kids these days don't listen to classical music, anyway

[rone]

Renée realized today that the melody in Santana's "Love of my Life" (off Supernatural) is lifted, note for note, from Brahms's Third Symphony's third movement. She played for us the Brahms, and then the Santana, and she's right... not only has Santana lowered himself to selling ladies' shoes and releasing crap featuring the flavor of the month on vocals, but he's also a plagiarist. Sad.

Comments

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Could be worse. James Horner (HATE LOATHE *SPIT*) plagiarizes himself.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Punk was nominated for an Oscar again, too. Good thing he didn't win.

[ikkyu2.livejournal.com]

Why is it when John Zorn puts in a Bartok melody, it's a "quote," but when Santana does it, it's "plagiarism?"

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Two things:
1) Attribution, dammit. Sting lifted Prokofiev in "Russians" but he attributed the phrase (and it's just a tiny little phrase)
2) The melody goes on and on. It's not a quote, it's a freakin' paragraph.

[ikkyu2.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I just downloaded the Santana - you're right.

Fair enough.

Good job

[(Anonymous)]

Good for you! Santana plagiarizes Brahms? Here and lo, we fight back by downloading off the Internet for free. Take that, Santana ;-)

Thib ;-)

Re: Good job

[ikkyu2.livejournal.com]

Hey, it's Irony Man.

Who let Irony Man in here?

Re: Good job

[merde.livejournal.com]

nice catch, Thib. oh, and hi!

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Googling seems to show that he acknowledges Brahms as an inspiration in the liner notes. So perhaps it's not outright theft...

[rjray.livejournal.com]

If he does, I can't find it...

satana and brahms

[plambert.livejournal.com]

he doesn't hide the fact that it's brahms. from the third or fourth hit on google for 'santana brahms':

Carlos says " there's a story behind " Love of my Life " w/Dave Mattews. When my father passed away two or three years ago, I didn't listen to music for four days -- that's a long time for me. I was picking up my son from school, and I thought, okay, time to listen to some radio. I turned on a classical station, and the first thing I heard was this melody.The melody just stayed with me. They didn't say who the composer was, but I thought it was Strauss. I wanted to find out what this was, so I went to the classical music section at Tower Records and said , "All I have is this melody." I sang it , and the guy goes ...."Oh yeah. Brahms " Concerto No. 2." .They get me the CD, and that's the song! I said, " Damn, you guys are good!" So I brought this melody to Dave Matthews in New York. I said, "I hear this with a 1999 bass." I also recited these lines: " You're the love of my life You're the breath of my prayers Take my hand, lead me there With you is where I want to be ". Dave sat down and -- wrote the song lyrics right there on the spot, and we recorded it. If Brahms were alive today, he would swing it, too, because it's what's happening. Listen to Dave's phrasing -- he sang it like Billie Holiday or Frank Sinatra -- way behind the beat. It's that human thing. Only squares sing in the middle. The album " Spellbinder " by Gabor Szabo. That is a must for anybody who plays guitar. He's the person who I credit with pulling me out of B.B. King.......B.B. had us in a headlock -- Michael Bloomfield , Peter Green -- we were all under his spell.

Re: satana and brahms

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, if you read all the way down the comments, you'll see where i mentioned this. Of course, what you quote comes from an embarrassingly passionate and nearly inarticulate fan page, so who knows how true it is.

Re: satana and brahms

[plambert.livejournal.com]

You mean the part where you said you googled and found it, but included no URL, and someone replied saying that they weren't able to find it? Yeah, I scrolled down that far.

Of course, I took the embarrassingly passionate and nearly inarticulate fan page at face value, assuming that because it's in print, it must be true. I didn't look for the source of the quote, to make sure it was valid, before posting it here. I certainly didn't check to see that the quote came from a UK guitar magazine that, for whatever reason, was much lower in the google rankings than the nearly inarticulate fan page.

http://www.totalguitar.co.uk/print.asp?ID=462&type=ART

Luckily, you would never give me any benefit of the doubt, and saw through my laziness and poor etiquette right quick!

--plambert

Re: satana and brahms

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

You're gonna have to work harder than that... but it's a start.

I like that Santana thinks (incorrectly) that it's Concerto #2. Also, comparing Maná to The Police is deranged... comparing them to No Doubt or Incubus, that's probably closer.