Is it just me or does Fight Test sound a lot like Father & Son?
Yeah, it's a fairly well known "homage".
"Fight Test" is musically very similar to
Cat Stevens's 1970 song "
Father and Son." Stevens, now Yusuf Islam, is receiving royalties following a relatively non-contentious settlement. In an interview with
The Guardian, front man Wayne Coyne stated
"I want to go on record for the first time and say that I really apologize for the whole thing. I really love Cat Stevens. I truly respect him as a great singer-songwriter. And now he wants his money. There was a time during the recording when we said, this has a similarity to 'Father and Son'. Then we purposefully changed those bits. But I do regret not contacting his record company and asking their opinion. Maybe we could have gone 50–50. As it is, Cat Stevens is now getting 75 per cent of royalties from 'Fight Test', We could easily have changed the melody but we didn't. I am really sorry that Cat Stevens thinks I'm purposefully plagiarising his work. I am ashamed. There is obviously a fine line between being inspired and stealing. But if anyone wanted to borrow part of a Flaming Lips song, I don't think I'd bother pursuing it. I've got better things to do. Anyway, Cat Stevens is never going to make much money out of us."
Keeping in mind this is a band that later remade Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and Dark Side Of The Moon (with people like Henry Rollins, Peaches, Miley Cyrus, Maynard Keenan and J Mascis among others).