This is an interesting music plagiarism case. Gary Moore is a name familiar to the guitar heads. He has lost a lawsuit in Germany concerning his track “Still Got the Blues”. From Reuters.
A German court has ordered former Thin Lizzy guitarist Gary Moore to pay damages after ruling the guitar solo in his 1990 hit “Still Got the Blues” had been plagiarized from a German song written in 1974.
A court in the southern city of Munich said on Wednesday the solo in Moore’s song was too similar to the one in “Nordrach” by the band Jud’s Gallery not to have been copied — even though the German song was not available on record at the time.
In a statement, the court ordered Moore, 56, from Northern Ireland, and his record label to pay damages to band leader Juergen Winter who brought the case. The amount has yet to be fixed.
Interesting that the focus of the lawsuit is the guitar solo. In many cases, the instrumental solo would not be considered integral to the song. Would the song be recognizable if there was an entirely different solo? If you think about most songs that we consider “standards”, say something like “Stella By Starlight”, Charlie Parker would play the melody and solo over the changes but, it’s a totally different solo than Stan Getz would do while interpreting the same song. Either way, it’s identifiable as “Stella” even though both versions differ greatly from how the song was originally conceived.
But the song in question, “Still Got The Blues”, has a guitar solo that is identifiable in itself. Is it part of the composition? If you heard Gary playing the song and he sang all of the verses the same but then played an entirely different solo; is it the same song?
Well, let’s go back to the first rule of thumb in these music plagiarism case which is; it only matters if the song made some money. Did “Still Got The Blues” make enough dough to hire lawyers to go after Gary Moore?
“Still Got the Blues” was the title track on Moore’s album of the same name, one of the guitarist’s most successful records. According to online chart database everyhit.com the single reached 31 in the British singles charts in May 1990.
Now normally, I would look at a chart position like #31 on the Britsh charts and say no that’s not a big enough song to go after. But, this is a case where you can’t really go by chart position. “Still Got The Blues” is a bigger song than the chart position reflects. I’ve heard it used as bumper music and, I don’t doubt that it’s been used in some soundtracks, it’s been covered a lot of times and, like I said, it’s a guitar geek staple, the catalog sales have probably been pretty good.
So, now we get to the meat; does Juergen Winter, leader of the band Jud’s Gallery have a case? Does Gary Moore’s song sound like “Nordrach”? Thanks to YouTube, we can give both of them a listen. First “Nordrach” then, “Still Got The Blues”.
As always, assemble a crack legal team then click pause on the music player located in the side bar before playing the YouTubes.
What do you think, should Gary Moore have to pay Juergen Winter some money?
Right.
I am using the law offices of Pilsner, Beechwood and Crocheting: okay poker-doodle?
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Opinion: “Spaniard to be a cruel exterminator, and the German to be a beer-bibber. …… suspended on lateral wires and uprig[ht] stays croHsing them and through… those damn songs are identical.”
Addendum to the Opinion: “we thinks the defendant is Irish, and the Plaintiff is German, your honor…”
Court Question: “Okay, now we just have to decide on which currency to use.”
Response: “…dollars for flour, two thousand euros for beer, for the 202 RELIGIOUS Penances for the clergy.. use pfennig and francs….”
Tort Application: “The earliest known chemical evidence of beer dates to circa 3500–3100 BC from the site of Godin Tepe in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran.” [Source HERE]
Response: “geeesh that is an old law…. ”
Rebuttal: “…but the Defendant’s song isn’t about beer, your honor, it’s about a wet nurse nanny who gets away from the oppressive black slave boss and the white plantations owner’s son, later a writer, who fantasizes about his circus act nanny’s life…”
Penalty: “No Matter. Defense pays court costs, and penalties for bad taste of the Plaintiff’s video visual aides… jud´s gallery war-video ‘was wollten wir nicht alles ändern’”
Response: “we, the Defendants, will write a Quatrain or two for the record, to show that [video visual aides] utilized by the Plaintiffs is a ’self-inflicted’ condition of the plaintiffs’s…”
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Good post, Jack. You have any more you want figured out? We’re here; day or night.
Apparently Mr. Winter has a patent on the iv VII III VI ii* V i progression…the minor cousin to the Bingo progression (B I, NGO, B I NGO, B I NGO, and BINGO was his Name-O). How ironic that a German judge feels that a German songwriter who chooses a melody based on falling 3rds has create something unique while a hundred years ago Heinrich Schenker spent his life trying to prove that all music is based on the same ii V7 I progression. It’s all part of the “great conversation” (Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mortimer J. Adler) which has been around since recorded history…”Can’t we all just get along?”
