It happened last night. The dreaded question. I was playing at the Sawdust festival. I had just finished my cover of Led Zeppelin's "Going to California". Like a radio DJ I back announced the song when someone in the audience asked; "That songs by Led Zeppelin"? "
"Yes", I replied.
"Well than that means you could play Stairway to Heaven too.....Right"?
I have never understood this leap in logic. But there are a lot of folks out there who think that because I know how to play song "A" by such and such band, that I should then also know how to play song "B" by such and such band.
To those who have never learned how to play an instrument, let me set the record straight. Think of each song as being a different mini language unto itself. Before you can learn how to play a new song , you must learn it's language. Now it's true that many songs will have similar chord patterns and this will make learning those songs easier, but there will still be subtle and sometimes not so subtle differences that require their individual learning curves (and that's not even counting that you have to learn a different set of lyrics).
A good analogy for this is the difference between the kind of Spanish they speak in Mexico vs the kind of Spanish they speak in Spain.
It follows then, that the more songs you learn, the easier it becomes to learn more new songs. This is why if say you have an experienced guitarist who has never played Johnny Be Goode before (which is a simple song) but he's heard the song plenty of times. You can tell him, it's a a 1,4,5 chord progression in the key of "A", and he can say "OK, I can do that, so long as you can sing the lyrics".
However if you ask him to play "Mood for A Day" By Yes, it isn't going to matter how many times he's heard it, He is going to have do his homework and learn that songs individual language before attempting a performance.
But how do I explain all that to the guy who thinks that song are learned by osmosis.
I didn't.
I just said to him very seriously "I'm afraid Stairway to Heaven is against the rules".
He nodded solemnly and replied "Oh".
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