ELP rip off Deep Purple?)

And they guy who talked about everyone ripping off Mozart is quite right, you shouldn't take these similarities close to heart, or you might even think first seconds of Pink Floyd's Dogs is simiral to Bowie's Starman 

I would not assume inspiration just because the opening strum is the same, but since I was replying to Pastmaster my comment was directed more at him than you - he did not assume, he claimed to know it was a rip-off. (I too made an assumption in that he meant "From the Beginning" by ELP)

Well, both start with a natural harmonic strum on the 12th fret and there the similarity ends. Therefore it is not the same and thus is not a rip-off.

 

Something that never occurred to me even though I've heard those tunes a thousand times. There is some similarity granted but nothing that screams 'rip off' in fact I know it isn't!

You will always hear things that appear to be ripped off. For instance Rush appeared to rip off Be Bop Deluxe quite a lot , that stop start thing was not originated by Rush. However no one cares about this. Its just a stylistic approach. Bands influenced other bands. That's how music evolves. No one works in a vacuum.

 

 

OK man, let's begin - I've already heard people wondering about this, I guess because Mozart was also a MASTER in creating hooking melodies quite accessible for everyone: singable - small ranges, in a major key, and a well-shaped melody; memorable - a lot of repetition in it, which helps make a song stick in the brain; and interesting - both for musicians like Mozart because of its implied harmonies, and for the listener, because the melody has f.ex. inherent tension in it.

 

Not only Mozart, but many classical musicians had often lifted tunes from each other, and this will always be found in music, forever, if you dig a little into classical you will understand better how common it was - they also even publicly mentioned different sorts of ripoffs in their own well-known Variations, which I often enjoy even more than the originals. Just an example, when Franz Liszt first performed a melody called "Ah vous dirai-je, Maman", he openly admitted he was not the melody’s maker, but had heard it in the work of another grand master, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Many people still believe that Mozart composed this tune, but what is true is that Mozart wrote twelve variations on the theme (also called Ah vous dirai-je, Maman), some time between 1782 and 1786, while he was staying in Paris. However. Mozart was himself knocking off the melody from a song called Le Faux Pas, whose first line was "Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman".

 

 

This is one of those "well known facts" and Gillian has acknowledged that musically it is based upon Bombay Calling (thou' he'd never heard the original when he wrote the lyrics) - IABD returned the 'compliment' by basing one of their songs (Don & Dewey) on Purple's Wring That Neck - which is probably how all these rip-off and plagiarism claims should be resolved instead wasting time and money in court with a judge who knows nothing about music.

Next challenge: were Mozart tunes ripoffs from unknown baroque/renaissance masters? 

Let's all check the Bach/Palestrina back catalogue to find out