it reminds me of “honesty” by billy joel. a much less cheesy song. also check out the beginning chord to “a hard day’s night” it’s the same as the ENDING chord in “people are strange” by the doors (sans the glissando). also, in a chase scene in the movie “dirty harry” lalo schiffrin does a rhythmic guitar passage that seems to have been used by led zepplin in “the immigrant song” or vice versa.

btw, I understand the above-poster’s Louie, Louie post, but fyi & fwiw, the Miami Herald years ago did an article showing that the three-note sequence opening up Louie, Louie came from a Cuban cha-cha arranged & played by Rene Touzet, which makes sense since the sequence is a pretty literal quote from Guantanamera, the unofficial Cuban Nat’l song. Couldn’t find the article, but Wikipedia confirms, & I did find this Rene Touzet youtube “History of Louie, Louie”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EerYrT-5VVc

thnxs again wnu–this is my first visit here; I’m an aficionado and (very) amateur musicologist, not a musician.

We’ll now it gets interesting. In papers issued to the courts on monday Coldplay DO NOT deny access or even lifting from Joes song. They say ” the similarities are so little ,that damages are not warranted ” and that Joes song “lacks originality and therefore not subjected to copyright”.Which is along the lines of the article above.In copyright law you can only go for the melody unless the chord structure is the melody ( smoke on the water) basically what you hum after hearing the song. Joes is claiming “substantial portions were used” but that seems a bit exaggerated .Joes and Coldplays melodies are very similar but not exact as people are stating. Same at the beginning ,different in the middle, same at the end.Enough though to call them “strikingly similar”. Identical circumstances in a the case ( baxter v MCA) resulted in the finding from a jury along the lines of” although we believe artist A copied from artist B.we believe that the piece in question is in the public domain therefore not protected by copyright.”the guy got off. In this case that would be Coldplay.

What that means , if there are enough examples of that melody out there ( and we have plenty of examples so far) Joe cannot lay claim to it as can no one else .It is then deemed “in the public domain” and free for all to use. If presedense is any thing to go by Coldplay are home free .

Soon, someone will figure out that Hang On Sloopy and LaBamba and Louie Louie and Twist and Shout all ripped off some old guy playing in the Delta circa 1940.