“Whole lotto love”, Led Zeppelin’s theft from Willie Dixon

At the end of the fair there are seven notes and therefore it is inevitable that something is stolen from around and then elaborated with the sensitivity of the artist in question and transformed into something of one’s own. Some of the greatest rock songs of all time are practically a patchwork of riffs, melodies and ideas perhaps already from others. But as Ultimate Classic Rock points out, there’s a very thin line between crafting and stealing.

There have been (and there will still be) many cases in history. Today we report what they were involved in forty years ago Led Zeppelin and their classic “Whole Lotta Love”. When the black American bluesman Willie Dixon he decided, at his daughter’s urging, that he listened “Whole Lotta Love” on the radio he noticed strong similarities with a song by his father. So, about 16 years after the release of “Whole Lotta Love”Dixon filed a lawsuit against the band over melodic and lyrical similarities to his own “You Need Love”released as a single in 1963 by another blues legend, Muddy Waters.

Whereas
“You Need Love”
had been regularly performed by
Small Faces
friends of
Robert Plant
And
Jimmy Page
who had also recorded a version on their self-titled 1966 debut album titled
“You Need
Loving”
and that the future
Led Zeppelin
he had often talked about their love for that song… in short it was all very evident. The matter ended up being settled out of court in Dixon’s favor, and from the way Page and Plant later described it, they didn’t have much to add.

Jimmy Page
he commented on the story by placing all the blame for the issue on Plant’s shoulders: “Robert should have changed the lyrics. He didn’t always do it, and that’s what caused most of the problem.”
Robert Plant
in an interview with Musician he explained: “Page’s riff was Page’s riff. It was there before anything else. I just thought, ‘Well, what am I going to sing.’ It was all a little theft. Now paid with pleasure. At the time, there was a lot of talk about what to do. It was decided that it was really far away in time and influence… Well, you only get discovered when you succeed. This is the game.”