a federal jury says that one of the decade s biggest hits blurred lines infringed on the marvin gaye s got to give it up in all marvin gaye s family was given $7.1 mill 7.3 million 8 million from robin thicke and 1.6 million from pharrell williams. they thought that we couldn t prove it but they were wrong. and now the gaye family is deciding if they should go after another one of pharrell s hits.
and gaye s daughter says i ain t going to lie, i do believe they sound alike. it may sound crazy what i m about to say oh you do me wrong but still i m crazy about you now from the amateur perspective those songs don t sound a lot alike to me, and on tuesday today a song of williams blurred lines and got to give it up prompted headlines like blurred lines is got to give it up even if you hate robin thicke. and this is why jeff parrot said that there is no case there, but they said that there are stylistic similarities in the
drum and the cowbell patterns and joining me is the man behind the cowbell pattern, the legendary percussionist in marvin gaye s got to give it up and mr. ashford, thank you for joining us and i want to get your opinion on the verdict, but tell me how you went to create that distinctive sound that is the anchor of got to give it up. well, at motown, we were known for creating different things for sound in order to fit the rhythm that we made. like we had tire chains, and things like that, that we would experiment with. so i was accustomed to looking for the new sounds. and so when we were in the studio doing got to give it up marvin wanted a cowbell sound, and i didn t have a cowbell. so i used something else. and so, when i got finished with that, he said, what else you got in the bag? i said i have a instrument here
they were able to obtain every evidentiary ruling they wanted to obtain. we fought this the case with one arm tied behind our back, and really one and a half arms behind our back and this is a copyright infringement case where they claimed innocence, but they fought tooth and nail to keep frus playing got to give it up in the courtroom, and we had to play the excerpts and compare it to blurred lines and even with that, and even with that arm behind our back we were able to prove to the jury that it was a taking of the composition of got to give it up and it is not the taking of the genre or the taking of the era or the groove or a feeling which is their argument. we had terrible musicologist and judith munson and they showed that the keyboard and the structure was copy and it was a
gaye 1977 hit got to give it up and pharrell and robin thicke s blurred lines. hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey all right, kg, now the lawyers for pharrell williams says he is going to appeal that judgment. to the end of time. you called it yesterday. yeah, got to appeal it a challenging precedent for a musician going forward. there s a lot of back and forth about whether or not it is similar. going to be an important decision for the courts to make. let s see what happens. overlay it again, that doesn t sound that close does it? overlit gating that is an epidemic in america. i m curious how it s going to turn out. i can kind of hear a little bit of similarity, i don t know where the line is. blurred lines? oh. nice. get it? there was no there was no melody. this is a first, cause there s no melody or harmony lifted, you can t copyright a cowbell or a false set toe. if you can if you can sue