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  • Meet Francis Malofiy, the Philadelphia Lawyer Who Sued Led Zeppelin
    https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/02/11/francis-malofiy-led-zeppelin

    Francis Malofiy may be the most hated man in the Philadelphia legal community. He may also be on the cusp of getting the last laugh on rock’s golden gods.

    #droit_d_auteur #musique #plagiat

    • @sandburg Voillà

      Meet Francis Malofiy, the Philadelphia Lawyer Who Sued Led Zeppelin
      https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/02/11/francis-malofiy-led-zeppelin

      People Laughed When This Philly Lawyer Sued Led Zeppelin. Nobody’s Laughing Now.

      Francis Malofiy may be the most hated man in the Philadelphia legal community. He may also be on the cusp of getting the last laugh on rock’s golden gods.

      By Jonathan Valania· 2/11/2019


      Philadelphia-area attorney Francis Malofiy. Photograph by Bryan Sheffield.

      The fact that Philadelphia barrister Francis Alexander Malofiy, Esquire, is suing Led Zeppelin over the authorship of “Stairway to Heaven” is, by any objective measure, only the fourth most interesting thing about him. Unfortunately for the reader, and the purposes of this story, the first, second and third most interesting things about Malofiy are bound and gagged in nondisclosure agreements, those legalistic dungeons where the First Amendment goes to die. So let’s start with number four and work our way backward.

      At the risk of stating the obvious, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, let the record show that “Stairway to Heaven” is arguably the most famous song in all of rock-and-roll, perhaps in all of popular music. It’s also one of the most lucrative — it’s estimated that the song has netted north of $500 million in sales and royalties since its 1971 release. Malofiy’s lawsuit, cheekily printed in the same druidic font used for the liner notes of the album Led Zeppelin IV, alleges that Jimmy Page and Robert Plant — Zep’s elegantly wasted guitarist/producer/central songwriter and leonine, leather-lunged lead singer, respectively — stole the iconic descending acoustic-guitar arpeggios of the first two minutes of “Stairway” from “Taurus,” a song with a strikingly similar chord pattern by a long-forgotten ’60s band called Spirit. At the conclusion of a stormy, headline-grabbing trial in 2016 that peaked with testimony from Page and Plant, the jury decided in Zep’s favor.

      When the copyright infringement suit was first filed in Philadelphia by Malofiy (pronounced “MAL-uh-fee”) on behalf of the Randy Craig Wolfe Trust — which represents the estate of Randy “California” Wolfe, the now-deceased member of Spirit who wrote “Taurus” — people laughed. Mostly at Malofiy. The breathless wall-to-wall media coverage the trial garnered often painted him as a loose-cannon legal beagle, one part Charlie Sheen, one part Johnnie Cochran. “Everybody kind of dismissed me as this brash young lawyer who didn’t really understand copyright law,” he says, well into the wee hours one night back in December, sitting behind a desk stacked four feet high with legal files in the dank, subterranean bunker that is his office.

      Hidden behind an unmarked door on the basement floor of a nondescript office building in Media, the law firm of Francis Alexander LLC is a pretty punk-rock operation. The neighbors are an anger management counselor and a medical marijuana dispensary. “I think of us as pirates sinking big ships,” Malofiy, who’s 41, brags. Given the sheer number of death threats he says he’s received from apoplectic Zep fans, the fact that mysterious cars seem to follow him in the night, and his claim to have found GPS trackers stuck to the bottom of his car, the precise location of his offices remains a closely guarded secret. Failing that, he has a license to carry, and most days, he leaves the house packing a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson.

      While most lawyers are sleeping, Malofiy is working through the night to defeat them, often until sunrise, fueled by an ever-present bottle of grape-flavored Fast Twitch as he chain-chews Wrigley’s Spearmint gum and huffs a never-ending string of Marlboro menthols. We’ve been talking on the record for going on eight hours, and Malofiy shows no signs of fading; in fact, he’s just announced the arrival of his third wind.

      He has a pretty good ‘fuck you’ attitude that comes from an inner confidence. He might have had a little too much early on,” attorney Jim Beasley Jr. says of Malofiy. “If you piss the judge off with your pirate act, the judge can make it difficult for you. Sometimes you could avoid all that by not swinging your pirate sword around.

      Talk turns to the distinctly pro-Zep tenor of the media coverage of the “Stairway” trial. “I was a punch line for jokes,” he says, spitting his gum into a yellow Post-it and banking it into the trash for, like, the 42nd time. Nobody’s laughing now, least of all Page and Plant. Nor, for that matter, is Usher. Back in October, at the conclusion of a dogged seven-year legal battle marked by a bruising string of dismissals and sanctions, Malofiy won a $44 million verdict — one of the largest in Pennsylvania in 2018 — for a Philadelphia songwriter named Daniel Marino who sued his co-writers after being cut out of the songwriting credits and royalties for the song “Bad Girl” from the R&B heartthrob’s 2004 breakout album, Confessions, which sold more than 10 million copies.

      Also, in late September of last year, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Malofiy’s appeal of the 2016 “Stairway to Heaven” verdict and ordered a new trial on the grounds that the court “abused its discretion” when the judge refused to allow Malofiy to play a recording of “Taurus” for the jury. (Members were only allowed to hear an acoustic-guitar rendition played from sheet music.) The retrial is expected to begin in the next year, and Page and Plant, along with bassist John Paul Jones, are again anticipated to take the stand. Copyright experts say Led Zeppelin — which has a long history of ripping off the ancient riffs and carnal incantations of wizened Delta bluesmen and only giving credit when caught — should be worried.

      Malofiy, who calls Zep “the greatest cover band in all of history,” will go to trial armed with reams of expert testimony pinpointing the damning similarities between the two songs — not just the nearly identical and atypical chord pattern, but the shared melodic figurations, choice of key and distinctive voicings. He’ll also show the jury that Page and Plant had ample opportunity to hear “Taurus” when Zep opened for Spirit on their first American tour in 1968, two years before they wrote and recorded “Stairway.”

      “Most big companies rely on the concept of wearing you down, forcing you to do so much work it literally drives you broke,” says Glen Kulik, a heavy-hitter L.A.-based copyright lawyer who signed on as Malofiy’s local counsel when the Zep case was moved to federal court in California. “If you have any chance of standing up to them, it’s going to require an incredible amount of persistence, confidence, and quite a bit of skill as well, and Francis has all those things in spades.” And Kulik would know, having successfully argued a landmark copyright infringement case before the Supreme Court in 2014 that paved the way for the Zeppelin suit.


      Francis Malofiy. Photograph by Bryan Sheffield.

