Most blatant clone ever

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TelePaul said:
Thats a travesty unto itself!
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I agree.

Donovan had 'Universal Soldier', 'Catch the Wind', sitting there in a railroacd cap, fingerpicking a guitar and blowing tunelessly into a harmonica within two months of Dylan making an impact on the British charts. When the money dried up, he altered his style to suit the burgeoning psychedelic scene. And was still derivative.

Nick Drake he ain't.


Now, Nick Drake and Jackson C. Frank maybe, but that's another story.
 
notCardio said:
I think he just took a style and ran with it. He's no more of a clone than most of the guys who came within the next 2 decades after EVH. Was Howlin' Wolf a Leadbelly clone? Was Leadbelly a Robert Johnson clone? George Harrison could easily be called a Carl Perkins clone, Paul a Little Richard clone. Keith Richards is a Check Berry clone.

And even if he is, what do I care? I think he's great.
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No, Prince is the Little Richard clone. ;^)

I saw an interview with Little Richard a couple of years ago where the interviewer asked him, "I understand you have a message for Prince. What is it?" LR said, "Yeah. Get your own act. Woooooooooo!"
 
Molly Hatchet = Lynyrd Skynyrd clone

I remember hearing MH for the first time and thinking "if Skynyrd hadn't gone down in a plane crash we'd have never heard of these guys".
 
Are you frickin' kidding me? You can hardly listen to any Trower song without seeing exactly what Hendrix song he was ripping.

One of the most blatant to me is "Day of the Eagle." That uses the same intro as "Crosstown Traffic!" And the rest of the riff is a rip off of "Freedom"

Regardless of whether or not he was/is a good player, he didn't have a shred of originality.

And Notcardio, those comparisons are laughable at best. Keith Richards a Chuck Berry clone? Did Chuck play in open G? Did he write songs with borrowed chords and killer riffs like Keith with "Brown Sugar?" Sure, Chuck was an INFLUENCE, (which is what all your other comparisons are), but to say Richards is a clone is just plain silly.

You need to learn the difference between influence and clone.

Ausrock, it's perfectly obvious that we're not talking about Trower's Procul Harum days. We're talking post-Hendrix, which is when Trower clearly became a clone.


I mean seriosly guys .... his tone, his rig, his effects, his licks, his writing (even his lyrics were trying to be Hendrix), his production, everything. When you go that far, THAT'S a clone.

The reason I started this thread is because I had to write a column in a magazine recently that lists the top ten classic rock tones. The editor-in-chief insisted on including a Trower tune, and I had to seriously bite my tongue, so it was on my mind.
 
TelePaul said:
No argument here. And Aerosmith; Stones Clones to the extreme.
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Some idiot in a magazine was calling Guns-n-Roses an Aerosmith clone when they first came out.
I couldn't then, and still don't, see that...
 
Rokket said:
Some idiot in a magazine was calling Guns-n-Roses an Aerosmith clone when they first came out.
I couldn't then, and still don't, see that...
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I can see The Stones in Aerosmith, but I'd agree with ya on the Guns...though it didn't help they covered Mama Kin in their early days (and later on 'Wild Horses' though thats me going off on a tangeant). I think you can dismiss any Aerosmith-Guns likeness when ya think Guns and Roses co-toured with Metallica in '92...and then the shit REALLY hit the fan! :)
 
When I think of Donovan clones, I think more of Belle and Sebastian. I hhhhhhhhhhhhaaatttteeee them.
 
cephus said:
DANGER---THIN ICE!!!

Robin Trower is not a xerox of hendrix and I like where he took it. But he sounds way more like hendrix than any of the other parallels you draw. When SRV does Hendrix, it is a total Hendrix rip-off and he sounds way more like jimi than Trower, though.

Geo Harrison a Carl Perkins clone? He wishes!!! (Wished) George was no hillbilly cat like CP.
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I don't think SRV sounded alot like Hendrix, when he did hendrix. He had a different flow, different chops, and a MUCH different tone.

Trower was accused of being a hendrix clone because of the timing of his success. He was seen as "jimi-lite" by the full blown hippies that were actual Hendrix fans. To then it was a shameless ripoff of a guitar hero that had recently died. There was almost a religious reverence for Jimi Hendrix in the early 70's. As far as guitar players went...you weren't shit if you couldn't play hendrix....but, actually cutting records and touring with hendrix cloned "original" tunes was sacriledge.
Trower was a "teeny bopper" fad to the older woodstock crowd for the most part.
I was a teenage trower fan who had a big brother who was part of the hippie movement so I know this all to well.
Im still a trower fan and can play most of his stuff.

