Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and Robert Plant will appear in court on Tuesday to defend “Stairway to Heaven,” one of the most recognisable songs in rock history, from accusations of plagiarism.
Spirit, a psychedelic band from Los Angeles that enjoyed a niche following but never the superstardom of Zeppelin, claim the iconic melancholic guitar that opens the song was lifted from its instrumental track “Taurus.”
Spirit’s guitarist Randy Wolfe — who went by the nickname Randy California — never took legal action and died in 1997, but a lawsuit was filed by his trustee Michael Skidmore.
“Well, if you listen to the two songs, you can make your own judgment. It’s exact… I’d say it was a rip-off,” California said in a magazine interview just before his death, quoted in the lawsuit.
“And the guys made millions of bucks on it and never said ‘Thank you,’ never said, ‘Can we pay you some money for it?’ It’s kind of a sore point with me.”
After two years of legal proceedings, a judge stopped short of agreeing that the song was copied but said there was enough of a case for a jury trial in Los Angeles.
Spirit’s representative “failed to proffer evidence of striking similarity, but he has successfully created a triable issue of fact as to access and substantial similarity,” US District Court Judge Gary Klausner said in a ruling in May.
The judge said the two sides had “vehemently contested” the question of whether Led Zeppelin had access to 1967’s “Taurus” before recording “Stairway to Heaven” in London in December 1970 and January 1971.
Led Zeppelin was the opening act for Spirit when the hard British rockers — Plant, Page, John Paul Jones and the since deceased John Bonham — made their US debut on December 26, 1968, in Denver.
But surviving members of Led Zeppelin submitted testimony to the court that they never had substantive interaction with Spirit or listened to the band’s music.
