Sounds Like Teen Spirit: Stolen Melodies, Ripped-off Riffs, and the Secret History of Rock and Roll

by Timothy English

Ever heard a song and thought "Hey, they ripped that off!" Sounds Like Teen Stolen Melodies, Ripped-off Riffs and the Secret History of Rock 'n' Roll is the first book ever to examine the phenomenon of songs that appear to have "borrowed" their melodies from earlier songs. While many are familiar with the similarities between George Harrison's My Sweet Lord and the Chiffon's oldie He's So Fine, did you also know · The first rock 'n' roll hit, Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock took part of its melody from Hank William's Move it on Over?
· The guitar riff that powered Nirvana's classic Smells Like Teen Spirit had its origins in Boston's More Than a Feeling?
· Bob Marley's Buffalo Soldier shares its melody with The Theme from the Banana Splits, a kids show from the 1960s? Come along for an exiting and informative journey through The Secret History of Rock 'n' Roll. You'll find out how ultra-hipsters the Strokes borrowed a melody from ultra-dork Barry Manilow; why Huey Lewis sued Ray Parker Jr. over Ghostbusters, how a novelty record cut by his dad may have influenced John Lennon's Imagine, and how an obscure song by the band Spirit was a likely inspiration in the creation of Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven. Sounds Like Teen Spirit will delight any music fan, and is sure to send you running to your stereo or I-Pod to hear the songs for yourself! "A fun and fact-filled book that you can either read from cover to cover, or skip around and open up at any page and dig in. Most of the songs you can hear in your head (or dig out the cds!) and you'll find yourself going again and again 'Oh yeah, this song really does sound like that song!' An enjoyable read."- Bob Brainen , WFMU, Jersey City, NJ "The book is a winner, one of those why didn't-I-think-of-that projects.guaranteed to elicit laughter and/or fistfights among your friendly neighborhood music geeks." -Kirkus Discoveries

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

177 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Lisa Bentley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sounds Like Teen Spirit is a music nerds dream book. It looks at the similarity between songs throughout history and the court cases that followed. It is informative and entertaining and also highlights some music similarities that I hadn’t noticed. It is really interesting.

For me, sometimes the sections were too long. If you weren’t a fan of a particular band or artist that had been focused on then the chapter seemed to drag but there is enough more entertaining information in the book to outweigh this small negative.

Sounds Like Teen Spirit is the perfect stocking filler book for the music lover in your life. Yes I did just mention stocking fillers in April.

Sounds Like Teen Spirit – Stolen Melodies, Ripped-Off Riffs, and the Secret History of Rock and Roll by Tim English is available now.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the secrets of the history of rock & roll is now unoriginal much of it is. It is common for people to think of the uncreative nature of contemporary music, as it is a regular talking point among those who are even casual fans of music. But such a thing has always been the case in rock & roll. From the very beginning of the genre, previous riffs and melodies were stolen, sometimes with a wink and a nod and honest appreciation and sometimes not. Sometimes things have been solved by tolerant and gracious good will, sometimes it has ended up in court. One of the remarkable aspects of this book is that the author generally thinks pretty well of both songs that are inspired or otherwise stolen and ripped off by others as well as those songs that pay honest homage to the music that came before. Originality is hard, and it is intriguing to see how different artists have made use of the same few chords and the same riffs and the same melodies. In my own mind, it must be admitted, I have a stronger degree of fondness for those who honestly appreciate others than those who simply rob and pillage and then try to sue those who are inspired by them. Such things have been known to happen, after all.

This book is a relatively small book of less than 200 pages that is divided into eleven parts. The first part of the book looks at sound-alike songs and their histories, looking first at the song that copied another and then a look at the usually more obscure song that was copied. After that the second and third parts of the book look at specific examples of copying on the part of the Beatles (both copiers and copied) and Led Zeppelin (mostly the latter), though the author does consider it amusing that others copied Led Zeppelin the way that they plundered others sometimes as well. After that come sections on the Rolling Stones (4) and Rod Stewart (5). The author spends a short section talking about examples of borrowing that seem unbelievable (6), like the way that Smells Like Teen Spirit borrows from Boston's More Than A Feeling, how Imagine borrows from That's My Life, a song by Lennon's father, how Buffalo Soldier borrows from a children's television theme, and how Autobahn takes from the Beach Boys. This is then followed by examples of self-borrowing (7), the Oasis game (8), examples from "new music (9)," a case history of Bolton vs. Ivey (10), and some musical family trees (11). The book ends with an afterword, bibliography, and information about the author.

The author is also much to be praised for the way that he sticks up for authors who do not tend to get a lot of credit for their work. The author notes, however, that Michael Bolton lost a dubious copyright claim and likely for the reason of his reputation. A similar thing, it should be noted, can be said for the case of Robin Thicke. Another interesting aspect of this book is the way that it traces the family tree of songs, noting how it is that certain riffs or melodies are used by others and then used by still others in turn, sometimes leading to long traditions of a particular riff being appreciated. There are many examples of these things not being included in the book, but the book does give plenty of cases where people intentionally used other songs as jumping off points and where this became especially troublesome. I could think of a few examples of stealing and "inspiration" that were not included here, but if all of the examples of such things were included in a book it would probably be more than a thousand pages, and no one would want to read it but me.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun and informative, if not particularly well-written.

