Not too long ago there were a number of articles in the media about a lawsuit that had been filed by the estate of the late guitarist Randy California against Led Zeppelin, claiming that Jimmy Page had plagiarized California’s composition “Taurus” when he wrote the music for Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”. This and other disputes and controversies, whether taken to court or not, touch on an interesting question, that of how songwriting credits should be written and where to draw the line between being influenced by an earlier composition and plagiarizing it. Since this is a complex issue and there are far too many interesting examples to go over all of them in detail, I will just summarize some of my own thoughts on the subject.
First of all, as a music historian and a firm believer in giving credit where credit is due, I personally think all songwriting credits should reflect as accurately as possible who actually contributed to the writing of the song. I can understand how some writers may occasionally want to give credit to someone else for various reasons; for instance, some songwriters have registered songs in the names of family members or friends out of generosity, often in order to provide them with regular income from royalties. That seems to be why Vincent Ford was credited as the writer of “No Woman No Cry”, even though it is more likely that Bob Marley himself wrote the song. Paul McCartney gave his wife Linda co-writing credits on numerous songs, when in most cases her contributions were probably minimal. In other cases, a band’s songs may be credited to the entire band in order to give everyone an equal share in songwriting royalties and to minimize disputes. Queen, for example, started crediting the entire band on all songs on their 1989 album The Miracle even though some songs were still written primarily or entirely by a single member, because in the past they had had major arguments about whose songs got to go on the band’s singles (which generated considerable extra royalty income). At other times, credit has been given for less noble reasons, such as when Elvis Presley’s publishers insisted he get a co-credit on songs like “Love Me Tender” (which was actually a re-write by Ken Darby of the 19th century tune “Aura Lee”, but ended up being credited to Presley and Darby’s wife Vera Matson), or when disc jockey Alan Freed and Chess Records financial backer Russ Fratto initially received co-credits on Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene” as payback (though their credits were later removed). But regardless of the reason, I’d prefer to see the actual writers credited, so, for example, Paul McCartney should get sole credit on “Yesterday”, “For No One” and “Let It Be” and John Lennon should get sole credit on “A Hard Day’s Night”, “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Revolution”, to name a few examples.
But even if every effort was made to credit a song accurately, it’s not always so clear cut how that should be done. One problem is determining how much of a contribution is sufficient for someone to deserve a songwriting credit. If someone suggests a line in the lyrics of a song, is that enough for them to get a writing credit? How about changing a few notes in a melody? If your starting point is an older song, how much do you have to change it before you can claim the new song as entirely your own? This of course relates back to disputes such as the one over “Stairway to Heaven”. In that case, there clearly is a resemblance between the opening bars of the two songs, and since California’s band Spirit and Zeppelin played together it seems certain that Page heard California’s tune and was likely influenced by it. On the other hand, some have pointed out that there are many songs far older than “Taurus” that have similar progressions, and in any event the rest of “Stairway” is nothing like “Taurus”. Personally I’m a little dubious whether California should get an actual co-writing credit, though Page should acknowledge his debt to him. On the other hand, Jake Holmes should certainly have received a full co-writing credit for Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused” (rather than than just "Jimmy Page, inspired by Jake Holmes", which is how it was credited on a Zeppelin release following the lawsuit over the song - this particular wording seems like it might be more appropriate to "Stairway"), though it is fair for Page to also be credited, considering how radically he transformed Holmes’s song. Of course it was an old tradition in blues and folk music to take bits and pieces of older songs and claim your re-working of them as your own (as was done by artists ranging from Robert Johnson and Woody Guthrie to Bob Dylan), but unless the end result was entirely different from the original, I’d prefer to see the original writers (if known) credited alongside the person who transformed it. Admittedly this might be difficult in situations where a song has undergone several transformations, as Pete Seeger once said of the Weavers’ hit “Kisses Sweeter than Wine”, which started as an Irish folk tune: “Now, who should one credit on this song? The Irish, certainly. Sam Kennedy, who taught it to us. Lead Belly, for adding rhythm and blues chords. Me, for two new words for the refrain. Lee [Hayes], who wrote seven verses. Fred [Hellerman] and Ronnie [Gilbert], for paring them down to five….” On the other hand, sometimes it is the ones who transformed a song who don’t get the credit they deserve. For example, one could argue that Carolyn Franklin and Aretha Franklin should have gotten co-writing credit for Aretha’s version of Otis Redding’s “Respect”, since they came up with the memorable “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” and “sock it to me” bits, which weren’t in the original song. But if the changes to an older song or contributions to the writing of a new one are very minor, then it isn’t necessarily reasonable to claim a songwriting credit, so, for example, one wouldn’t expect George Harrison to credit his mother or John Lennon for their lyrical contributions to his song “Piggies”. For that matter, while at the insistence of the main writer Jutopi I received a credit for co-writing the lyrics to a short little song called “I Learn” that I sang on a human rights themed compilation album in Taiwan, I’m not sure that I should have, since I only changed two lines, amounting to just six words (though admittedly there are only 31 words in the entire song, including repeats).