      Ultimately, Malofiy doesn’t have to prove Led Zeppelin stole Spirit’s song; he just has to convince a jury that’s what happened. Assuming the trial goes forward — and that this time, he’s allowed to play recordings of both songs for the jury — there will be blood. Because contrary to his hard-won rep as a bull in the china shop of civil litigation, Malofiy possesses a switchblade-sharp legal mind, an inexhaustible work ethic, and a relentless, rock-ribbed resolve to absorb more punches than his opponents can throw. He’s a ruthlessly effective courtroom tactician with a collection of six-, seven- and eight-figure verdicts, not to mention the scalps of opposing counsel who underestimated his prowess. “I don’t plink pigeons; I hunt lions and tigers and bears,” he says. The big game he’s targeted in the past decade include deep-pocketed transnational corporations like Volvo (an epic seven-year case that ended in an undisclosed settlement) and Hertz (against whom he won a $100,000 verdict).

      In the arena of civil litigation, where the odds are increasingly stacked against plaintiffs, Malofiy claims to have never lost a jury trial, and that appears to be true. “I have lost twice — in the Zeppelin case and a lawsuit against Volvo — but got both decisions reversed on appeals,” he says, unsheathing a fresh stick of Wrigley’s. “Now, the same people that were asking me for years why I’m doing it are asking me how I did it.”

      If Malofiy prevails in the coming “Stairway” retrial, he’ll completely shatter the Tolkien-esque legend of the song’s immaculate conception — that it was birthed nearly in toto during a mystical retreat at a remote Welsh mountain cottage called Bron-yr-aur, to which many a starry-eyed Zep disciple has made a pilgrimage once upon a midnight clear when the forests echo with laughter. It will be like proving that da Vinci didn’t paint the Mona Lisa, that Michelangelo didn’t sculpt David. Barring a last-minute settlement, many legal and copyright experts predict that Malofiy may well emerge victorious, and credit for the most famous rock song in the world will pass from the self-appointed Golden Gods of Led Zeppelin to some obscure, long-forgotten (and not even very good) West Coast psych band, along with tens of millions in royalties, effectively rewriting the sacred history of rock-and-roll. And the man who will have pulled off this fairly miraculous feat of judicial jujitsu is the enfant terrible of Philadelphia jurisprudence.

      Malofiy hates wearing a suit and tie. Outside the courtroom, he dresses like a rock star masquerading as a lawyer: a crushable black trilby perched at a jaunty angle atop a blue bandana, a collarless black and orange leather Harley jacket, and a pair of beat-to-fuck brown Wesco boots, unlaced. “I’m always in jeans and boots when I meet new clients,” he says. “I warn them up front: ‘If you want a fancy lawyer in a suit, you should go elsewhere.’”

      The barrier to entry for new clients at Francis Alexander LLC is steep, because Malofiy doesn’t take on new cases so much as he adopts new causes. A case has to register on a deeply personal level if he’s going to eat, sleep, and fight to the death for it for the next five to seven years.

      “Lawyers have an ethical responsibility to advocate zealously for their clients,” says attorney Max Kennerly, who’s worked with Malofiy on a number of cases. “But frankly, in this business, a lot of lawyers play the odds and just do a ‘good enough’ job on a bunch of cases. Sometimes they win, and sometimes they lose. Francis really throws himself into his cases.”

      After 10 years of struggle, things finally seem to be breaking Malofiy’s way. Fat checks from cases settled long ago are rolling in, alleviating some fairly crippling cash-flow issues, and big cases just keep falling out of the sky — more than his two-lawyer outfit can field. They need to staff up, stat. Malofiy wants to hire some young bucks fresh out of law school — preferably Temple — as force multipliers in his quest to hold the powerful accountable on behalf of the powerless. “Most kids in law school right now will never see the inside of a courtroom,” he says. “Law schools don’t want to teach you how to change the system; they want to load you up with debt so you have to go do grunt work for some corporate law firm that specializes in maintaining the status quo.”


      Francis Malofiy. Photograph by Bryan Sheffield.

      Malofiy doesn’t have a website. He doesn’t do social media. He doesn’t trawl the watering holes of the rich and powerful. He doesn’t even have a business card. Thanks to the notoriety and name recognition that came with the Zeppelin trial, new clients chase him. He just got off the phone with a Brooklyn puppet maker who wants him to sue the band Fall Out Boy for alleged misuse of two llamas — Frosty and Royal Tea — that it created. Right now, he’s on a conference call with a trio of British songwriters who want Malofiy to sue the Weeknd for allegedly lifting a key section of their song “I Need to Love” for a track called “A Lonely Night” on his 2016 Starboy album, which has sold more than three million copies to date.

      “Why are you guys calling me?” he asks.

      “We’re looking for an honest person fighting for ordinary working people,” says Billy Smith, one of the Brit songwriters in question. Malofiy clearly likes the sound of that. After thinking it over for a few moments, he tells them he’ll take their case and gives them his standard new-client spiel. “I can’t promise we’ll win, but I can promise I won’t turn yellow when things turn bad. I won’t put my tail between my legs and run,” he says. “If there is any bad news, you will hear it from me first.”

      His teeth have been bothering him for days, and near the end of the call, one of his dental caps comes loose. He spits it out, and it skitters across his desk before he traps it under his palm. Most lawyers would be mortified. Malofiy thinks it’s hilarious. “I got teeth like you people,” he says to the Brits. Everybody laughs.

      Many people mistake Malofiy’s unconventionality as a design flaw when it’s actually a feature. “I think that’s an incredibly important part of what makes him so good as an attorney,” says A.J. Fluehr, 33, Malofiy’s right-hand man, co-counsel and, though eight years his boss’s junior, voice of reason. “Because he’s so unorthodox, I believe it causes a lot of other attorneys to underestimate him and think, ‘Oh, he’s not serious; he doesn’t know what he’s doing.’ All of sudden, there’s a massively serious case against them.”

      Even some of the defense lawyers who’ve done battle with Malofiy begrudgingly acknowledge his chops. “I’ve known Francis for four years now. He is difficult to deal with but a fierce advocate for his clients and his cause,” says Rudolph “Skip” DiMassa, a partner at Duane Morris. “Calling him ‘abrasive’ would be putting it mildly. But he wears it like a badge of honor that he is not like all the other lawyers in town.”

      When I read that and similar assessments from other lawyers back to Malofiy, he chalks them up to blowback for the heresy of Robin Hooding a corrupt status quo. “I have a target on my back because I sue big corporations, politicians, big law firms. Hell, I sued DA Seth Williams,” he says one night at the Irish Pub, as he’s nursing a screwdriver he’ll chase with a root beer. “When you start stepping on toes and suing the wrong people and get a few million shifted from those who have it to those who don’t — that’s where the change happens; that’s where you make a difference. And there is a price you have to pay for that.”

      According to family lore, Francis Malofiy’s maternal grandfather was murdered by Nazis in occupied Greece; his great-grandmother had to cut the body down from a tree and carry it home on the back of a mule. Concurrently, his paternal grandfather was murdered by Nazis in Ukraine, while his father and grandmother were frog-marched to camps in Germany. Some things can never be forgotten or forgiven. That’s why Malofiy is always kicking against the pricks. A slight child, he was often bullied at school, and after a brief experiment with turning the other cheek, he started fighting back. Hard. He recalls the day that a bully was picking on a girl half his size; young Francis cold-cocked him and threw him into a closet door. The kid had to be taken out on a stretcher. After that, the bullies moved on to easier prey. “I was always fighting for the little guy, even back then,” he says.

