If George Harrison can go to court and lose, what makes Chris Martin and his team think they can win this one?  Especially with YouTube on Satriani’s side?

It’s like sampling.  Clear the license.  Pay the man.  Coldplay could have paid Satriani and the world wouldn’t be the wiser.  How many people know the original anyway?

Somebody in Coldplay heard it.  That’s what you need to prove liability.  Access.  If Satriani was a guy working in an amp repair shop in Cincinnati, Coldplay would have a leg to stand on.  But he’s a guitar geek’s guitar hero.  Along with Eric Johnson and the rest of the shredders the mainstream is unaware of but the maestros salivate over.  Coldplay absolutely can’t win this case.  Or even if they possibly could, their image has already been shredded.

Watch this video…

I’ll admit, when wind of this story first started blowing through my inbox I took it with a grain of salt.  Isn’t everybody claiming they’re being ripped off? Then I watched the video, and I cracked up.  IT’S THE SAME DAMN SONG!

Now Coldplay paid Kraftwerk when they took that band’s riff on their previous album, why not pay Satriani here?

This is not a monetary issue, this is a public relations issue.  This is how Tom Cruise got in trouble.  He’s a twit who had an incredible PR person.  But then he fired her and now we know Tom Cruise is an adolescent with behavior problems and his career has been irreparably harmed.  I don’t know how you control this story at this point.  But Coldplay needs to hire a strategist.  This is the biggest music story on the Web right now.  Chris Martin’s image was already inches above the toilet.  Do I think that Coldplay INTENTIONALLY ripped off Satriani?  No.  But that’s not how the law works. Give Joe a piece of the action.  I’d say to even invite him up on stage to play his part.  But that’ll just let the Coldplay fans without Internet access in on this crime.