An amusing game you might like to try out - try to find all Beatles songs that begin with their chorus (preferably without listening to all their albums again, lest you have a whole day to spare). I haven't tried this on many other artists, as the Beatles belong to a very select group of bands whose entire catalogue I can nearly recall at will; consequently, its novelty may be severely lacking. But the genesis of this game was an analysis of...well, I can't give the name of the song, for that would spoil the game ;) Let's say an analysis of "an early song" of theirs, which thought that beginning with the chorus was pretty bold for its time.

How did it just so happen that two of the greatest melodists rock has ever seen were born within years of each other in Liverpool?

(You know, it is instinctive for me to write to "of the", rather than just "the", but in this case I'm oh-so-tempted to reconsider)

I was a little disappointed to find that The Doors' "Hello I Love You" (click to hear sound sample! Courtesy of the very cool CDUniverse It occurs to me that maybe linking to the sound file is some form of bandwidth theft*) sounds quite similar to The Kinks' "All Of The Day And All Of The Night". I heard of the supposed similarity a few days back, but only just compared the two. It definitely isn't the most obvious rip-off in rock, certainly not as obvious as, say, how Deep Purple's "Child In Time" lifted the melody from It's A Beautiful Day's "Bombay Calling". But it does certainly seem that The Doors' song is an extension of the riff and the melody in the "All Of The Day" (although, like I said, there's some marginal room for doubt), although the overall atmosphere is utterly different. As it were, The Kinks' riff is the base of the one The Doors used. Dave Davies, brother of Ray, doesn't seem to have forgiven The Doors for this, and I can understand his frustration. After all, The Kinks are either completely unknown to people, or known just as being those guys who did "You Really Got Me" all the way back in 1964.

(Of course, "Hello I Love You" is hardly the greatest song the Doors ever did - if you told me that "Light My Fire" was a rip-off of some other artist, I'd get a bit more depressed)

So, I wonder which of the famous classic-rock acts haven't been accused of ripping-off another artist? Even the undisputed kings of classic-rock, The Beatles, got into trouble with "Come Together", which copied the riff and structure of Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me". The towering giant Bobby Zimmerman, from memory, reworked some lines of an old folk-ballad into "A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall" - specifically, the lines like "And what did you see, my blue eyed son? And what did you see, my darling young one?" (although I don't know if that's considered a 'rip-off' per se).

While we're on the subject of classic rock, and The Kinks, all my life I've lived under the delusion that "Sunny Afternoon" was by The Beatles. Like most songs I heard when growing up, it has always been buried away under the surface, burnt in my mind forever. It wasn't until a few minutes ago that I realized that this song from my childhood is in fact a Kinks song from Face To Face. Wow. Even now, I could so easily picture this being sung by Lennon, and finding its way on something like Revolver. I'd never have imagined that anyone other that Lennon and McCartney could come up with such a divine mood and melody..heh, I wonder what other songs I've wrongly associated over the years?!

* Bandwidth leeching, by my understanding, would be if I embedded the sound clips onto this blog. I'm not sure then what merely linking to these files is - in any case, I've decided not to risk anything.