- Music
- 23 Jun 16
A Los Angeles jury today found in favour of the British rock behemoths in what was a landmark copyright case
Led Zeppelin have did not plagiarise the opening of their classic song ’Stairway To Heaven’. That is the verdict of the jury, in a case filed in LA by Michael Skidmore, on behalf of the estate of the late Randy Wolfe – aka Randy California – who was the leader and main songwriter with the US psychedelic band, Spirit.
The prosecution case was that Led Zeppelin had become familiar with the Spirit song ’Taurus’ when the two bands played on the same bill at a club in Birmingham – which is the hometown of the Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant (pictured) – in 1970. The bassisist with Spirit, Mark Andes, told the court last week that he had met Robert Plant at the gig and that they had played snooker afterwards.
‘Stairway To Heaven’ was originally released in 1971 and the court was told that Randy Wolfe often remarked on the similarity between the chord progressions used in both songs.
The lawyers for the defence made the musicological case that the chord progression was – and is – very common and that it had been in use for more than three hundred years.
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Guitarist Jimmy Page also testified that – while he owned five Spirit albums – the song ‘Taurus’ was “totally alien" to him. Amusingly, Page also compared 'Stairway to Heaven' to 'Chim Chim Cher-ee' from the Disney film Mary Poppins – emphasising that both songs had a chord sequence that has "been around forever."
For those curious about the minutiae of rock ’n’ roll history, the trial bust one well established myth – in this case that the song had been begun at the cottage in Wales called Bron-Yr-Aur. No so, Robert Plant said in his evidence: the song had been conceived originally at the country estate Headley Grange.
In the end, the jury believed the English band, deciding that the riff they were accused of stealing from ’Taurus' was “not intrinsically similar” to the opening of what has gone on to become one of the best known songs in the history of rock. The reputation of ‘Stairway To Heaven’ remains unscathed. A lot of rock fans will breath a sigh of relief tonight. Is nothing sacred? Well, for now at least, that piece of rock magic still is.