Did Led Zeppelin steal other musicians ideas/songs? A question only, and definitely not a statement of fact.

Why pick on Led Zepp or indeed that century.

I thought almost everyone borrowed/stole/covered/paid homage to/ripped off/emulated everyone else's work back then. (And thank goodness they did. So often the 'originals' sounded b_____y awful!)

Blind Willie Johnson - "Nobody's Fault But Mine", "Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed".  IIRC Johnson gets credited for these songs.

whilst you are on youtube, check out      Axis of Awesome - 4 Four Chord Song (with song titles) 

pretty much every pop song is the same...

Never mind what LZ owe the Small Faces, what about Muddy Waters & Willie Dixon?

The right hand side of this table sort of illustrates what I mean...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_written_by_Willie_Dixon

You'd think he should have ended up the richest one of the lot,  but received little in the way of royalties until quite late in his life.

Wasn't picking on Led Zepp, as a lot of artist are guilty of a certain amount of copying.

It's just that I noticed the incredible similarities of the 2 "Dazed and Confused" songs, and also read Led Zepp's refusal to give Jake Holmes any kind of writing credit. 

Read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Holmes and http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/music/led_zeppelin_sued_by_folk_singer_Onb6nSTXepES8W0KURCX0O

Definitely a popular chord sequence, but there are only 12 notes, so you will always get some musical similarities.

I once wrote a song with the same chord sequence too. Not a hit 

Zeps cover of Joan Baez's Babe I'm Gonna Leave You off their first album definetely proves this, original was worse than b awful.
Their first album has two songs credited to Willie Dixon and the above track with Traditional arrangement by Jimmy Page, the second album lists Killing Floor credited to Burnett.

How many songs today are just copies of the original? Don't Stop Believin' for example.

I think I'm correct in saying that Zepp only gave those writing credits after legal action was taken years later. 

As i say, I may be wrong, but I'm sure I read this somewhere. They have definitely been to court (and lost) on a few occasions though. 

You slate cover versions, but at least the composer gets money from sales, where Zepp just seemed to copy, then refuse to admit it. Allegedly!!!!

I thought Men At Work were a little hard done by though, couldn't really hear the similarity of "Down Under" and the alleged tune they stole it from.

Yes Bernie, Men At Work were very hard done by. Hopefully they enjoyed the royalties from such a big hit for the twenty five years or so that they were able to.

Led Zep played a lot of bluesy rock sure but I`ve always felt that the debt Heavy Rock in general is supposed to owe to the Blues has been over hyped/stated. At least according to my ears.

...as now.

So, yes.

The information quoted in my previous post is from the sleeves of original Zep albums bought when they were released in the late 60s early 70s.