10 Classic Rock Songs That Were Likely Inspired From Other Songs

As the '00s started to turn a corner, there seemed to be no more room left for the traditional side of rock and roll. Even though there were offshoots like nu metal and pop punk that were dominating the charts, most of the standard rock and roll bands didn't really have as much time in the spotlight as they had before. For the good stuff, you needed to look a little bit underground, and The Strokes rose to the surface and made the sleazy sounds of New York rock again.

From the moment that you put on Is This It, you can tell that these guys were born and bred on the sounds of the '70s, and they may have been a little bit cheeky with the intro to their song Last Nite. Starting off with one chord building up the tension and then having the rest of the band join in around it, the entire construction of the song's intro sounds like the one Tom Petty used when making the song American Girl back in the '70s.

Given how blatant it was, what did Mr. Petty do? Not a damn thing. Even when the Strokes went so far as to admit the similarities in interviews after the fact, Petty was always fine with it, saying that they should be proud of making a whole new hit around his song and actually getting away with it. That's the nature of rock and roll though. It's always about passing on the attitude from one generation to the next, and the Strokes are just another link in the chain here.