Rock’n’roll is built on nicking ideas from here and there and fashioning it into something of your own. Some of the greatest rock songs ever are pretty much a pilfered patchwork of riffs, melodies and ideas, but it is a fine line until you’re basically just stealing someone else’s song, as Led Zeppelin discovered on this day 40 years ago concerning their one-for-the-ages classic Whole Lotta Love.
That was when veteran US bluesman Willie Dixon decided that enough was enough (or more precisely, his daughter, who heard Whole Lotta Love on the radio and noticed the strong similarities to her father’s song). Some 16 years after Whole Lotta Love’s release, Dixon filed a lawsuit against the band for the melodic and lyrical similarities to his composition You Need Love, released as a single by Muddy Waters.
