A Whole Lotta Nothing linked to an article in the New Yorker about intellectual property in which an interesting claim was buried: “The guitar riff from Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ is just a tweaked version of the lick from Boston’s ‘More Than A Feeling.’”
The Dead Parrot Society decided to explore this further and posted an audio loop comparing the two. I know both songs pretty well, and off the top of my head I couldn’t remember anything that similar. However, having heard the clip I can now say that although the riff is not exactly the same, it’s definitely more similar than I had remembered. Listen for yourself…
