Is it a RIP OFF of The Soul Is The Rock??

[charlene]

Aussie singer - John Williamson sings this song: Is it a rip-off of Lightfoot's tune??

YouTube - ULURU (Ayers Rock) Australia ~ ...

[jj]

naw, in my opinion

YouTube - John Williamson--Raining on the...

but boy, it sure is raining here...i haven't stopped mowing since May! lol

[joveski]

nope.. john williamson always sings his own songs. here's another original he wrote in 1990:

YouTube - John Williamson - Rip Rip...

[johnfowles]

Originally Posted by charlene

Aussie singer - John Williamson sings this song: Is it a rip-off of Lightfoot's tune??;

A resounding NO! The only plagiarism I can detect is that John Williamson (OA) copied the word "Rock" in his song title a transgressionn previously comiitted several times by the songwriters of many earlier hit songs by amongst others Bill Haley and Elvis Presley and genuine singer/songwriters such as Paul Simon and Buddy Holly
I can only conclude that the South Australian Lightfoot fan name of John Ahern (a man of the cloth who should know better) who brought this up in a new thread on the sadly neglected Lightfoot Newsgroup alt.music.lightfoot at:-
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.m...b8856258?hl=en
has an axe to grind about Mr Williamson because he referred to him in that Newsgroup posting most unpatriotically eudely and incorrectly as "a terrible Aussie singer". Mr Ahern also considered that his selected song about the rain falling on "the rock" is a plagiarism of "Gordon Lightfoot's song 'the Soul is the Rock"
John Williamson was in fact recommended to us in the old chatroom years ago by a fellow countryman of Mende Joveski, young catmanron who for anybody who cannot remember was a one time prolific member of this forum, and it was by shear chance that in April 2007 we heard and bouight a fine CD of Johns called Anthems



whilst waiting in the superb Sails Of The Desert Hotel lobby in Yulara

for the shuttle bus to take us back to Ayers Rock Airport after an overnight visit to see the rock in question which us correctly known by its Aboeiginal name of Uluru.
Since then we have accumulated a comptrehensive library of JW CDs and DVDs containing many fine ORIGINAL JW compositions. He truly is to Australian themes what Gord is to Canadian but a plagiarist or rip off artist never!!!

[Dave, Melbourne,Australia]

Thanks for the interesting comments, especially John Fowles who has gone the extra mile for our entertainment as usual. I didn't have much time for John Williamson's music until I heard his best-known song "True Blue" used for the funeral of an old true-blue Aussie who was my great-aunt's widower. It described him so well, it could have been written for him!