This was sent in by Blaire.
Here’s the second Red Hot Chili Peppers post on the site (the first). This time it’s a fishy borrowing of a Budgie riff from 1973. RHCP’s 1999 song “Around The World” opens with a nearly identical riff played on bass.
Budgie – “Breadfan” (1973)
Red Hot Chili Peppers – “Around the World” (1999)
Advertisement
The end of “Give It Away” contains the riff from Black Sabbath’s “Sweetleaf”
[Reply]
Keith Reply:
December 9th, 2009 at 4:25 am
Thanks xyroran! It’s posted here:
http://www.thatsongsoundslike.com/2009/12/09/black-sabbath-vs-red-hot-chili-peppers
[Reply]
@xyroran
Thanks. I’ll add it to the list and post it later.
[Reply]
Even though both sound vaguely similar, claiming that the bass riff is “nearly identical” to or has been borrowed from the guitar riff in the other song is not only a blatantly incorrect accusation, but also a complete ignorance of the variance in musicality and context of each riff.
[Reply]
Add RHCP – ‘Under The Bridge’ and Rolling Stones – ‘Beast of Burden’!
If I may nerd out for a moment: Much of Rick Rubin’s rock music production output from the late 80’s / early ’90’s’ is built almost entirely on a foundation of well known classic rock riffs. The Cult – ‘Electric’, Danzig – ‘Danzig’, Masters of Reality – ‘MOR’, RHCP – ‘Blood Sugar Sex Magik’, Trouble – ‘Trouble’, Four Horsemen – ‘Nobody Said it Was Easy’ etc. These records are stuffed with allusions to 60’s and 70’s rock.
The reasoning is pretty subversive: Back when Rubin made a name for himself in Rap / Hip Hop, the ‘authentic’ world of rock music completely dismissed it as ‘not music’ due to the use of turntables and (later) samplers. Rubin had their ticket punched, though, when he took British goth rockers ‘The Cult’ and crafted their breakthrough 1987 lp ‘Electric’. The record, amid Rubin’s stark, bone dry production, is a set of ’sampled’ classic rock(most obviously AC/DC, amongst others), but instead of using turntables and Akai’s, they used guitars, bass and drums, thereby proving rap / hip hop right about sampling and making rockers look like hypocrites.
For proof of concept Rubin continued this style for three years with numerous groups, tweaking the method to fit particular acts, leading to some big success with both RHCP’s and, though belatedly, Danzig.
Once rock finally let go of it’s hip hop hang up, Rubin abandoned the concept soon after ‘Blood Sugar’.
[Reply]