A Melbourne musician has commented on similarities between the Guns N’ Roses 1988 rock classic Sweet Child O’ Mine and a song he released seven years earlier as part of the band Australian Crawl.
Australian Crawl lead singer James Reyne, co-writer of the track in question, Unpublished Critics, told the Daily Mail it was “not inconceivable” there were similarities between the two rock anthems.
He went on to agree it was also “not inconceivable” the US band were not aware of certain Australian songs of the time. “God forbid I had an active publishing company and they investigated the possibility,” he said.
When Sweet Child O’ Mine was released, Reyne had not been struck by any obvious similarity. “I didn’t really listen to the song,” he said. “I was more looking at the video thinking, ‘Are they stoned? Or on smack?’
“I was probably more interested in their drug habits. I really wasn’t that aware of Guns N’ Roses … It just didn’t cross my radar because I was listening to other things.
“I’m not about to take on the might of the Guns N’ Roses lawyers.”
While comparisons between the chord progressions and verse melodies of the two songs have been kicking around for years among Australian music fans, the debate found new life online when it was mentioned in the comment thread of an article on Max TV.
It is not the only song in recent months to raise eyebrows as a historical sound-a-like. In January, UK singer Sam Smith admitted his Grammy award-winning hit Stay With Me featured similar melodies to I Won’t Back Down, written by Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne in 1989. Petty and Lynne will now receive 12.5% of royalties from the song, even though the similarities were characterised by Smith as coincidental.
Two months later, nearly US$7.4m was awarded to the children of soul maestro Marvin Gaye after a Los Angeles jury determined singers Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams had copied the singer’s music to create their hit 2013 song Blurred Lines. The pair have filed an appeal, which will be considered at a hearing on 29 June.
Sweet Child O’ Mine was the third single from the Guns N’ Roses No 1 debut album Appetite for Destruction. It was the band’s first and only song to reach No 1 on the Billboard US charts. The song’s crown jewel – a grandiose guitar solo by lead guitarist Slash – regularly lands a prominent position on all time best guitar solo lists.
Unpublished Critics was also taken from a best-selling album, at least in Australia: Australian Crawl’s second LP Sirocco. It reached No 1 on the Australian charts and was one of two album chart toppers for the band.
Several lineup changes and the disappointing 1985 release, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, led to Australian Crawl disbanding the following year. James Reyne continued as a solo artist and will tour Australia this August.