A related question is the use of samples or the inclusion of a bit of another song in a new one. My own feeling is that if the piece of the older song is used as the hook for the new song or makes up a significant portion of it, then of course the writers of the older song should get songwriting credit, but in the case of a brief musical snippet or lyrical nod to another song that is not a vital part of the new song, the most that should be necessary is to mention the original song in the liner notes. So, for example, Stevie Wonder obviously had to be credited for Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise”, since musically and even to some extent lyrically it was based entirely on Wonder’s "Pastime Paradise", and Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” had to credit Queen and David Bowie, since, even though it only used the opening notes of their “Under Pressure”, the entire song was built around that sample. Similarly, the Verve had to credit Jagger and Richards for “Bitter Sweet Symphony” since the latter was built around a sample from a symphonic version of the Stones song "The Last Time", though it was unjust (though hardly surprising considering his reputation) for Allen Klein, who owned the copyright to the older recording, to claim all the royalties from the Verve song, since they had obviously created an entirely new thing around that sample. Likewise, it was unreasonable for Chuck Berry’s publisher to sue John Lennon over his brief lyrical reference to Berry’s song "You Can't Catch Me" at the beginning of “Come Together” since that was a fairly minor part of the song as a whole – though at least they didn’t insist on a co-writing credit for Berry.
Unfortunately, and frustratingly for musical history researchers such as myself, official songwriting credits are frequently unreliable for many reasons, including some of those discussed above. In the case of some Taiwanese popular music recordings, particularly records and tapes of aboriginal popular music, several of the participants in the recording might be listed as having written the entire album when in fact they had written little or none of it, because the songs were pre-existing folk tunes or the music had been directly lifted from a foreign song (usually Japanese but sometimes Western). Even in the West, outright injustices are far more common than they should be. For example, it’s said that Percy Sledge came up with much of his signature song “When a Man Loves a Woman”, but he didn’t get any credit for it. Barrett Strong has said that “Money (That’s What I Want”) began with a piano riff that he came up with, and indeed he was initially listed as a co-writer along with Janie Bradford and Motown boss Barry Gordy, but a few years later his name was removed without his knowledge. Motown says that he was credited in error in the first place, but Barrett’s account of the song’s origins is fairly detailed and believable, and is backed up by at least two witnesses, recording engineer Robert Bateman and guitarist Eugene Grew, whereas to my knowledge Gordy and his lawyers and publishers have not given a credible alternative account. The ridiculous thing in that case is that Strong apparently may not be able to challenge the removal of his name from the credits since he failed to do so within the three years after it was done – even though he wasn’t notified of the change and so had no way to know that it had been made short of going in person to check, which he wouldn’t have had any reason to do unless he was already aware that the credits had been altered. This is just another example of how the copyright laws which should be designed mainly to protect the actual authors of a work often end in fact harm them. Admittedly in disputes over authorship it often comes down to a case of “he said, she said”, but in at least some instances one side is clearly more credible than the other, even when the law doesn’t necessarily favor them.
Of course the main reason songwriting credits are such a big deal – to the point that people will sometimes illegitimately cheat others out of credit they deserve – is money. But in the long run, the real injustice in incorrect, incomplete or downright false credits is that the actual writers of the songs don’t get fair credit for their work. For songs that remain popular for decades or even centuries, this can mean that the actual writer of the song ends up being unknown or at best known to a few experts, while most people falsely believe it to be written by someone else. This is the case with many of the Taiwanese aboriginal songs I have researched; one of the many Western examples is “You Are My Sunshine”, which is credited to former Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis and his collaborator Charles Mitchell, even though they had simply bought the song from a group called The Rice Brothers Gang - who seemingly were also not the actual writers or even the first to record the song, which some have concluded was actually written by Oliver Hood. To me, the most important piece of information about a song is who wrote it, and where possible I always try to give credit where credit is due, though like everyone else I may sometimes be mislead by an inaccurate credit, since it is not humanly possible to do detailed research on every song. In the future I hope to occasionally write more about individual songs with interesting histories or major disputes about their authorship.
