The world loves music, but there are times when one musician tries to copy someone else’s work and call it their own. This is usually called as “plagiarism”, but in the world of music people try to get away with it by calling it “inspired from”. While this is a new way to get away with copying things, back in the day, this never happened and people were called out when such a thing happened.
Brian May talked about the time when rapper Vanilla Ice ripped off Queen on “Ice Ice Baby”. He said that it was the band’s publishers who wanted to “go to war” for the cause instead of he and his bandmates. The song was relased by Vanilla Ice without fanfare in 1990. The public talked about the uncanny similarity to the introductory bass line from Queen’s David Bowie collab “Under Pressure”.
According to Ultimate Guitar, Brian May spoke to Rosie Bennet during a recent interview and talked about the situation. While he didn’t mention about winning the dispute, and getting the royalties, he did talk about other aspects of this entire situation. It didn’t include the fact that Vanilla Ice was not crediting them on the covers of his debut album “To the Extreme”, on which the song was released.
Brian May said, “I think it was just on the radio when we heard it… And I remember reading an interview with Vanilla Ice himself [who was asked], ‘Didn’t you steal this from Queen?’ And he said, ‘No, theirs is completely different; mine is [mimics virtually the same melody twice]’. I mean, we didn’t go to war for it, but the publishers did. So, they came to a settlement, which was that he pays us most of the money he’s ever generated with that song. We’re alright with that [laughs]; we became a part of the writing team, if you like.”
Brian May continued talking about this entire situation and how things have changed since the situation occurred between the two. There is no talk about what has happened, and how things have changed, but Brian May keeps a very low profile about this entire conversation.
The guitarist added, “That’s an interesting example though, isn’t it? I mean, he made something new and interesting, and people liked it. So, I guess it’s about acknowledging your influences, that’s the decent thing to do. I hope that I’ve always done it. Sometimes you want to quote someone deliberately — like [Sergey] Rachmaninoff’s ‘Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.’ He was upfront about what he was doing, so nobody minded it. If he stole that stuff without acknowledging it, it would be different.”
Brian May and Vanilla Ice have not talked about this entire matter to any number and it doesn’t look like they will try to talk about it any more as the conversation is now done and dusted. They don’t want to reignite the entire situation as no one has any positive memories of this situation.
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