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?
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