Alas, poor Gary is a victim of the legal system. He’s not the first. It reminds me of a little joke:
Q: What is the difference between a lawyer and a rooster?
A: When a rooster wakes up in the morning, its first instinct is to cluck defiance.
Jurgen Winter’s biggest fan is a judge
Who probably never heard of Czerny.
Now Gary’s looking at a Skid Row drudge
For lack of a musical attorney!
Too late the heavens weep for lost bluesmen
And pity Nature’s cruel dance with the Fates
Now I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain again
But never Mr. Moore in such Dire Straits!
Bravo J! I was trying to put that to the tune of BI NGO but, correct me if I’m wrong, those are quatrains referring back to PD’s comment, yes?
The mark of a good lawsuit is if it inspires poetry.
I’m pretty sure that is the first Czerny reference in the history of this blog and for that matter, oddly enough, the first Zagros Mountains name check too.
My wiki is overheating.
What an embarrassing court decision based on an expertise which couldn’t have been more ridiculous. But it’s also terryfing because all headlines here in Germany say that Gary Moore had stolen the “song” of an unknown German composer. And most readers believe it because they don’t know anything about the difference between a song and a short and simple chord progression with a simple guitar sequence. And Hermann Rauhe who wrote the expertise? He told the lawyers that even Winter’s way of playing “his” tune was unique. Maybe for a professor who was born in 1930 and published a book about schlager music when Winter’s genius created those 4 bars and a million hobby guitarists all over the world may have improvised on the same chord progression in the same key.
Still got the blues is one of the most identifiable songs I know and the solo is part of it, but still the song consists of a whole, not only the solo. If you would play the solo only, the people would say look, this guy played the solo in Still got, while if you play the song with another solo, you would still have the same song. Strange thing, why did this guy wake up now, after so long?
He said that his women told him about Gary’s song, haha … 10 years later! I wonder where Winter and his fellow musicians and his woman might have lived from 1990 until 2000.
Interesting…I wonder where she heard it?
Jack, are you insinuating that Winter’s GF and Moore were previously acquainted?
Ovidiu –
“A good composer does not imitate; he steals.” – Igor Stravinsky
It’s not about the chord progression or the solo. It’s about the basic melody line. IMO the melody line is close enough for a case to exist. The factor of time makes it an annoyance for either party, but in this info./web age, the characteristic of time has altered. Before I totally defend Winter however, it would be interesting with further digging to explore the possibility that the melody in question actually goes back further, deriving from some section of a classical composition. I don’t know this, but I got a feelin’, a feelin’ deep inside. Oh yeah.
Y’know how Pachelbel’s Canon shows up all over the place. One of them deals.
So, in harmonic minor, scale steps “6-5-4, 5-4-3, 4-3-2, 1″ are copyrighted? Sounds like background to “Autumn Leaves” to me…
damn…all the good music is already taken. This explains a lot!
And classical composers like J.S. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven or Gustav Mahler were the biggest thieves. By the way, the progress of life (and not only human life) is based on imitation. If even a subconscious imitation was a copyright infringement and animals had the same rights as humans, then we should have copyright laws for animals as well. Back to the big bang!
Wow! I did not know our Universe was spawned into existence with a single foot thrust to a SONOR 24 BASS DRUM… that is a heaviest revelation! Eureka it’s the Phoenix!
You are so on track drumkid… I wonder if that drum has the Sgt. Pepper’s drum skin on it? Damn, that was a good one, dk.
You know when I read over all the comments, it gives me chills… Czerny rhymes with attorney in J’s iambic jamameter, fates and Dire Straits… wow. Infinite harmonic minor scales, wet nurses and strange bedfellows and a material universe only Bernaysian treachery can digest.
This is truly the coffee shop for inspired curmudgeons… Thanks everyone for clearing up Life, the Galaxy and Everything.
Right, Stratoblogster, we are not talking about a sequence of chords, which of course themselve are not protected and often reused (I-IV-V for example). We are talking about a subjective feeling when listening at the 2 songs. I’ve done it and asked other people to do the same. In our opinion, there is clearly something too similar.
So we should not blame Juergen Winter for having opened a case about it. It seems to be justified.