[Ben Kalman · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look at musical plagiarism - but a lot of issues that are inherently problematic. For one, it attempts to be an academic style musicological text, but it is filled with non-sequiturs and asides, injections of opinion, and other interjections than all feel very much out of place.

There is also far too much supposition, which undermines the veracity of the text - ‘possibly’, ‘maybe’, ‘likely’, ‘loosely based on’, etc - and all without support. Other selections are said to have ‘similar production’ or ‘the same sonic template’ without any explanation of what that means.

In addition, there is not enough actual explanation of the evolution of music and of the actual plagiarism - just mentioning that a song is a rip-off is not enough - and no exploration of how plagiarism moves music forward. Exploring the history of music through its plagiarism would have been far more effective in building an understanding of the cause and effect than the limp afterward simply saying ‘songwriting is so hard!!!!’ And it doesn’t help that the author includes any song that an artist claims was a rip-off of their work - even if unjustified or doubtful.

Even beyond the above issues is the amateurish lack of anything remote resembling editing or fact checking. Self published books are terrible because of such a lack of editing:

1. There are typos all throughout the book, including title and artist names - Leonard Cohen’s Flowers FOR Hitler not Flowers OF Hitler; The Animals’ House of the RISING Sun not House of the Sun; Springsteen’s The PromiseD Land, not the Promise Land; They’re Coming to Take me Away is written as ‘THERE’ at least once; he miswrites ‘Soul Makossa’ as ‘Soul Mokossa’ multiple times...oh, and it’s ‘Donovan’ not ‘Donavan’
2. There are several factual errors. For example, claiming that the Beatles never shared billing with another artist prior to Billy Preston when they did (Tony Sheridan) at the beginning of their career; including the English Patient in a list of movies Saul Zaentz had produced by 1985 - it was from 1996; and I’m pretty sure JS Bach wasn’t composing in 1927...
3. And there are footnotes that repeat numbers, missing footnotes, etc - it’s a mess!

Next, there is an incomplete understanding of some of the pieces in the text - a good example is Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start The Fire, which is dismissed as an echo of Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues do to an apparent ‘laundry list’ lyric approach, but in fact it is a coherent and intentional trek through mid-20th century history, with each verse representing a different year; something that would have been apparent with a touch of research into the song...or even a careful listen to the lyrics.

Finally, there is no rhyme nor reason to chosen songs nor their order - the Beatles section is a good example; it is not chronological and contains a hodgepodge of songs inspiring and inspired by Beatles and post Beatle solo stuff in random fashion. And why are the Traveling Wilburys in the Beatle section? Just because George was a Wilbury (and Ringo an honorary one) doesn’t mean there’s any true tangible connection - the Wilburys were a super group in their own right.

All in all, this is a good compendium but would be far more interesting and less frustrating read if it were properly edited and if the author took the time to reference musical history and the evolution of music through plagiarism rather than just jumping in without properly situating his work.

[Rob Schorr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read! Was fun to listen along to the various songs and hear for yourself!! Love Timothy's clips on "Wake and Bake" on WFMU!

[Scott Vine · Rating 4 out of 5]

[This is review of the 2016 edition]

If you listen to a lot of music, you do find yourself regularly thinking ‘that sounds like …’ This book looks at those songs and artists who have been *cough* ‘inspired’ by other songs.

There are chapters devoted to serial ‘borrowers’ such as The Beatles, The Stones, Led Zeppelin, Brice Springsteen and Bob Dylan (who doesn’t stop at music for his plagiarism), as well as more recent proponents of the skill – Oasis and Green Day, Robin Thicke, Sam Smith and Coldplay. And a lot of fun it is too.

• Did you ever listen to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Outlaw Pete’ and think, hang on this is ‘I was Made for Lovin’ You’ by Kiss? or hear the guitar riff in Gun’s and Roses’ ‘Paradise City’ and immediately think ‘Macarena’! ? or maybe listen to Bob Marley’s ‘Buffalo Soldier’ and wonder why he starts to sing the melody from “The Banana Splits Theme!” ?
• Do you know John Denver has a writing credit on a New Order song?
• Or know the Green Day ‘song’ that manages to rip off four different tracks?

This is the book that will have you checking out Jorge Ben’s – Taj Mahal (Rod Stewart’s Do Ya Think I’m Sexy rips it off), and Jimi Hendrix’s Third Stone from the Sun (a song I’m very familiar with but until this book had never linked to Right Said Fred’s ‘I’m So Sexy!’ – but, it’s TRUE!)

Great Fun for music geeks everywhere.

[Israel Macario · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book. It was an interesting history of music, saw that Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley are the pioneers of rock music. Now I have new songs to put in my playlist or should I say alternative versions of some of my favorites. My biggest surprise was that Oasis has quite a few songs it "borrows". One song that I thought would be on the list would be Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall, it sounds like Lipps Inc. Funkytown. But I guess all the late 70s rock songs have that disco beat.

[Seton Rae · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tim English serves as an engaging and knowledgeable tour guide through the world of pop music similarities, both deliberate and unintended. His wide-ranging examples provide interesting listening suggestions for the reader.