Almost thirty years after it’s release, an Australian music website is claiming that Sweet Child O’ Mine might have been kidnapped in the hospital — or whatever analogy works best to claim the song might have been ripped off.
MaxTV is stirring the pot and causing quite a controversy with claims that the Guns N’ Roses chart topper off Appetite For Destruction was plagiarized off a popular song by Australian group Crawl. Here’s the crux of the claims.
With all the legal battles regarding copyright flying around at the moment, we’ve been alerted to a more dormant claim of alleged plagiarism, regarding an almost-three-decade-old rock classic.
Under an article regarding Slash’s recent comments on a possible future band reunion, MAX reader Jimmy Gray pointed out the similarities between Guns N’ Roses’ most enduring song – 1987’s ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ – and Australian Crawl’s 1981 song ‘Unpublished Critics’, from their #1 album Sirocco. We checked it out, and wow it does it sound similar: the same chugging chord progression, a similarly-sweeping lead break, the verse melody, and the elongated one-syllable vocal in the chorus.
Death and Taxes explains where Slash got the chord ideas for Child back in the day:
The fact is, the chords in both songs are not that uncommon or unique. Slash has said how he initially hated “Sweet Child O’ Mine” because the now-famous riffs were actually based off of a string-skipping exercise he was doing to warm-up during band practice. Izzy Stradlin ended up building chords off what Slash was playing, then bassist Duff McKagan created a bass line and Steven Adler a beat.
Thankfully, this will all stay out of the courts because the co-writer of the Crawl song has heard the comparisons, loves the Guns N’ Roses tune, and has no plans of taking the band to court over the matter.
Now it’s time for you to be the judge. Here’s both songs, let’s see how similar they sound.
[via MaxTV]