Okay, this may or may not be news to anyone here because I just came upon this weird discovery today while listening to Pink Floyd's Echoes.
I'm not musician but I DO like Andrew Loyd Webber and just LOVE Pink Floyd. Anyway, I was listening to 1971's Echoes and I heard part of the song and something clicked in my head---PHANTOM OF THE OPREA! THAT'S from Phantom of the Oprea!
I quickly alerted my wife who dismissed it as coincidence and reasoned that it happens a lot with music. That's probably true but I had to listen to both and it's really astonishing. So I did some web research and of course I wasn't the only one to pick up on it. Even Roger Waters from Pink Floyd noticed--and he hated Webber without any help:
Yes, the music of "Sir" Andrew Lloyd Webber is rather horrible - but has not Waters, in condemning Phantom Of The Opera as "fucking fifteenth rate from beginning to end", as he does, missed something? Has he not noticed something uncanny about Phantom Of The Opera, the title song, something about the opening notes that go "DAAAA-da-da-da-da-da"?
"Yes, Echoes"! he booms. (Echoes was an LP-side-long, and rather-good- actually, track on Pink Floyd's Meddle.) "Echoes. Yeah the beginning of that bloody Phantom song is from Echoes. (_He sings_) DAAAA-da-da-da-da-da. I couldn't believe it when I heard it. It's the same time signature - it's 12/8 - and it's the same structure and it's the same notes and it's the same everything. Bastard. It probably is actionable. It really is! But I think that life's too long to bother with suing Andrew fucking Lloyd Webber. I think that might make me really gloomy."Here's the Floyd version(at 3:33 and 4:33 of the video you can hear it but it kicks in more powerfully at 5:55 of this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBe7ooQNEicAnd here is Phantom(listen to the beginning and compare to the previous parts of Echoes):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXKHYgorL0o&mode=related&search=Why does any of this matter?
When I figure that out I'll let you know.
I am curious though, whether he "borrowed" from any other songs.