      In the third grade, friends turned him on to Poison’s Look What the Cat Dragged In and Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet, indelibly imprinting the spandexed bikers-and-strippers aesthetic of ’80s hair-metal onto his psyche. He started channeling the energy he once put into beating back bullies into beating the drums. One day in the sixth grade, he came home to tell his dad about a band all the kids were into: “The Led Zeppelins.”

      “He said, ‘No, son, it’s just Led Zeppelin.’”

      “No, I’m pretty sure it’s the Led Zeppelins.”

      So his father, who’d seen the band at the Electric Factory, drove Francis to the record store at the Granite Run Mall, where the clerks set him straight. His father bought the four-cassette Zep box set that had just come out. On the way home, Malofiy heard “Whole Lotta Love” for the first time, and before the song even ended, it was official: Led Zeppelin was his favorite band. When he was in high school, his drum teacher gently broke the news that Zep didn’t exactly, um, write all their own music — that key parts of their iconic songs had been cherry-picked from old, obscure blues recordings. “I said, ‘C’mon, don’t talk shit about Jimmy Page!’” Malofiy recalls. Then his teacher played him the Willie Dixon-penned Muddy Waters track “You Need Love” — which is what “Whole Lotta Love” was called before Zep hijacked the lyrics and the riff and Frankensteined them into the gloriously scuzzy heavy-metal Viking porno movie for the ears we’ve come to know and love. It was hard for Francis to process, and even harder when he was tipped to the uncanny similarity between Spirit’s “Taurus” and “Stairway.” Still, the spell Zep cast over him remained unbroken.


      Francis Malofiy. Photograph by Bryan Sheffield.

      As a young teenager, he built go-karts, dirt bikes and small-block Chevys. To make spending money for guitars and records, he started buying beater cars, fixing them up, and flipping them for quadruple what he paid for them. He almost didn’t graduate from high school because he’d played hooky too many times, to go fishing or work on cars or play guitar. When he finally got his high-school diploma, he raced home from school to show his mother in his Chevy S-10 lowrider. Tearing ass on the backcountry roads of Media, he blew past a cop who immediately lit up his cherry top and gave pursuit. Soon, one cop car became two, then three, until there were five cars tailing him.

      Much to his parents’ dismay, his run-ins with the law became common. They were never for anything all that serious, just the usual teen-rebel monkeyshines: fighting, speeding, the occasional high-speed car chase. He got a big wake-up call in 1998 when his beloved Uncle Nick — a.k.a. Nicholas “The Greek” Vasiliades — was handed a life sentence for running a high-volume meth lab in a warehouse in Manayunk that supplied the drug networks of the Pagans and the Mafia, as well as for his 50-gun arsenal of illegal weaponry. Malofiy was devastated. “I was going down a bad path,” he says. “My uncle pulled me aside and said, ‘You’re smart enough to do it the right way. You need to step away.’”

      Malofiy took the warning to heart and focused on getting a college education, graduating from Penn State in 2000 with a degree in finance. After college, he went back home to Media and his true loves: cars, girls and heavy metal. With a revolving cast of musicians, he formed multiple go-nowhere suburban hard-rock bands with cringe-y names like Prada G and Sluts ’n Slayers. Unimpressed, his parents urged him to enroll in law school. Eventually he relented, forging this pact: He would go to law school if he: a) could do whatever he wanted with the unfinished basement of his parents’ home (i.e., build a high-end recording-studio-cum-man-cave tricked out with a kitchen, bedroom and bathroom); and b) nobody hassled him about having long hair, rocking out and chasing girls. Deal. Malofiy took the LSATs and scored just south of 160 — hardly off the charts, but good enough to get into Temple, where he found himself drawn to copyright law.

      He graduated from law school in December of 2007 and took the bar exam the following July. On the night of August 16, 2008, he stopped into the Liberty Bar at 22nd and Market with his then-girlfriend. It was crowded, but they found a table in the back. After ordering drinks, they started getting static from a group of three young men in ball caps and white t-shirts. “Three drunken jerkoffs, white privilege out the ass,” says Malofiy. According to Malofiy’s testimony, the trio mocked his bandana and called him “cunt,” “pussy” and a “dirty spic.” (It was summer; Malofiy was tan.) According to Malofiy, at some point the men apologized and the situation seemed defused, but then one of them grabbed Malofiy’s girlfriend’s ass. “I said, ‘That’s it. Follow me out,’ and made for the door,” Malofiy says, but he was blocked by a member of the group. As they stood chest-to-chest, Malofiy says, the man struck him twice. Finally, Malofiy, who boxed in college, unloaded with a right cross that landed squarely on the guy’s left cheekbone, shattering the glass still clenched in Malofiy’s fist.

      The man suffered a deep gash in his cheek that would require 150 stitches and reconstructive surgery. Malofiy nearly severed the tendons in his thumb. Bleeding profusely, he had his girlfriend drive him to the emergency room at Penn Presby to get stitched up and then to Central Detectives to file a criminal complaint.

      Two months later, in October, notice came in the mail that he had passed the bar. His mother was ecstatic and insisted on driving him to the Pittsburgh office of the Prothonotary of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania immediately to obtain his law license rather than wait two weeks for the formal ceremony. When they got home the next day, Malofiy got a call from Central Detectives, who said they had a “body warrant” for his arrest on aggravated assault and related charges stemming from the Liberty Bar fight. The next day, he turned himself in and spent a night in jail awaiting a bail hearing. Had he not gone to Pittsburgh at his mother’s behest, it’s unlikely he’d have gotten his law license with a felony arrest on his record.

      Malofiy’s first case as a newly minted lawyer would involve defending a client staring down decades in prison if convicted: himself. Heeding the maxim that a man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client, Malofiy hired Sam Stretton, one of the most respected criminal defense attorneys in the city. Malofiy took the stand and delivered an impassioned defense of his actions. “He had already hit me twice, blocked my exit-way,” he testified. “I was scared for my safety and my girlfriend’s safety, and his friends had just yelled ‘Fight!’ and came up to me with fists drawn. I thought I had no other option.” The jury found him not guilty on all charges.

      “Welcome to Hogwarts,” Malofiy jokes as he shows me around the vast oak and stained-glass room that houses the law library at the Beasley Firm, possibly the most fearsome and feared personal-injury law firm in the city, where he worked, in an of-counsel capacity, from 2012 to 2014.

      Fresh out of law school and still wet behind the ears, Malofiy showed up one day in search of mentoring. Granted an audience with Jim Beasley Jr., one of the most successful plaintiff’s attorney in the city, Malofiy ended up with a promise of rent-free office space, the phone extension 666, and a commitment to help finance some of the highly ambitious cases he was mounting — a product-liability suit against Volvo, and a breach-of-contract suit, against a marble manufacturer that had screwed his client out of an ownership share, that resulted in a $4.2 million verdict — not to mention the Usher case. “Jim was like, ‘I keep getting calls from defense lawyers saying That kid’s the fucking devil, so you must be doing something right,’” Malofiy recalls.

