8 Led Zeppelin Songs That 'Rip Off' Other Songs

Led Zeppelin are infamous for the amount of lyrics, melodies and riffs that they "borrowed" from the blues and rock artists who came before them. Of course, it is fine to be inspired and influenced by great artists and songs but, if you're going to take somebody else's work and use it as the foundation of your new song, at least consider paying them some royalties or credit!

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SOURCES:
Robert Plant on “Whole Lotta Love”: Young, Charles M. (June 1990). "Robert Plant's manic persona". Musician. No. 140. p. 45.
Dave Lewis (1994), The Complete Guide to the Music of Led Zeppelin,
Dixon, Willie; Snowden, Don (1989). I Am the Blues. Da Capo Press. p. 223. ISBN 0-306-80415-8.
Lewis, Dan; Pallett, Simon (2005). Led Zeppelin: The Concert File.
Segrest, James; Hoffman, Mark (2004). Moanin' at Midnight: The Life and Times of Howlin' Wolf
Mick Wall (2008), When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography Of Led Zeppelin',

0:00 Introduction
0:57 Whole Lotta Love VS. You Need Love
2:25 Bring It On Home VS. Bring It On Home
3:40 The Lemon Song VS. Killing Floor
4:36 Dazed & Confused VS. Dazed & Confused
6:25 Babe I'm Gonna Leave You VS. Babe I'm Gonna Leave You
7:33 Black Mountain Side VS. Blackwaterside
8:17 Rock and Roll VS. Keep A-Knocking
9:21 Stairway to Heaven VS. Taurus

[CHURINDOK]

LZ didn't "rip off" other songs; they just Pagerized them.

[hifijohn]

One critic said that LZ was his favorite cover band.

[MrNathan]

There's nothing wrong with being inspired to the point of copying someone else song, but be a man about it and give them the proper credit and the royalties. Even if the copied version is better, it's still not their own. Great video by the way. Thanks for sharing.

[phizzler]

willie dixon's legacy is the most underrated thing in music. period.

[RebSike]

"All musicians are thieves, the good ones take it somewhere new and the great ones do it more than once." -- Muddy Waters.

[alexsmith-rszq]

“Hippity Hoppity your song is now my property” - 4 English Lads

[halflanding]

Zeppelin’s music is great. Just disappointing that they didn’t credit the original writers until they were sued.

[bobbibaker]

The sad thing is Zep never needed to plagiarize their songs. They could have given credit where credit was due, and their cover versions would still have been amazing!

[StephanieMT]

all they had to do was credit the artists and paid them royalties.

[drytool]

I'm not sad that Led Zeppelin existed. That music needs to exist. Giving credit where it's due is also a necessity. One shouldn't need to be forced by a lawsuit to do that.

[telekidd]

Funny thing is that led zep is also one of the band that is the strictest about their copyrights and never accept reuse of their songs catalog for games like guitar hero or for commercials.

[hanspeterraatz]

Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull once said, there are only so many riffs and notes (144), a guitar player can play, and if someone is using mine, it only shows my genius.

[stevenbatke]

I can’t wait for LZ’s new album “Settled Out of Court For An Undisclosed Amount”

[todwest]

The sad thing is, no one would have thought any less of them if they had simply said, "This is our interpretation of the classic blues tune by X."

[nickdryad]

In 1976, when I was 14, Paul Hagan (in third form) used to get his older brother to transfer all his Led Zeppelin albums on to tape for me at one dollar a pop. I don’t feel so bad now.

[EDOGG]

I'm a huge Zeppelin fan, and I used to work at a music store with a guy who was a huge blues connoisseur and he basically started listing all the songs they KNOWINGLY stole. It was disappointing that they had to be forced to do the right thing for their supposed heroes. I lost a lot of respect for them after that.

[spyderlogan]

Speaking of Willie Dixon. He has an autobiography called "I Am The Blues", 1990. You want to know about the most prolific Chicago blues songwriter? This is the book that reveals his upbringing and life in Chicago and Chess Records. Highly Recommended.

[neilomac]

Point of order - the intro of 'Rock & Roll' starts on the 'and' of beat 3, rather than on beat 1 - doing that means you won't need to stick those bars of 3/4 and 5/8 in and it all lines up in 4/4.

[michaelegan]

You've educated, and disappointed me with that . Very well done. One band that didn't do this was Humble Pie with their Rocking the Fillmore live album( absolutely wonderful) where they put rock songs to their own music but everything was credited to the original composers. Decent people.

[dondiubaldo]

I'm glad you have quotations around "Rip Off". In American roots music and even its ancestor, the fiddle music of England, Ireland, and Scotland, there is a long tradition of borrowing licks, lyrics etc and combining them in different ways to make it your own. It is not stealing, it's part of the blues tradition. If you were to try to credit those, who actually created it, you'd have to go so far back into history there would be no documentation.