Jury to decide whether ‘Stairway to Heaven’ riff stolen from Jewish guitarist
Randy California (Robert Wolfe) always claimed the intro was copied from his own song ‘Tarus,’ written years earlier; the two bands played together in late 1960s
LOS ANGELES — A jury was selected Tuesday for a federal copyright trial over Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.”
Guitarist Jimmy Page and singer Robert Plant, long hair pulled back and dressed in dark gray suits and white shirts, watched as eight jurors were chosen. Testimony was expected to begin in the afternoon.
The panel will have to decide whether the members of Led Zeppelin ripped off the song’s famous riff, which generations of aspiring guitarists have tried to copy.
Page and Plant are defendants in the lawsuit brought by the trustee of Jewish guitarist Randy Wolfe (who went by Randy California) from the band Spirit. Attorneys for the trustee contend that 1971’s “Stairway to Heaven” copies music from the Spirit song “Taurus,” which Wolfe wrote in either 1966 or 1967.
Wolfe, who died in 1997 when saving his son from drowning in Hawaii, always believed that Zeppelin’s guitarist Jimmy Page, credited as co-writer of “Stairway” with lyricist and singer Robert Plant, had stolen his song.
“It’s an exact… I’d say it was a rip-off. 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,” Wolfe told the magazine Listener in 1997. “Maybe some day their conscience will make them do something about it. I don’t know.”
Page, Plant and their bandmate John Paul Jones are all expected to testify at the trial, though Jones has been dismissed as a defendant in the case.
Led Zeppelin and Spirit performed at some concerts and festivals around the same time. According to some reports, indeed, Led Zeppelin heard the song plenty because the British band was the opening act for Spirit in a series of shows in America in 1968 and 1969.
US District Judge R. Gary Klausner ruled in April that evidence presented in hearings made a credible case that Led Zeppelin may have heard “Taurus” performed before their song was created.
Francis Alexander Malofiy, attorney for Wolfe’s trustee Michael Skidmore, said while many copyright cases are an uphill battle, Klausner’s ruling brought his client one step closer to getting Wolfe credit for helping create one of the most recognizable song introductions in rock history.
Led Zeppelin’s attorneys argued that both “Stairway to Heaven” and “Taurus” use notes and combinations that have been circulating in music for centuries.
The song has generated hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. Wolfe’s attorneys overcame statute-of-limitations hurdles to sue over “Stairway to Heaven” because the song was remastered and re-released in 2014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9TGj2jrJk8
“Stairway” is a multi-sectioned, eight-minute epic.
“Taurus” is a far-shorter, instrumental number. The similarities with the opening section of “Stairway” kick in at about 45 seconds.
The lawsuit also came after a high-profile victory last year when a federal jury found that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams had copied a Marvin Gaye song to create their 2013 hit, “Blurred Lines” and awarded Gaye’s children $7.4 million.
A judge trimmed the award, and the verdict is under appeal, but the decision appears to have prompted a surge in copyright-infringement filings.
The same attorney who represented Gaye’s family filed another suit last week in Los Angeles saying Ed Sheeran’s 2014 song “Photograph” is too similar to the 2009 song “Amazing” written by Martin Harrington and Thomas Leonard.
Six years ago, “Stairway” was estimated to have earned over $560 million in royalties and record sales. The album on which it appears, Led Zeppelin IV, is America’s third biggest-selling album of all time, with 23 million copies sold.