      During Malofiy’s tenure at Beasley, he took out a controversial full-page ad in this magazine that depicted him crashing through a courtroom in a hot rod, looking every bit James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. Many members of Philadelphia’s uptight, buttoned-down legal community thought it was disrespectful. “Everyone was outraged, but I thought it was funny,” says Beasley. “He has a pretty good ‘fuck you’ attitude that comes from an inner confidence. He might have had a little too much of that early on, but I think he’s throttled back a bit. So many of a judge’s decisions are ties and jump-balls that are not reversible, and if you piss the judge off with your pirate act, the judge can make it difficult for you. Sometimes you could avoid all that by not swinging your pirate sword around.”

      Malofiy has learned this the hard way. In 2015, a three-judge panel voted to suspend his license to practice law in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for improper conduct in the Usher case — despite the fact that the special prosecutor recommended what amounted to a slap on the wrist: a reprimand.

      “It’s highly unusual that they would disregard the disciplinary recommendations of the special prosecutor after he has heard the facts,” says Stretton. The matter is currently on appeal before the Third Circuit.

      At Malofiy’s insistence, I’ve been tailing him for the better part of a month: from a big-dollar NDA’d settlement in a judge’s quarters, to a Port Richmond dive bar called Chuckles, to a Bucks County gun shop where he plunked down $1,729 for a handsome Benelli shotgun (a gift for his right-hand man Fluehr), to a back-alley strip bar in Center City and the disused factory under the Commodore Barry Bridge that he’s purchased and plans to renovate into office space, living quarters and a beer garden. I watched him hide his $82,000 Land Rover from the repo man (“It’s all a misunderstanding”) and then, days later, saw a pile of white letter-size envelopes stacked on his desk, each containing what looked to be thousands in cash. What I have come to learn is this: When you write about lawyers, there is so much you can’t write about lawyers.

      Malofiy slowly, methodically and unflinchingly parceled out the most personal details of his backstory — the good, the bad and the ugly — as I incrementally earned his trust. But always on his timetable, not mine. It could be exasperating, but by the end, I discovered the method to his madness: He’d been pacing his revelations as he would a trial presentation. And now we’re reaching the crescendo of his closing argument — the big reveal.


      Francis Malofiy. Photograph by Bryan Sheffield.

      It’s a few clicks shy of midnight at Malofiy’s house in Media on a Sunday night shortly before Christmas. In the morning, he’s jetting off to an auction in London to bid on the Helios recording console that captured “Stairway to Heaven” for the ages. (Malofiy, true to form, won’t confirm that he won or lost the auction.) Though he’s been locked in a nasty four-year legal fight with Led Zeppelin, they’re still his favorite band.

      Malofiy called to insist that I come to his house tonight. “Why? What for?” I demanded. He said he wanted to show me something I could only see there. I begged off, explaining that this article was due in the morning and I already had more than I could use. But he insisted, promising it would be worth my while. He doesn’t disappoint. He tells me to open the freezer. There’s a bottle of Tito’s vodka, an ice tray, and half a lemon on a plate with a yellow plastic knife. “That’s the lemon Robert Plant squeezed into his tea when we deposed him in London back in 2016,” he claims. This is deeply ironic and, if you’re acquainted with the role lemons play in Plant’s legend, cosmically hilarious. One of Led Zeppelin’s most infamous tracks is “The Lemon Song,” a sultry blooze ramble from 1969’s deathless Led Zeppelin II stitched together from pieces of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor” and Robert Johnson’s “Travelling Riverside Blues.” (Zep settled a 1972 copyright suit over the Howlin’ Wolf portion of the song.) In the fifth verse, Plant sings:

      Squeeze me baby, till the juice runs down my leg
      The way you squeeze my lemon, ah
      I’m gonna fall right out of bed

      By swiping that lemon rind at the deposition, Malofiy stole Robert Plant’s metaphoric penis the way Prometheus stole fire from the gods. Zep famously invoked the mythic “Hammer of the Gods” from Norse legend. For Jimmy Page, that hammer was his guitar, but for Plant it was his, um, mighty lemon tree.

      Incredible though it may seem, Malofiy says he’s kept the lemon on ice for the past three years and had it in his briefcase like a talisman when he gave oral arguments for what proved to be his successful appeal of the 2016 “Stairway” verdict. He has every intention of taking it to the retrial that will, barring unforeseen developments, commence in the next year.

      “Robert Plant is always going on about his lemon, and at the deposition he made a big deal out of slicing it up and squeezing it into his tea and then sucking on the rind,” he says with a cat-who-ate-the-canary grin. “Jimmy Page famously dabbled in black magic and was always going on about Aleister Crowley, and I said to myself, ‘If they are going to use black magic to try to beat me on technicalities — well, two can play at that game.’”

      Published as “The Devil’s Advocate” in the February 2019 issue of Philadelphia magazine.

  • Plagiarists or innovators ? The Led Zeppelin paradox endures
    https://theconversation.com/plagiarists-or-innovators-the-led-zeppelin-paradox-endures-102368

    La musique entre usage des communs et plagiat, entre appropriation et « just have fun ». Superbe article.

    Fifty years ago – in September 1968 – the legendary rock band Led Zeppelin first performed together, kicking off a Scandinavian tour billed as the New Yardbirds.

    The new, better name would come later that fall, while drummer John Bonham’s death in 1980 effectively ended their decade-defining reign. But to this day, the band retains the same iconic status it held back in the 1970s: It ranks as one of the best-selling music acts of all time and continues to shape the sounds of new and emerging groups young enough to be the band members’ grandchildren.

    Yet, even after all this time – when every note, riff and growl of Zeppelin’s nine-album catalog has been pored over by fans, cover artists and musicologists – a dark paradox still lurks at the heart of its mystique. How can a band so slavishly derivative – and sometimes downright plagiaristic – be simultaneously considered so innovative and influential?

    How, in other words, did it get to have its custard pie and eat it, too?

    As a scholar who researches the subtle complexities of musical style and originality as well as the legal mechanisms that police and enforce them, such as copyright law, I find this a particularly devilish conundrum. The fact that I’m also a bassist in a band that fuses multiple styles of music makes it personal.
    A pattern of ‘borrowing’

    For anyone who quests after the holy grail of creative success, Led Zeppelin has achieved something mythical in stature: a place in the musical firmament, on its own terms, outside of the rules and without compromise.

    When Led Zeppelin debuted its eponymous first album in 1969, there’s no question that it sounded new and exciting. My father, a baby boomer and dedicated Beatles fan, remembers his chagrin that year when his middle school math students threw over the Fab Four for Zeppelin, seemingly overnight. Even the stodgy New York Times, which decried the band’s “plastic sexual superficiality,” felt compelled, in the same article, to acknowledge its “enormously successful … electronically intense blending” of musical styles.

