Rock’n’roll is built on nicking ideas from here and there and fashioning it into something of your own. Some of the greatest rock songs ever are pretty much a pilfered patchwork of riffs, melodies and ideas, but it is a fine line until you’re basically just stealing someone else’s song, as Led Zeppelin discovered on this day 40 years ago concerning their one-for-the-ages classic Whole Lotta Love.
That was when veteran US bluesman Willie Dixon decided that enough was enough (or more precisely, his daughter, who heard Whole Lotta Love on the radio and noticed the strong similarities to her father’s song). Some 16 years after Whole Lotta Love’s release, Dixon filed a lawsuit against the band for the melodic and lyrical similarities to his composition You Need Love, released as a single by Muddy Waters.
Given You Need Love had regularly been performed by Robert Plant and Jimmy Page’s pals in Small Faces, who also recorded a version of it on their self-titled debut album, and the future Led Zep pair had often spoken to them about their love for it, they didn’t much have much in the way of a defending case. The matter ended up being settled out of court in Dixon’s favour and the way Page and Plant have subsequently described it, they might as well have held their hands up and gone “It’s a fair cop!” when the lawsuit arrived.
“Robert was supposed to change the lyrics,” Page said later, firmly putting the blame on his ex-bandmate. “He didn’t always do that, which is what brought on most of the grief.”
“Page’s riff was Page’s riff. It was there before anything else. I just thought, ‘Well, what am I going to sing’,” Plant stated in an interview with Musician. “That was it, a nick. Now happily paid for. At the time, there was a lot of conversation about what to do. It was decided that it was so far away in time and influence… Well, you only get caught when you’re successful. That’s the game.”
Of course, it wasn’t that far away – You Need Love came out in 1962 and Whole Lotta Love in 1969. But they’re all square now. Willie Dixon got his due in the end.
