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  3. Dire Straits ‘Hand in Hand’ from Making Movies lifts the ‘dearest, darling…’ trumpet figure from 24 Hours From Tulsa several times as a repeated guitar phrase.

    Similarly, Jimi Hendrix’s Third Stone From The Sun is almost but not quite the theme tune to Coronation Street. Honest.

  6. Bobby Parker’s early 60s floor-filler “Watch Your Step” bookends the otherwise pointless “Moby Dick” by Led Zeppelin. Awesome riff, of course. I edited my LZ2 copy so you get the great riff at the beginning and end, without the waste of time in the middle.

    • I think it was based on Peter Jenner’s half-remembered, sung version of “My Little Red Book” by Love – but you’re right of course, it could just as easily be the Steptoe theme.

      • Very poorly worded – what I should have written was: it was based on Peter Jenner’s half-remembered, sung version of Love’s recording of “My Little Red Book” by Bacharach/David!

  8. I was listening to Absolute Radio Country last week (don’t judge me) and was astounded to hear this song by someone called Chris Young. Do you recognise the riff, readers?

  10. I haven’t heard it in a few decades but there is a Focus track (on Focus 3 I think) where Jan Akkerman plays the 2 lines that feature as “I’ve heard it all a million times before
    Take off your coat, my love, and close the door” in Petula Clark’s hit Don’t Sleep in the Subway. I wonder if Tony Hatch & Jackie Trent sought recompense?

    • and of course LZ took the drums from Little Richard’s Keep a Knocking for Rock n Roll.
      Which is totally fine because for me it is by FAR the best thing LZ ever did.

    • Yikes! This is mind-boggling stuff, @DrJ.

      So, in 195, the dastardly Pee Wee hijacked a time machine to travel forward in time to 1968 to plunder a riff from the Beatles Band.

      I’m very surprised this did not result in a rip in the space time continuum

  18. How about where a band uses one of its most famous riffs in a new song about one of its older song characters? For example, The Kinks song Destroyer, from 1981s “Give The People What They Want” album, which uses the riff from All Day and All of The Night in a story about a girl called Lola. Granted, it’s probably not Ray Davies’ finest album…

  19. What’s the Colour of Money by one hit wonders Hollywood Beyond seemed to steal wholesale this tune from the great film Southern Comfort…

    A bit tangential but I was not paying much attention to an Oscar Peterson and Ella Fitzgerald performance on BBC late some Saturday night a month or two ago when Oscar started playing a riff I was sure I knew but couldn’t place at the time. This annoyed me and I could not rewind the show to catch the name of the tune so I sang it into my phone. On listening back to it the next day, it was clearly the theme tune to Blind Date. I googled of course and there was nothing linking the two online. I can only assume some jingle writer ripped him off when asked to knock out a theme tune. Any jazzers out there, feel free to shine a light on this?

    • Another tangental swerve makes me recall from Smash Hits that the singer of Hollywood Beyond claimed he was a lifelong Rastafarian and washed his dreadlocks in the sea, in Jamaica, once a year. A cheeky text box appeared under this from his hairdresser, saying that they are hair extensions, and he had put them in only a few weeks previously.

      • There was a time when the Human league would colour-code their singles as Red (Disco) Sound of the Crowd, Love Action, Fascination or Blue (ABBA): Open Your Heart.
        Don’t You Want Me was coded ‘100’, a cryptic reference to the 100 Club in Sheffield. I suppose tagging it as Blue for ABBA would have given the game away.

  22. It’s intentional, since Fairport Convention drop in the riff from ‘The Last Time’ just after the line “….like a rolling stone” in the title track from 2004’s ‘Over the Next Hill’. They’ve got previous – one number on ‘The Bonny Bunch of Roses’ album kicks off with the intro from ‘Happy Jack’.

  24. Ron Kavana’s This is the Night lifts the riff from Here Comes the Night. Deliberately, it being a tribute to Sir George.
    One of the tracks, I forget which, on Roger McGuinn’s back from Rio has a run of Byrds ricky 12 string reprises from his previous career, liberally sprinkled through it.
    Alice Cooper’s Halo of Flies has a brief lift from My Favourite Things.

    • The Eight Miles High riff may have been borrowed from India from the John Coltrane album Impressions.

      But then again Eric Dolphy, who played bass clarinet on that performance, may have himself liberated the riff from the fourth movement of Stravinsky’s Chant Du Rossignol.

  27. Think I’ve mentioned this before, but in Neville Farmer’s biography of the band, he says that XTC’s ‘Omnibus’ is based upon a slowed-down bit of Pink Floyd’s ‘See Emily Play’.

  30. Two guitar solos: Clapton starts his Sunshine of Your Love solo with ‘Blue Moon’ (2:00)
    and Glenn Tilbrook quotes the first line of Waterloo Sunset into his Another Nail in my Heart guitar workout twice (0:54 and 1:07).


    • A common musicians joke, especially playing live, is to quote some other tune in a solo.
      The more outrageously off-the-wall the better.
      Even better when one soloist quotes a tune and another quotes a different one back in HIS solo. Or another part of the same tune.

  33. None Shall Escape The Judgement:

    Egyptian Reggae. Initially credited to Jonathan Richman but later corrected to Earl Zero. You all know what Mr Richman looks like, so here’s Legs & Co instead:

    • Thanks for that @fentonsteve I never knew that and Im a big Jonathan Richman fan.

      Of course he’s been a victim of Grand Theft Muso himself… and I’m not talking about David Bowie’s assault on his Pablo Picasso. I present the following evidence.

      Exhibit B…

      I rest my case M’lud.

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