    Yet, from the very beginning, the band was also dogged with accusations of musical pilfering, plagiarism and copyright infringement – often justifiably.

    The band’s first album, “Led Zeppelin,” contained several songs that drew from earlier compositions, arrangements and recordings, sometimes with attribution and often without. It included two Willie Dixon songs, and the band credited both to the influential Chicago blues composer. But it didn’t credit Anne Bredon when it covered her song “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You.”

    The hit “Dazed and Confused,” also from that first album, was originally attributed to Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. However in 2010, songwriter Jake Holmes filed a lawsuit claiming that he’d written and recorded it in 1967. After the lawsuit was settled out of court, the song is now credited in the liner notes of re-releases as “inspired by” Holmes.
    ‘Dazed and Confused’ by Jake Holmes.

    The band’s second album, “Led Zeppelin II,” picked up where the first left off. Following a series of lawsuits, the band agreed to list Dixon as a previously uncredited author on two of the tracks, including its first hit single, “Whole Lotta Love.” An additional lawsuit established that blues legend Chester “Howlin’ Wolf” Burnett was a previously uncredited author on another track called “The Lemon Song.”

    Musical copyright infringement is notoriously challenging to establish in court, hence the settlements. But there’s no question the band engaged in what musicologists typically call “borrowing.” Any blues fan, for instance, would have recognized the lyrics of Dixon’s “You Need Love” – as recorded by Muddy Waters – on a first listen of “Whole Lotta Love.”
    Dipping into the commons or appropriation?

    Should the band be condemned for taking other people’s songs and fusing them into its own style?

    Or should this actually be a point of celebration?

    The answer is a matter of perspective. In Zeppelin’s defense, the band is hardly alone in the practice. The 1960s folk music revival movement, which was central to the careers of Baez, Holmes, Bredon, Dixon and Burnett, was rooted in an ethic that typically treated musical material as a “commons” – a wellspring of shared culture from which all may draw, and to which all may contribute.

    Most performers in the era routinely covered “authorless” traditional and blues songs, and the movement’s shining star, Bob Dylan, used lyrical and musical pastiche as a badge of pride and display of erudition – “Look how many old songs I can cram into this new song!” – rather than as a guilty, secret crutch to hold up his own compositions.

    Why shouldn’t Zeppelin be able to do the same?
    Willie Dixon’s imprint can be found on a number of Led Zeppelin songs. Brianmcmillen, CC BY-SA

    On the other hand, it’s hard to ignore the racial dynamics inherent in Led Zeppelin’s borrowing. Willie Dixon and Howlin’ Wolf were African-Americans, members of a subjugated minority who were – especially back then – excluded from reaping their fair share of the enormous profits they generated for music labels, publishers and other artists.

    Like their English countrymen Eric Clapton and The Rolling Stones, Zeppelin’s attitude toward black culture seems eerily reminiscent of Lord Elgin’s approach to the marble statues of the Parthenon and Queen Victoria’s policy on the Koh-i-Noor diamond: Take what you can and don’t ask permission; if you get caught, apologize without ceding ownership.

    Led Zeppelin was also accused of lifting from white artists such as Bredon and the band Spirit, the aggrieved party in a recent lawsuit over the rights to Zeppelin’s signature song “Stairway to Heaven.” Even in these cases, the power dynamics were iffy.

    Bredon and Spirit are lesser-known composers with lower profiles and shallower pockets. Neither has benefited from the glow of Zeppelin’s glory, which has only grown over the decades despite the accusations and lawsuits leveled against them.
    A matter of motives

    So how did the band pull it off, when so many of its contemporaries have been forgotten or diminished? How did it find and keep the holy grail? What makes Led Zeppelin so special?

    I could speculate about its cultural status as an avatar of trans-Atlantic, post-hippie self-indulgence and “me generation” rebellion. I could wax poetic about its musical fusion of pre-Baroque and non-Western harmonies with blues rhythms and Celtic timbres. I could even accuse it, as many have over the years, of cutting a deal with the devil.

    Instead, I’ll simply relate a personal anecdote from almost 20 years ago. I actually met frontman Robert Plant. I was waiting in line at a lower Manhattan bodega around 2 a.m. and suddenly realized Plant was waiting in front of me. A classic Chuck Berry song was playing on the overhead speakers. Plant turned to look at me and mused, “I wonder what he’s up to now?” We chatted about Berry for a few moments, then paid and went our separate ways.

    Brief and banal though it was, I think this little interlude – more than the reams of music scholarship and journalism I’ve read and written – might hold the key to solving the paradox.

    Maybe Led Zeppelin is worthy because, like Sir Galahad, the knight who finally gets the holy grail, its members’ hearts were pure.

    During our brief exchange, it was clear Plant didn’t want to be adulated – he didn’t need his ego stroked by a fawning fan. Furthermore, he and his bandmates were never even in it for the money. In fact, for decades, Zeppelin refused to license its songs for television commercials. In Plant’s own words, “I only wanted to have some fun.”

    Maybe the band retained its fame because it lived, loved and embodied rock and roll so absolutely and totally – to the degree that Plant would start a conversation with a total stranger in the middle of the night just to chat about one of his heroes.

    This love, this purity of focus, comes out in its music, and for this, we can forgive Led Zeppelin’s many trespasses.

    #Communs #Led_Zeppelin #Musique

  • http://www.desordre.net/bloc/ursula/2017/sons/status_quo_is_there_a_better_way.mp3

    J – 127 : La fin des étoiles de pierre (et autres mouvements de balanciers).

    Je me souviens, oui, c’est comme cela que cela devrait commencer, d’avoir reçu en cadeau de Noël la disque Blue for you du groupe de rock britannique, Status Quo , d’ailleurs en allant vérifier la chose, j’ai trouvé cette indication parfaitement calligraphiée d’une écriture dont j’ai le vague souvenir, chaque fois reprécisé quand j’en retrouve des traces dans mes petites affaires, que cette écriture était bien la mienne au millénaire précédent, celui de l’écriture calligraphiée pour ne pas dire analogique, les restes d’une telle écriture chez moi étant devenus parfaitement illisibles, parfois de moi-même une heure après avoir pris des notes, mais en mil neuf cent septante six, à Noël, j’écrivais d’une façon tout à fait lisible et convenable, avec même quelques traces voulues décoratives, bien de mon âge, bien de mon sexe, mais qui ne laissaient cependant pas deviner dans leur volonté d’afféterie que ce serait là ma voie, dix ans plus tard je rentrais aux Arts Déco, et donc c’est bien la mention Philippe Noël 1976 qui est donc inscrite et parfaitement lisible sur l’enveloppe de papier qui contenait la galette même à l’intérieur de la pochette du disque.

    Is there a better way ?

    Y a-t-il une meilleur façon de commencer ce récit ?

