10 Perfect Rock Songs That Were Inspired From Another Band

In the early days of rock and roll, the line between plagiarism and inspiration gets a little hazy. Since most people were mining the same 12 bar blues song structure, there's no way to really trademark something like that and call it your own for the rest of time. If you wanted to steal something, you had to go the extra mile, and Paul McCartney confessed as much when talking about I Saw Her Standing There.

On its own, the first song on Please Please Me does a good job at introducing the Beatles' sound to the world, being a little scruffy around the edges while keeping that trademark Liverpool drawl to their voices whenever they sang. If you look beneath the guitar licks from George Harrison though, McCartney's bass riff really drives the entire song forward, which actually comes from an old Chuck Berry song.

When McCartney talks about the song these days, he has said that the bass line is practically an exact note for note copy of the Berry song I'm Talking About You, with only the key shifted to fit the song. Granted, Paul has also said that few people end up believing it, given that both of the songs are incredibly different. There's a lesson in there though. You can steal all you want, but if you hide it in the right way, you can get off clean.