Reuters reports that Guns N’ Roses is being sued by parties representing German elecrtonic artist Ulrich Schnauss. The charge? Copyright infringement.
When Joe Satriani went after Coldplay, we were a little less than intrigued; the melody at the heart of the debate was a generic, unimaginative coffee jingle, that hundreds of “musicians” have likely stumbled upon legitimately.
But this case is rather interesting to us, and not just because it’s our former plaintiffs through proxy in the hot seat. The sections of Riad N’ The Bedouins in question do indeed sound identical to the parts of the two Schnauss tracks that were allegedly stolen from.
Compare the intro to Riad N’ The Bedouins to these two tracks by Ulrich Schnauss: Wherever You Are and A Strangely Isolated Place.
While GNR manager Irving Azoff “vigorously contests” and denies the claim, the camp seem to be hedging their bets and possibly even setting up a scapegoat, noting that the snippets of ‘ambient noise’ were “provided by a member of the album’s production team,” who they say claimed that the audio was “obtained legitimately.”
well I’ll be. I’d like to see someone getting fucked in the ass for this. Would be pretty sweet in light of all the shite they put you through over the Chi Dem leaks, and its a pretty cool idea in general: a German electronic act playing legal swing ball with Guns N fucking Roses? Epic.
What comes around goes around. How ’bout that.
even if it looks like David Vs Goliath, the German guys might actually win, there’s been a case like this in Belgium, where a local composer accused Madonna of stealing his work for the song ‘Frozen’. Well, you can’t play Frozen in Belgium without giving this guy royalties.
Yeah I agree that they are similar but still it’s only intro and it’s not worth that case, I’m sure it would be resolved off the court, Gn’R camp will pay him like half or third they want if it is true they used of course, cos it’s electronic, I don’t know. I don’t see Guns N’ Roses guilty for leaks and F.B.I case, I love this site but what I’ve read it was more FBI and record company thing, I don’t know about file sharing but some artists really support it (U2, Behemoth) some are against. There is a great interview with Nergal, leader of Behemoth, he said in the press interview that he had downloaded new Alice in Chains album form rapidshare, he had listened to it 3 times had loved it and he said that they day it was released he would go to the shop and buy it. And he had fair point, he download to listen to the music if he likes it he buys album.
And as far as Gn’R is concerned I hope they tour and release second album, the band is very talented, I know Ron, lovely guy and terrific guitar player, Brian is one of the best drummers around (even Duff said in recent interview that drummer on CD was awesome), Stinson is legend on his own, and Richard Fortus has cool blues influenced style and serious skills, I want to see how DJ Ashba fits, from what I’ve heard he has really cool style something between Slash melody and tone and Buckethead/Bumblefoot technicality, and Axl is one of the Top 3-5 rock singers and songwriters right now.