    Et c’est à cela que j’ai pensé, le matin de Noël. J’étais chez mes parents, nous avions réveillonné la veille, mon père avait sorti la grosse artillerie pour ce qui est des vins, ce qui commandait de facto que l’on vide, le lendemain midi même, les carafons, aussi étais-je retenu à déjeuner par mes parents, ce qui allait me donner l’occasion de réparer Oscar, l’ordinateur de mon père s’appelle Oscar, encore que réparer avec la dixième version de l’interface Fenêtres , il s’agisse bien davantage de tatônements, de quelques jurons bien sentis à propos de la conception de certaines des voies de ce progiciel, quand bien même, on est, je le suis, à mon corps défendant, et en dépit d’études dans le domaine des Arts Déco, informaticien, et puis, depuis quelques temps, auteur même, ceci n’est pas mon coup d’essai, avec l’expérience maintenant, je peux faire semblant d’hésiter, je sais un peu où je vais malgré tout, et là où je serai, vous avec moi, dans quelques centaines de pages, bref cela n’allait pas tout seul, depuis quelques temps, depuis son passage à la dixième version de Fenêtres , Oscar peinait sans cesse à se raccrocher au réseau orange de mes parents. Vers onze heures, j’ai pu pousser un cri victorieux, alors que cinq minutes auparavant j’avais déjà laissé entendre à mon père que je n’étais pas certain de pouvoir réactiver la carte réseau de son ordinateur portable, ma quoi ? avait demandé mon père, l’équipement dans Oscar qui permet de choper les paquets de données qui émanent de ta boîte. Et pour donner foi à mon cri de guerre victorieux, putain ça marche enfin , j’avais démarré une fenêtre de navigateur de marque panda roux et dans la barre d’adresse je pianotais l’adresse du site du Monde . Et de fait, cela fonctionnait. Les nouvelles s’affichaient, un avion de transport de troupes russes s’était abimé ne laissant aucun survivant. Mon père, ancien ingénieur en aéronautique faisait grise mine, il n’aime pas, plus que personne je crois, les accidents d’avion, quand bien même, rationnellement il lui arrive de parler d’impondérables, Rick Parfitt, guitariste, à l’époque on disait guitariste rythmique, du groupe britannique Status Quo est mort, Ah merde Rick Parfitt, mon père, qui ça ? Un musicien de rock. Ah.

    Apparemment Rick Parfitt est mort d’une infection contractée lors d’une opération chirurgicale la semaine précédente, à l’âge de 68 ans. Un peu jeune pour le commun des mortels, un peu vieux pour un musicien de rock. Et plutôt une mort de type de la rue qu’une de ces morts spectaculaires au volant d’un bolide de la route, d’une overdose carabinée, ou encore d’un coma éthylique, de ceux dont justement on ne sort pas, ou alors pas la porte de derrière, d’un suicide ou que sais-je qui fait les légendes de ces étoiles de pierre. Et qui disparaissent.

    A vrai dire Rick Parfitt, cela faisait longtemps que je n’en avais plus du tout entendu parler, cela aurait même pu dater de la toute fin des années septante, je ne peux pas dire que je suis resté scotché très longtemps sur le Quo , comme on disait, alors, pour se donner un peu, à l’âge de douze treize ans, des airs de type qui s’y connaissait, si ce n’est qu’ayant habité pendant trois ans en Angleterre, j’ai appris, à ma plus grande stupéfaction, que ces types-là, pas juste Rick Parfitt mais aussi Francis Rossi, l’autre guitariste, le soliste comme on disait du même temps où on disait un guitariste rythmique, et d’ailleurs quand on le disait, je ne suis pas certain que l’on savait très exactement ce que cela voulait dire, mais on n’aurait pas voulu dire autre chose, moins, bref le Quo, et bien, à l’époque, s’entend, ils n’étaient pas morts, et même qu’ils étaient en tournée plus souvent qu’à leur tour et que même, certains de leurs morceaux passaient à la radio, il faut dire à la radio anglaise, ils ne sont pas tenus par des histoires de quotas pour ce qui est de passer de la chanson française. Et même tout quinquagénaires qu’ils étaient, dans les années nonante, il leur arrivaient de faire les gros titres de la presse populaire pour tel, petit qu’on se rassure, méfait, ou, même, déjà, de survivre à une crise cardiaque, Francis Rossi, le soliste, pas le rythmique, mais si pendant ces trois années d’anglaise vie, je n’avais pas, de temps en temps, jeter un coup d’oeil dans les pages de cette presse populaire, généralement laissée derrière soi par l’équipe de nuit, j’aurais peut-être oublié jusqu’au nom de ces types et de leur groupe, le fameux Status Quo , et peut-être que j’aurais à peine relevé le titre de la manchette du Monde ce matin de Noël, quarante ans, jour pour jour, après le jour de Noël de septante-six, quand j’avais reçu en cadeau de Noël le fameux Blue for you de Status Quo .

    Et du coup, je me sens tout chose, comme on dit. Ému, ce serait beaucoup dire. Juste un peu triste parce que je n’ai aucun mal à me faire l’application du raisonnement qui veuille que si ces types dont les posters ornaient les murs de ma chambre adolescent sont en train de tomber comme des mouches, et depuis quelques années, ce ne sont plus des overdoses, des morts par balle ou que sais-je d’un peu rock’n’roll comme on dit, mais bien plutôt des insuffisances rénales, des crises cardiaques ou encore des cancers, bref des maladies de vieux, encore que le cancer, et donc que si ces idoles de jeunesse qui avaient l’âge d’être des grands frères un peu remuants commencent à périr du grand âge, il n’est pas difficile d’en déduire que notre tour se profile aussi.

    Et est-ce qu’avant que ce soit notre tour, ce qui va surtout advenir, c’est que plus personne ne sera bientôt capable de partager avec soi l’éventuelle émotion, le petit pincement de cœur, que provoquent ces disparitions d’étoiles de pierre, lesquelles vont finir par se produire dans le silence et même l’indifférence, et on sera passé de l’émotion planétaire provoquée par la mort de John Lennon, de celle qui permet d’échanger, entre personnes émues, des années plus tard de ce que l’on faisait de jour-là, comme dans la chanson de Lou Reed (insuffisance rénale, 2013), the day John Kennedy died , on passera donc de cette forme d’universalité à la plus grande des indifférences, en sera-t-on même informé quand Jimmy Page se brisera le col du fémur en tombant de l’échelle de sa bibliothèque de parchemins de je ne sais quel obscur penseur dont il est le seul lecteur et que conformément aux statistiques en matière de col du fémur, son trépas interviendra dans l’année suivant cette mauvaise chute, comme c’est le cas pour la moitié des patients ayant à souffrir d’une fracture du col du fémur, pauvre Jimmy Page (col du fémur, 2018) quand on y pense, c’est pas beau de vieillir. De même la grande faucheuse sera cruelle qui viendra prendre Neil Young dans son sommeil, à son enterrement les membres claudicants du Crosby, Stills and Nash et donc plus Young, viendront chanter sur sa tombe, Hey Hey my my, rock’n’roll will never die , incantation de vieux perclus de rhumatismes, Neil Young (rupture d’anévrisme dans son sommeil, 2019) n’en saura rien, mais le rock’n’roll est mort.

