‘Boogie with Stu’: The Led Zeppelin song that blew up in their face
The intention behind Led Zeppelin was simple: To make music that no other band had made before. Previously, as a session guitarist and a stand-in for The Yardbirds, Jimmy Page had mastered a number of different styles of music. When he made Led Zeppelin, he wanted to merge all of these styles together and, in doing so, create a crossover that was yet to be attempted.
The band accomplished this very well, combining hard rock, blues, R&B, and acoustic music to create something that took over the music industry. This was possible because each member of Led Zeppelin was one of the best in their chosen field.
John Paul Jones was one of the best bassists on the planet who had a mastery of rhythm and made it so the chaos of Led Zeppelin remained accessible to listeners. Equally, Jimmy Page was the mastermind behind the whole operation and could play guitar better than anybody. John Bonham wrote the rulebook on drumming while simultaneously ignoring every rule there was, and finally, Robert Plant had a dynamic and versatile voice that nobody could match.
Of course, the band were still human, which meant they couldn’t be masters at everything. While songwriting came naturally to certain band members, others struggled somewhat. Robert Plant was never a natural when it came to penning lyrics, and even those he did write, he often ended up resenting, which is why he eventually grew tired of playing ‘Stairway To Heaven’.
To overcome this hurdle, Robert Plant would often take lyrics from other tracks and twist them to fit within Led Zeppelin’s framework. Some people didn’t see a problem with this, as they felt it was repurposing lyrics that others might not have heard otherwise. Others were less keen, as they said it was blatant copying and not in the spirit of rock.
“Jimi Hendrix personally told me that he didn’t like Zeppelin because they were like excess baggage and that they stole from everybody,” said Vanilla Fudge drummer Carmine Appice, ”‘You Shook Me’ was on Jeff Beck’s record. ‘Dazed and Confused’ has a bit of Vanilla Fudge on it and it has parts of ‘Beck’s Bolero’ in it. I think I was told by a member of the band that the ‘Good Times Bad Times’ riff came from Tim Bogart’s bass line.”
One of the main issues Led Zeppelin had when they used other people’s lyrics and styles was not crediting those responsible for the original idea. For instance, with their song ‘Babe I’m Gonna Leave You’, the lyrics were taken from a Joan Baez cover of an Anne Bredon song. There was no credit on the song for Anne Bredon; instead, the band merely credited it as a “Traditional” folk song. She wasn’t listed as a co-author until the ‘80s, over a decade after the track first came out.
It seems Led Zeppelin could never get this right, though, as even when they tried to credit their music to the right people, it still backfired. This occurred on the song ‘Boogie with Stu’, whose lyrics were lifted from Ritchie Valen’s song ‘Ooh, My Head’. Led Zeppelin tried to do right by the songwriters and credited Ian Stewart and Mrs Valens; however, rather than a thank you, they were met with a lawsuit.
“What we tried to do was give Ritchie’s mother credit,” explained Jimmy Page, “Because we heard she never received any royalties from any of her son’s hits, and Robert did lean on that lyric a bit. So what happens? They tried to sue us for all of the song.”
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