Nick Cave Responds to Plagiarism Allegations

Published at 12:08 PM on October 5, 2010

By Bonnie Stiernberg

Nick Cave Responds to Plagiarism Allegations

The Guardian reports that Nick Cave has responded to plagiarism allegations at a show on Friday, telling the crowd, “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. That’s funny, because I wrote it for my wife.”

That “17-year-old kid” is actually 29-year-old Scottish musician Frankie Duffy, who claims that the Grinderman track “Palaces of Montezuma” is a rip-off of his song “Grey Man.”

Duffy is convinced that Cave stole the 2005 track by his now-defunct band Rising Signs. “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 said. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard that track. It stood out a mile: it’s exactly the same chords and the same hook as the intro to ‘Grey Man.’”

Duffy is reportedly waiting for an offical response from Cave before deciding whether or not to sue. Watch Rising Signs’ “Grey Man” and Grinderman’s “Palaces of Montezuma” below to judge for yourself:

Rising Signs — “Grey Man”