    Et avec cette mort, les générations futures ne relèveront plus certaines références, ils ne comprendront plus certains effets de décor comme dans, je ne sais pas pourquoi je pense à ce film maintenant, Tonnerre de Gruillaume Brac, avec Benard Menez, dans le rôle du père de province dont la garçonnière dans la maison est décorée de pochettes de disques reprises par quatre punaises en leurs coins comme nous faisions tous dans les années septante, et dans Tonnerre donc, le souvenir de la pochette d’une compilation de Jimi Hendrix (overdose, 1970), le représentant dans une peinture très bariolée, celle de Sounds of silence de Simon (cancer, 2013) & Garfunkel (cancer aussi, 2021) et je ne sais plus quoi de Cat Stevens (infection urinaire, 2025), (je viens de télécharger le film, le troisième disque l’on voit c’est Everbody knows this is nowhere de Neil Young (rupture d’anévrisme, 2019) pareillement épinglées sur un fond de papier peint à l’avenant. Avouez que, vous même, en regardant ce film sorti il y a deux ans, Lou Reed venait de casser sa pipe, insuffisance rénale, je n’y reviens pas, vous ne l’avez peut-être pas remarqué et vous ne vous ne souvenez peut-être même pas de cet élément de décor. Donc pas grave.

    Et en fait je me demande si ce n’est pas ce qui qualifie le mieux ces disparitions d’étoiles de pierre : ce n’est pas grave. C’est même étonnant à quel point ce n’est pas grave. Anodin même. Oh bien sûr je ne doute pas que cela attriste les proches de ces morts autrefois fameux, mais pour nous qui ne sommes pas proches, ces disparitions finissent par rejoindre en émotion modérée, celle des quelques cent militaires russes morts dans le crash de leur avion de transport de troupes, j’y verrai presque de l’émancipation, une sorte de crépuscule des idoles, à la manière de cette installation de Gilles Barbier qui a imaginé la maison de retrait des superhéros, Hulk est en chaise roulante, Superman en déambulateur tandis que Wonderwonan est un peu avachie et veille tendrement sur Captain America gisant sur une civière et sous perfusion, et si l’émancipation est à ce prix, j’y verrai presque un encouragement à hâter la manœuvre.

    Voici donc le récit de la disparition des étoiles de pierre.

    (en cours d’écriture)

    Il me semble avoir mentionné le décès de Jimmy Page en 2018, à l’âge de 74 ans, Jimmy Page qui ne s’est jamais remis tout à fait de sa fracture du col du fémur en dégringolant de son escalier de bibliothèque, chute survenue alors qu’il voulait épater une petite jeunette de quarante ans sa cadette, avec la lecture de tel manuscrit d’Aleister Crowley, dont vous même pouvez continuer de tout ignorer tant il semble que Jimmy Page a été, de tout temps, l’unique lecteur, et, pour le bienfait de nombreux bouquinistes dans le monde, un collectionneur vorace de ses grimoires, les bouquinistes se refilant mondialement le tuyau de cette érudition qui n’en était pas une. Las, le petit père Jimmy, 73 ans, un peu moins vert que ce qu’il aurait aimé faire accroire à cette jeune femme de 34 à laquelle il aimait jouer quelques sérénades de guitare, peinant désormais sur certains doigtés, depuis peu obtenus non sans un peu de tension arthritique dans les phalanges (c’est amusant tout de même de s’imaginer Jimmy Page à l’âge de 74 ans jouer l’intro de Stairway to Heaven à une jeunette), lui, Jimmy Page pensant benoîtement que cela pouvait impressionner encore quiconque (croyez-moi cela n’impressionnait déjà plus grand monde dans les années 80, j’ai gaspillé quelques heures de ma vie, pis de ma jeunesse, à tenter d’apprendre cette maudite ballade et ses arpèges prétentieux, pour un retour sur investissement auprès du sexe opposé voisin de zéro), elle, cette jeune femme, dont on a pu se demander si elle n’aurait pas donné dans cet escalier de bibliothèque cette secousse fatale, pas grand chose juste assez pour déséquilibrer le petit vieillard sémillant, la chute, fracture du col du fémur, manque d’entrain ensuite pour ce qui est de la rééducation, comme souvent à cet âge-là, et naturellement le déclin rapide inexorable, le patient ne sort plus vraiment de chez lui, il redoute le moindre choc, et la jeune femme qui hérite assez massivement de livres par millions, mais qui en revanche ne trouvera pas d’acquéreur pour les vieux manuscrits d’Aleister Crowley, son unique lecteur venait de prendre l’escalier de la sortie mais vers la descente, cette jeune femme était en fait, la fille illégitime de Jimmy Page, du temps des tournées aux Etats-Unis, des groupies par demi-douzaine et autres sévices lamentables notamment avec un requin, la jeune femme avait ce très bel aileron de requin tatoué sur le bas du ventre, l’ombre de ce dernier, schématiquement brouillé par les flots venant se mélanger avec ses poils pubiens, Jimmy Page pensez s’il se souvient du requin dont cette jeune femme était la fille, pensez s’il se souvient de cette femme dont il lui a donné à enfanter cette jeune femme, qui à l’âge de sa mère dans les années septante, a trouvé le chemin d’une vengeance servie froide. (à développer)

    Mick Jaegger (priapisme sénile, excès de masturbation, tachycardie, 2021)
    Keith Richards (sénilité, grand âge fatigue, 2035)
    Bob Dylan (Alzeimer, 2014)
    Neil Young (rupture d’anévrisme, 2019)
    David Bowie (maladie rare des os, 2022)
    Robert Fripp (crises d’épilepsie à répétition, 2030)
    Steve Howe (arthrose dégénérative, 2021)
    David Gilmour (cirrhose du foie, 2032)
    Steve Hackett (cancer inconnu, mort en 2017, mais mort connue seulement en 2025)
    Denis Laine (cancer du colon, 2025)
    Peter Hamill (crise cardiaque, 2025)
    Frank Zappa (épuisement, dans son sommeil, 2044, le jour de ses cent ans)

    etc ad lib

    Exercice #61 de Henry Carroll : Restez assis au même endroit pendant cinq heures. Ne prenez des photos que la lorsque la lumière est la plus belle

    Cinq heures c’est un peu excessif non, en revanche longtemps, oui, cela a du déjà m’arriver dans les Cévennes. Tout en haut des marches, le café en main, et le regard du côté du hameau de Brin sur l’ubac.

    #qui_ca

  • 11月6日のツイート
    http://twilog.org/ChikuwaQ/date-161106

    Top story: Weusegadgets on Twitter: "Who’s watching when a fracked oil pipeline… twitter.com/i/web/status/7…, see more tweetedtimes.com/ChikuwaQ?s=tnp posted at 04:39:50

    Top story: UPDATE: The Nevada Early Voting Blog - Story www.ktnv.com/news/ralston/t…, see more tweetedtimes.com/ChikuwaQ?s=tnp posted at 03:01:13

    Willem Mengelberg, Suppe: Poet & Peasant - YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ_HOg…

    posted at 01:35:33

    Top story: The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia www.nytimes.com, see more tweetedtimes.com/ChikuwaQ?s=tnp posted at 00:52:08

    RT @JimmyPageNews: Read pages of excerpt from the new unofficial biography No Quarter: The Three Lives Of Jimmy Page via @PopMatters www.popmatters.com/feature/no-qua… pic.twitter.com/0FFO6UwUKL posted at 00:35:59

    #ねこあつめ (...)