With SRV it wasn't the same. There had been the punk wave, the new wave wave, the disco wave, the hairband wave...ect...
A guy playing that style of flamboyant blues based guitar lines in a 3 piece band setting was almost a lost art. It sounded fresh...and refreshing. The old hippies were not saying "Jimis' body ain't even cold yet and here someone goes ripping him off", like they were about trower. They were saying "Man! Finally something I can dig again!"

It was another place and another time....thats all.

If SRV had have hit in 1973 he would have been written off as a hendrix clone like trower, and if trower would have hit in the early 1990's he would not have been branded as a hendrix clone.

For what it's worth... I never thought trower was a hendrix clone myself.

Although I am a trower fan I realize that jimi would have mopped the floor with him ....so would have SRV.
 
Sorry, but I have to say this

Anybody who can't see Keith as a Chuck Berry clone has no business calling anyone else one. He was clearly what Keith modeled himself after.

The most blatant Hendrix clone of all time is Frank Marino.

And I didn't say George was as good as Carl Perkins, but that's who he was trying to be. He even said so in an interview.

I see the Donovan Nick Drake thing. The vocal style, the guitar, the production. Whether or not it was intentional is another matter that I'll never know the answer to, or care.

And Prince is much more of a derivative of Hendrix than Little Richard. The only real similarities with LR is physical. Everybody seems to forget how flamboyant (sp?) Hendrix was. Gee, was he derivative of Little Richard?

Little Richard also said that the Beatles owed their career to him. Buy that? Me neither.

If ZZ Top's very successful 'LaGrange' wasn't John Lee Hooker, then there's no clone of anything ever. They knew it, they embraced it. It was an homage, if you will.

My point was that everybody takes something from their heroes and tries to emulate it. Some more successfully than others. What Hendrix did was to create a new genre, that many dove into headfirst, Clapton among them.

The early Beatles were an amalgamation of Bill Haley, Carl Perkins, Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and a half a dozen other American rock and roll icons of the day that they listened to as teenagers. If you can't see those influences, I don't know what to tell you.
 
SRV wasn't a clone of anyone. Sure, there's a fine line between heavy influence and outright copies, but in my opinion, SRV was not the latter. There's as much Hendrix in his style as there is Lonnie Mack, not to mention a lot of others. SRV had an amazing talent of distilling all that stuff down to his own thing.

It's all those homos after SRV that are the clones. Sheppard, Bonibozo...those guys can suck it. Totally generic.
 
I guess then

That my vote for most blatant clone ever would go to Frank Marino.

And if anyone ever calls me a Duane Allman clone, I will say 'thank you, thank, you, thank you!' :rolleyes:
 
And isn't

Oasis a Beatle's clone?

Again, my point was that just because someone likes a style and decides that's their thing, who cares?
 
Sure, he's capable of a lot of different styles of great playing, but last I heard, Scott Henderson had suddenly morphed into Jeff Beck on his latest record.
 
notCardio said:
I see the Donovan Nick Drake thing. The vocal style, the guitar, the production. Whether or not it was intentional is another matter that I'll never know the answer to, or care.
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The production? Like when they whored 'catch the wind' to the london philharmonic to cash in on the Dylan invasion? And the guitar sounds? You just cant compare Nick Drake, Richard Thompson and Danny Thompson to Donovan...theyre just on another level sonicaly. The vocals? Well I guess they both had distinct English accents, i'll give ya that.
 
peopleperson said:
SRV wasn't a clone of anyone. Sure, there's a fine line between heavy influence and outright copies, but in my opinion, SRV was not the latter. There's as much Hendrix in his style as there is Lonnie Mack, not to mention a lot of others. SRV had an amazing talent of distilling all that stuff down to his own thing.

It's all those homos after SRV that are the clones. Sheppard, Bonibozo...those guys can suck it. Totally generic.
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In my opinion, SRV sounded more like Albert King than Hendrix. He definately did his own thing though.
 
notCardio said:
Anybody who can't see Keith as a Chuck Berry clone has no business calling anyone else one. He was clearly what Keith modeled himself after.

The most blatant Hendrix clone of all time is Frank Marino.

And I didn't say George was as good as Carl Perkins, but that's who he was trying to be. He even said so in an interview.

