Nick Cave denies plagiarismaccusation

Tue 5th Oct, 2010 in International News

Introducing Palaces of Montezuma, one of the standout tracks of Grinderman 2, at a Grinderman show at London’s Hammersmith Apollo on the weekend Nick Cave has shrugged of allegations of plagiarism.

Cave told the crowd “You may have read that some 17-year-old kid in Dundee is trying to sue me and is claiming to have written this song. That’s funny, because I wrote it for my wife.”

That ‘17-year-old kid’ is the 29 year-old Frankie Duffy who claims that Palaces of Montezuma resembles a song he wrote with his now defunct band Rising Signs a little too closely.

Speaking to Scottish newspaper the Courier, Duffy claimed that he I couldn’t believe it when he heard Palaces of Montezuma, as it supposedly includes “exactly the same chords and the same hook as the intro to Grey Man. I sat down with my guitar and played along with it and it’s exactly the same A, E and B chords, which to be fair anybody could use to write a song at any time.”

Though he admits that the chords are hardly unique, Duffy continued: “It’s been up on our MySpace even after Rising Signs split, and I don’t know, I can’t help thinking that Nick Cave was sitting in his house one night and decided to surf some unsigned bands and saw our site, saw we were split up and thought, ‘I’ll have that track, nobody will ever know.’”

“Or it could be a really huge, amazing coincidence, but it’s really obvious they sound the same and on the Grinderman album you can hear the band talking and you can hear the words ‘grey man’ being said, so maybe it’s not as much of a coincidence after all… Everybody I’ve played it to agrees it sounds like the same song and you never know, I might have to sue him in court,” he laughed.

Since Duffy make the accusation Grey Man has been removed from the Rising Signs’ MySpace.

Compare the songs for yourself – is Nick Cave a plagiarist?