HaederleZTake
Copyright Infringement
"Are These Your Tunes? Mind If I Take One?"
Column by Jim Haederle (5/12/22)
It happens at odd moments, usually when I’m doing something mindless. I’ll be humming a favorite song as I tie my shoe, and suddenly the melody will remind me of another song.
Maybe it’s my obsessive nature, but I can’t not notice melodic similarities. Driving home from a wedding one December night, it occurred to me that the first four notes of "Here Comes The Bride" and "Oh, Christmas Tree" are identical. They don’t sound identical because they start on different beats, but sing either song acapella, just the first four notes, and you’ll see what I mean.
Such similarities abound in popular music, hiding in plain sight.
The "Nationwide is on your side" jingle, (introduced in 1977 and composed by J.D. Miller) is not unlike the melody to The Beatles’ 1963 song "Misery".
The first and second measure of Christopher Cross’s "Arthur’s Theme (The Best That You Can Do)" reminds me of the "You know you can’t hold me forever" line from Elton John’s "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", while the third and fourth measure of that same verse could be the refrain from the Mary Tyler Moore Show intro, both tunes written years before Cross’s 1981 mega-hit.
The melodic structure of Yes’s "And You And I" (1972) and "Benny The Bouncer" (recorded by Emerson, Lake and Palmer in 1973) are both reminiscent of "How To Handle A Woman" from the 1960 Broadway show Camelot, each melody comprised of ascending fourth intervals
Composers recycle their own music all the time. That’s what constitutes a style, for better or worse. One could argue that Jeff Lynne and Bruce Springsteen have been rewriting the same song for their entire careers, but their fans find comfort in
predictability. Where composers may run into trouble is when a discernible section or the entirety of a song is blatantly similar to something else.
When Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters first heard Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1986 musical Phantom Of The Opera, he was shocked to notice that the ominous opening organ theme was lifted hook, line and sinker from a segment of his 1971 song, "Echoes". Waters believed he had a solid case to take legal action, but ultimately decided it wasn’t worth the trouble.
Hollywood director Stanley Donen, weighing in on the script-in-progress for his 1952 musical Singing In The Rain, suggested to songwriters Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed that a certain scene could use a song ‘like’ Cole Porter’s "Be A Clown" from the 1948 musical The Pirate. The composers took his directive to heart and offered up "Make ‘Em Laugh", a song so obviously derivative of "Be A Clown" that classic film buffs still confuse the two. Cole Porter, like Roger Waters, was offended by the thievery but chose not to sue.
But some do not take plagiarism lying down. Former Beatle George Harrison found this out the hard way in February 1971, when Bright Tunes Music Corporation-holders of the copyright to composer Ronnie Mack’s hit for The Chiffons, "He’s So Fine"-filed suit against him, believing that his 1970 smash "My Sweet Lord" was more than a little imitative of Mack’s 1963 composition. The court found Harrison to have engaged in "subconscious plagiarism" (he did admit to being familiar with The Chiffons’ catchy single) and he had to pay out over a half million dollars in damages.
1963 was a banner year from which ex-Beatles could plunder inspiration. The anonymous composer of "Stewball," an obscure 18th century folk ballad, could hardly have imagined that his melody would someday reemerge in part as John Lennon’s 1971 holiday classic, "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)". But how was Lennon exposed to that melody? Likely from hearing Peter, Paul and Mary’s 1963 treatment of "Stewball".
There are ultimately only so many notes in the scales of Western music, and you’d think it’s next to impossible to write a fresh melody nowadays. But I still occasionally hear stuff on adult alternative radio that sounds totally original and surprisingly innovative, composed by artists who refuse to resort to cliché. These songs, of course, are far too clever for mainstream airplay, where skating on the slippery edge of plagiarism is almost the rule.
But it’s nice to know that the essence of John Lennon’s public comment on George Harrison’s legal woes ("He could’ve changed a couple bars in that song and nobody could’ve ever touched him") resonates with at least some contemporary songwriters. If you’ve written something that sounds a tad too familiar for comfort, just change a few notes and you can call it your own.
Jim Haederle is a father, freelance writer, songwriter, singer/keyboardist with "The Force," actor, cartoonist, presidential history buff, and can name every James Bond movie in chronological order.
©2022 Roger Zee