I see the Donovan Nick Drake thing. The vocal style, the guitar, the production. Whether or not it was intentional is another matter that I'll never know the answer to, or care.

And Prince is much more of a derivative of Hendrix than Little Richard. The only real similarities with LR is physical. Everybody seems to forget how flamboyant (sp?) Hendrix was. Gee, was he derivative of Little Richard?

Little Richard also said that the Beatles owed their career to him. Buy that? Me neither.

If ZZ Top's very successful 'LaGrange' wasn't John Lee Hooker, then there's no clone of anything ever. They knew it, they embraced it. It was an homage, if you will.

My point was that everybody takes something from their heroes and tries to emulate it. Some more successfully than others. What Hendrix did was to create a new genre, that many dove into headfirst, Clapton among them.

The early Beatles were an amalgamation of Bill Haley, Carl Perkins, Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and a half a dozen other American rock and roll icons of the day that they listened to as teenagers. If you can't see those influences, I don't know what to tell you.
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Again, I'm not denying that Keith was INFLUENCED by Chuck, but to call him a clone, I just don't get it at all. Keith played in open G with a 5-string guitar. Did he get that from Chuck? Besides the fact that he doesn't sound much like Chuck at all!

And calling Paul a Little Richard clone is perhaps even more silly (I missed that one the first time). Of course he was clearly influenced, but quickly found his own voice, especially in terms of writing. (I can't think of any Little Richard songs that aren't I-IV-V.)

EVERYONE is INFLUENCED by other people. And most people even probably "try to be" others in their early development. But most musicians realize that it's a dead-end road and will eventually find their own thing. In some cases, their style becomes an amalgamation of several other people's styles, so that the influence is clearly traceable, but they've managed to fuse the influences into their own sound. Eric Johnson is a good example of this. His Hendrix influence in undeniable, as is his Chet influence and Wes Montgomery influence. But he combined those influences and came up with his own voice.

I guess it comes down to this: If you're gonna tell me that Keith Richards sounds as much like Chuck Berry as Trower sounded like Hendrix, then the debate is over. Because if that's the case, then I'm just going to assume that you don't have a pair of ears.

And you act as though my suggestion is preposterous or something. Didn't Trower have to battle with this very thing for a good part of his career? Hmmm ... I wonder why?


I agree that sometimes people tread a fine line when it comes to influence vs. outright cloning. There's probably never been a musician who wasn't influenced by someone. Just about everything has "been done before." But my point is, even though Paul claimed LR as an influence in the early days, by the time the Beatles came out with their first few singles ("Love Me Do," "She Loves You," etc.), they had already begun to find their own sound. And this is one of the reasons why their music took the world by storm instead of resulting in accusations of being clones, which, of course, is what happened to Trower.

I'd always heard Trower was a Hendrix clone long before I ever heard his music. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt until I heard it.
 
TravisinFlorida said:
In my opinion, SRV sounded more like Albert King than Hendrix. He definately did his own thing though.
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I can definitely see this. Especially in slow blues, Stevie sounded a lot like Albert and surely treaded the line very closely. He did have another dimension to his sound and playing though, as you said. He wasn't a one trick pony.
 
32-20-Blues said:
I agree.

Donovan had 'Universal Soldier', 'Catch the Wind', sitting there in a railroacd cap, fingerpicking a guitar and blowing tunelessly into a harmonica within two months of Dylan making an impact on the British charts. When the money dried up, he altered his style to suit the burgeoning psychedelic scene. And was still derivative.
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Would you care to qualify your comment?

Also, Donovan had made the switch from the rawer folk/blues style to his "psychedelic" style at least two years before Nick Drake even started recording his first album...............so who followed who?

BTW, I'm not saying Nick Drake deliberately styled his music on Donovan (anymore than I believe Donovan styled himself on Dylan) but if you've listened to enough of their music from the time, there are similarities. Maybe it was a (British) cultural influence but it's there.


Ultimately, any discussion regarding "musical clones" is fraught with difficulties, as until you fully understand the reasons why one musician may sound similar to another, any opinions expressed are going to be totally hypothetical..............ie: we're all dribbling s h i t ;) .

:cool:
 
ausrock said:
Would you care to qualify your comment?

Also, Donovan had made the switch from the rawer folk/blues style to his "psychedelic" style at least two years before Nick Drake even started recording his first album...............so who followed who?
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You were the one who made the comparison between those two, not me. I can't find any common ground between them apart from the acoustic guitar.
 
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