  • Meghan Murphy : Une longue liste de musiciens masculins super qui n’étaient pas des gens super

    https://tradfem.wordpress.com/2016/01/26/meghan-murphy-une-longue-liste-de-musiciens-masculins-super-qui-n

    Les stars du rock ne sont pas des dieux. Et lorsque que votre comédien, réalisateur, ou musicien préféré, s’avère être un violeur ou un conjoint violent, essayez de ne pas laisser votre admiration brouiller cette réalité. [...]

    Lori Mattix a dit à la revue Thrillist, qu’au début des années 70, « [David Bowie] m’a conduite jusqu’à la chambre, a retiré doucement mes vêtements et m’a dépucelée » . Elle a continué :

    « Deux heures plus tard, je suis allée voir comment allait Sable. Elle était dans le salon complètement défoncée, elle tournait en rond, faisait de la buée sur les vitres et écrivait « Je veux baiser David ». J’ai dit [à Bowie] ce qu’elle faisait et que je me sentais très mal. Bowie a répondu « Et bien chérie, fais-la entrer ». Cette nuit là j’ai perdu ma virginité et fait mon premier plan à trois. Le matin suivant, quelqu’un tambourinait à la porte et c’était cette conne d’Angie [l’épouse de Bowie]. »

    C’est arrivé lorsque Mattix avait 13 ou 14 ans (certaines sources pensent qu’elle en avait 15, mais dans un documentaire elle indique que cela s’est passé avant qu’elle ne soit avec Jimmy Page, à 13 ou 14 ans). Celui-ci a aussi été accusé de viol en 1987.

    Traduction : Tradfem
    Article original : http://www.feministcurrent.com/2016/01/13/here-is-a-list-of-men-who-made-great-but-music-were-not-always-grea

    #Meghan_Murphy est écrivaine et journaliste indépendante, secrétaire de rédaction du soir pour le site rabble.ca, et fondatrice et directrice du site Feminist Current. Vous pouvez la suivre sur Twitter : https://twitter.com/MeghanEMurphy

    #David_Bowie #viols #agressions_sexuelles #rockstar #groupies #Feminist_Current #tradfem

  • 12月9日のツイート
    http://twilog.org/ChikuwaQ/date-151209

    “As you know, new violin bows are expensive, so what we would do is buy a bunch of warped ones and take them on the road.” — Jimmy Page posted at 00:49:52

    RT @TATJANASL: Father of Cinema, there is only one The Birth of a Nation 1915 D.W. Griffith The Godfather: Part II 1974 Coppola pic.twitter.com/P4gU3kDjSb posted at 00:44:57

    RT @AnneMortier1: Light My Fire... Willy Ronis, Paris 1957 pic.twitter.com/yRMDFjS2fo posted at 00:42:09

    RT @FilmForumNYC: Harold Lloyd’s THE FRESHMAN plays tomorrow at 11AM w/live piano accompaniment! #FFJR #35mm buff.ly/21D7OYi pic.twitter.com/1i8THtTPds posted at 00:41:31

  • Joni Mitchell vs. Janet Jackson
    http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LeMellotron/~3/Mkknr--PjKM

    Lemellotron http://www.lemellotron.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/joni_mitchell-big_yellow_taxi.mp3

    Joni Mitchell, multi-instrumentiste canadienne ayant inspiré de grands noms comme Neil Young ou Jimmy Page, a commencé sa longue carrière par le folk dans les 60’s, pour ensuite s’intéresser au rock puis au jazz. Avec plus d’une vingtaine d’albums studio et compilations à son actif, elle a gagné au (...)

  • How an Electric Guitar Actually Works
    http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/electric-guitar

    The electric guitar has become a staple in jazz, rock and pop music. Today, many of us couldn’t even imagine our favorite tunes without the influences of Chuck Berry, B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and countless others — and who could forget how Jimi Hendrix forever changed the American national anthem?

    But before that sweet sound can come through your speakers, a fascinating technological process takes place. Electric guitars essentially transform string vibrations into electromagnetic energy. The process is quick and simple to understand, but pretty impressive for a 1931 invention.

    To understand how an electric guitar works, first you need to know its various components. Let’s take a closer look at one of the most popular instruments in the world.

  • Une pensée amicale pour Baroug, fan de Led Zep

    Le Gloomy Saturay de Denis Parent | Bakchich
    http://www.bakchich.info/medias/2012/08/04/le-gloomy-saturay-de-denis-parent-61576

    Le premier morceau ne fait pas de prisonnier
     
    Ce jour de novembre 1969 l’album est sorti le mois précédent et quand le bras tombe sur le disque, quand grésillent les parasites dans l’unique enceinte je ne sais pas qu’il reste quelques secondes avant que retentisse « Whole lotta love », merveilleuse allitération bramée par un garçon à la chevelure d’or nommé Robert Plant. A la guitare il y a un sorcier du nom de Jimmy Page petite chose fragile et furieuse qui se sert parfois d’un archet pour tirer des sons inouïs de sa Gibson Les Paul. Derrière ce sont les chevaliers teutoniques : John Paul Jones bassiste métronome, John Bonham, alias le marteau de Vulcain. 
     
    Le premier morceau ne fait pas de prisonnier, rouleau compresseur d’énergie pure, guitare possédée, voix haut perchée, cavalcade de fer et de feu. Mais derrière, dans tout l’album, le zeppelin montre ce qu’il est : gorgé de blues. Et il a retenu la leçon de base des vieux blacks du delta : la musique du diable c’est tension/détente. Le zeppelin sait se faire délicat, un rayon de soleil avant l’orage. Le disque ne parle quasiment que de cul. Le blues toujours. Et des petits blancs, anglais pour ne rien arranger, sortent tous armés de la tête des nègres millénaires. C’est un disque transgressif qui va planer bien au-dessus de la production rock de ces années-là. Je l’écoute encore et je suis, à chaque fois, transporté dans la blanche lumière de cette journée de novembre 1969 quand Dieu m’est apparu, jeune, mâle, chaud, et branché sur des milliers de Watts. J’ai écrit mon testament y’a pas longtemps et comme disposition ultime j’ai demandé qu’à mon inhumation on diffuse « Babe I’m gonna leave you ». J’ai aimé tant de femmes sur cet arpège qu’il n’y a pas de raison que je n’ai pas quelques étreintes outre tombe. »
     
    Denis Parent 
     
    http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdhgh4_led-zeppelin-babe-i-m-gonna-leave-y_music

    #Led Zeppelin #Denis Parent