Nick Cave has denied accusations of plagiarism from a Scottish musician. Dundee based Frankie Duffy claims that Cave lifted a substantial portion of his song 'Grey Man' for Grinderman's 'Palaces of Montezuma', which appeared on the band's recent 'Grinderman 2' album.

Duffy, who now plays with a band called Kalel, first recorded the song in 2005 with his then band Rising Signs. The song has been streaming online since then and can still be heard at the band's myspace page.

Having listened to 'Grey Man' in full and compared it to the Grinderman track, there's no denying the 'ooohs' are pretty identical, which is pretty much what Duffy told Thecourier.co.uk in a recent interview.
"When you hear that track you can totally spot the similarities. I sat down with my guitar and played along with it and it's exactly the same A, E and B chords, which to be fair anybody could use to write a song at any time. But it's the chord progression and when the vocal hook comes in with some "ooohs", it's exactly the same, you can just hear it's the same thing."

Still, the rest of the song is strikingly different. Couldn't it be a big coincidence? Duffy thinks it's more likely that Cave came across the song in an online quest for inspiration.
"It's been up on our MySpace even after Rising Signs split, and I don't know, I can't help thinking that Nick Cave was sitting in his house one night and decided to surf some unsigned bands and saw our site, saw we were split up and thought, 'I'll have that track, nobody will ever know.'"

He continued, "It could be a really huge, amazing coincidence, but it's really obvious they sound the same and on the Grinderman album you can hear the band talking and you can hear the words "grey man" being said, so maybe it's not as much of a coincidence after all."

Meanwhile, Cave has paid little heed to the claims, responding to them briefly and disparagingly at a concert in London on Friday.
"You may have read that some 17-year-old kid in Dundee is trying to sue me and is claiming to have written this song." Then motioning at drummer Jim Sclavunos he joked, "That's funny, because I wrote it for my wife."

Duffy has not yet decided whether to take legal action against Cave and Grinderman.
"I'm not sure where I want to take it but it will be interesting to see what they've got to say. Everybody I've played it to agrees it sounds like the same song and you never know, I might have to sue him in court."

Judge for yourself who's right or wrong by listening to 'Grey Man' at www.myspace.com/rstransmission

Some elements are not supported yet for this mobile version.

You can see the full post content here.

Grinderman - Palaces Of Montezuma by The Big Beat