GNR "Sweet Child O' Mine" Plagiarism Accusation

Thought this might have been mentioned before, but I didn't notice it on this forum. I'm a big fan of Australian Crawl and Facebook "friends" with former guitarist Simon Binks. I saw a link to a story in my FB feed that there are some claims GNR's song "Sweet Child O' Mine" sounds a bit too much like Aussie Crawl's "Unpublished Critics." I've heard the Aussie Crawl song many times and "Sweet Child" never came to my mind. Thinking of how each song goes, I detect some similarities, but I've never taken much stock in that. I think there are so many songs, there is bound to be similarities now & then. It's not like a song is being listened to and copied. Binks doesn't think it's a big deal. He posted such in the link below as well as on Facebook. Singer James Reyne, however, didn't seem to dismiss the possibility of plagiarism, but made some not so nice comments about what he thought of GNR at that time (second link).  


http://ultimateclassicrock.com/sweet-child-o-mine-australian-crawl/

http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/may/14/australian-crawl-singer-james-reyne-similarities-between-sweet-child-o-mine



Here are the songs in question:

This seems overblown.

Puts Australian Crawl in the news, at least, which is cool because they were really good.

Definite similarities but not enough of them for me.

I always thought the riff from SCoM was pretty similar to the middle section of Savatage's Hall of the Mountain King, actually (the part just before the solo).

Well it does sound similar but I don't think it's that big of deal (as with most of these types of claims).

Ha! That's pretty similar. GNR makes it sound better;  though.

bgsully wrote:

Ha! That's pretty similar. GNR makes it sound better;  though.

Agree..

And then there's this one by Tesla also on the same label.

"Guitarist Frank Hannon later implied that Guns N' Roses had copied Tesla's earlier work, stating that a demo by Tesla called "Better Off Without You" was "'Patience' note for note."

You decide,

assault_attack wrote:

And then there's this one by Tesla also on the same label.

"Guitarist Frank Hannon later implied that Guns N' Roses had copied Tesla's earlier work, stating that a demo by Tesla called "Better Off Without You" was "'Patience' note for note."

You decide,

Now that's some thievery!

Witchfinder wrote:

assault_attack wrote:

And then there's this one by Tesla also on the same label.

"Guitarist Frank Hannon later implied that Guns N' Roses had copied Tesla's earlier work, stating that a demo by Tesla called "Better Off Without You" was "'Patience' note for note."

You decide,

Now that's some thievery!

The biggest difference is no whistling....

assault_attack wrote:

And then there's this one by Tesla also on the same label.

"Guitarist Frank Hannon later implied that Guns N' Roses had copied Tesla's earlier work, stating that a demo by Tesla called "Better Off Without You" was "'Patience' note for note."

You decide,

Doesn't sound anything like Patience to me.

Also the only similarities to the Australian Group and the GNR song, are the chord progressions through the verse.

I don't see that one either unless Tesla invented the acoustic guitar

If the Australian band were going to go after GnR for plagiarism, they should've done it 25 years ago when GnR were still worth suing.

Fat Freddy wrote:

If the Australian band were going to go after GnR for plagiarism, they should've done it 25 years ago when GnR were still worth suing.

Yeah, I don't understand why so many of these claims come out of the woodwork decades later. I don't know who started this one. I don't think it was any of the band members.