Unbelieveble coincidence or Sample Plagiarism?

Some days as a writer, you just can't find a topic to write about. That happened to me yesterday and the day before when I was struggling to find something to post on my Movies, TV and Music blog... until tonight an interesting topic just landed in my hands and I wasn't even looking!

Here's the story:

I had my girlfriend at my home over the weekend and we stayed up late playing cards and talking about everything and nothing. We started playing this game of guess the song, where one would load a random song on youtube and the other one (not facing the PC) would have to guess it. At one point we mistook the name of an instrumental song and started to look for its real name, not finding it at all (as it's kind of hard to look for the name of an instrumental song...)

So resignated to spend another day without posting in my blog, I decided to get a second look on the search of the misterious song, and I started goolging stuff like "best instrumental songs", "instrumental songs from the 60s or 70s" and so on. As you can imagine, large lists came up and I started to check one by one, trying to see if I could find the one I was looking for. Then came in the surprise:

I came across this gem, "The Last Time" by the Andrew Oldham Orchestra (or whatever). I found it strange that the writing credits were Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. I thought to myself the same thing you are probably thinking to yourself as you read these words: "What the hell?.... The Stones had an instrumental song?... and with an orchestra by some dude called Andrew Oldham?"

So here's the history of the song. The first thing you have to ask is ... Who the hell is Andrew Oldham Orchestra? I mean, I've heard of Andrew Lloyd Weber Orchestra, Love Unlimited Orchestra, Paul Mariat, but Andew Oldham? Who is this guy? Well... turns out that Andew Oldham was the first manager of the Rolling Stones. In fact, he was the one that got John Lennon and Paul McCartney to work with them and record "I wanna be your man", the single that eventually became the Stones' first hit. Also, he was the one that pioneered the Stones' image of "bad boys" to counter that one of the Beatles'. Bottom line, the guy was a top player of the game.

In 1965 Mick Jagger and Keith Richards write this random song (it's literally, as meaningful as a phone call from your yoga instructor), called "The Last Time". I proceeded to play it.

Play the song and try not to read the comments... keep reading my post

I heard it (this was my first time) and I actually thought it was the Kinks or the Youngbloods performing, and it was a title mistake or something. Initially it just didn't sound to me as a Stones's song. As most early Stones' songs it's kind of bluesy and focused on heavy vocals by all members. It has a catchy guitar riff, but nothing else. The real interesting part of playing the video was the nearly 4 million hits it had and almost 3,000 comments... most of them complaining on the fact that this song had nothing in common with a famous and one of the best songs of the 90s (Which I won't spoil yet to avoid ruining the experience)

As a musician myself, I had to replay the song (at this point it had ended and I was browsing through the comments), and I thought to myself something like "well, if you actually slow down the tempo a bit, you can hear some of the musical structure of the 90s song people were referring to." However it's not immediatly noticeable, because you have to pay close attention, and yes, you have to have a bit of musical ear.

Puzzled by my curious nature, I opened the next result I had on youtube, meaning the actual Andrew Oldham Orchestra result... and AHHHH.... THEN came in the REAL surprise (at this point you can play the video, and/or keep reading while you listen, and see if what I posted makes sense):

So in 1965 it just happened that Oldham being the Stones' manager -and a musician himself- embarked in a series of sampling projects of some songs of this clients, one of them being "The Last Time", which he proceeded to adapt to an orchestra version, resulting in the product that you are listening to. Like I mentioned above, he probably did something like slowing down the tempo, changed the measure of the metric and replaced the guitars  with violins and the drums with bongos.

Now you tell me... what famous song of the 90s sounds EXACTY like this?

That's right... thirty years later, "The Last Time" is now known as the "Bitter Sweet Symphony" by The Verve. The only feasable difference are Richard Ashcroft's lyrics, cause other than that, it's the same melody. In fact, the gap difference between the Stones' version and Oldham's version is WAAAAAAAY bigger than the one between Oldham's and the Verve's.

News for me is that both Andrew Oldham and some guy called Allen Klein (who's the owner of the company that has right of all Stones' early songs), noticed the coincidence immediately, and proceeded to confront The Verve with a lawsuit, who alleged they had requested permission to use a 4-bar sample of the song (I wonder if they meant musical bars or restaurant bars?). Needless to say, the court ruled favoring the Stones, hence the songwritting credits of "Bitter Sweet Symphony" read Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Richard Ashcroft.

Apparently Keith Richards was asked to give his opinion on the matter, which was "I'm out of whack here, this is serious lawyer shit. If The Verve can write a better song, they can keep the money." This initiallly shocking statement to many, has a lot of through to it. Just a few days ago, my mom (who is a huge 60s and 70s music fan, Zeppelin, Floyd, Stones, etc), was telling me how disappointed she has been of bands from the 90s and the 00s who weren't unable to match any of the classics from her teen years (with a few exceptions of course, like Nirvana, U2...). When Keith says "if The Verve can write a better song", he is 1) actually both inviting them to surpass their musical ceiling, and 2) subconsciously telling them that the Stones' manager was actually able to compose better than any of them were. Fact to matter is true: What other classic song can you name from The Verve, if not equal at least close to the popularity and legacy of Bitter Sweet Symphony? My mind is blank.

The worse thing is that by this point, I have still been unable to find the song I'm looking for... and now I found out that one of the greatest -easily top 5- songs of the 90s, one of the best songs I've ever heard, which originally I had thought was an inspirational moment of genius by The Verve, was nothing more than a simple rip-off of a cover that was made by the manager of The Rolling Stones! What does that tell you? Even the managers of the bands from the 60s were more capable of writing songs than most bands of the 90s and 00s. Honorable mention to another famous manager, Peter Watts, manager of Pink Floyd and father of Naomi Watts (who I'm in love with, and hopefully she's no rip-off)

Now is this the first or the last case? No, not at all. Also in the 90s -1997 to be more precise- the band Nerf Herder was questioned for writting a song that contained a very similar melody heard in a pop song from the 80s "Codo" by written and performed by an Austrian band called D.O.F. I guess that you do not recognize or heard of any of the names I've mentioned, so it's easier if I say it this way:

Did you ever watch Buffy The Vampire Slayer (Sarah Michelle Gellar)? Well the opening song:

is quite similar to this song

Nerf Herder denied having heard of D.O.F. before. In my opinion, they are full of .... well... let's just say that I know there are only seven musical notes, but man, this has to be one of the most unbelievable coincidences of all time.

There you have it... hopefully you learned something new about samping, orchestral songs of the 60s, and what to do, say and not to say when you find yourself involved in a lawsuit regarding copyright of a song!