in rock and roll, most espe­cial­ly the band that helped invent the sound of heavy met­al. See a score­board show­ing the num­ber of orig­i­nals, cred­it­ed cov­ers and uncred­it­ed thefts on the band’s first four albums here.’

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Zep­pelin Took My Blues Away: An Illus­trat­ed His­to­ry of Zeppelin’s “Copy­right Indis­cre­tions”

How Led Zeppelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en” Recre­ates the Epic Hero’s Jour­ney Described by Joseph Camp­bell

When Led Zep­pelin Reunit­ed and Crashed and Burned at Live Aid (1985)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness