New post series: Sounds Familiar. Homages, rip-offs, lawsuits, and the songs that have lived to tell. Exhibit A: Chuck Berry’s “You Can’t Catch Me” and some Beatles tune you may know.
From Wikipedia:
In 1973, “Come Together” was the subject of a lawsuit brought against Lennon by Big Seven Music Corp. (owned by Morris Levy) who was the publisher of Chuck Berry‘s “You Can’t Catch Me.” Levy contended that it sounded similar musically to Berry’s original and shared some lyrics (Lennon sang “Here come ol’ flattop, he come groovin’ up slowly” and Berry’s had sung “Here come a flattop, he was movin’ up with me”). Before recording, Lennon and McCartney deliberately slowed the song down and added a heavy bass riff in order to make the song more original. After settling out of court, Lennon promised to record three other songs owned by Levy.
The line is at 1:06. It’s not just the lyric, but also the delivery that made it into “Come Together.” Tribute or robbery? Either way, you’d probably have gotten irked if you were Chuck Berry hearing Abbey Road song one, line one for the first time. And greedy if you owned the publishing.