Joe Satriani Says Coldplay "Figured This Little Guitar Player Guy Will Leave Them Alone"

Joe Satriani has opened up about his plagiarism lawsuit against Coldplay, calling it the "weirdest thing I've ever been involved in." Satriani credits his rabid fan base for bringing the similarities between Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" and Satriani's own "If I Could Fly" to his attention. "Almost immediately, from the minute their song came out, my e-mail box flooded with people going, 'Have you heard this song by Coldplay? They ripped you off man.' I mean, I couldn't tell you how many e-mails I received," Satriani said.

Making the supposed copycatting even more hurtful to Satriani is that "If I Could Fly" took almost a decade to complete and was intended as a love letter to his wife. "I spent so long writing the song, thinking about it, loving it, nursing it, and then finally recording it and standing on stages the world over playing it — and then somebody comes along and plays the exact same song and calls it their own," the guitarist told Music Radar. As for Satriani bringing the lawsuit to court, "I did everything I could to avoid a court case with this situation. But Coldplay didn't want to talk about it. They just wanted this whole thing to go away. Maybe they figured this little guitar player guy will leave them alone after a while, I don't know." To help heal his emotional wounds, Satriani is seeking "any and all profits" the Grammy-nominated "Viva La Vida" has generated.

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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