‘Stairway to Heaven’ copyright case heads to trial
Judge rules trustees for deceased Jewish guitarist have sufficient evidence to advance lawsuit over opening notes of iconic song
A trial is needed to determine if Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” copies its opening notes from a song performed by the rock band Spirit, a federal judge has ruled.
US District Judge R. Gary Klausner ruled Friday that lawyers for the trustee of late Spirit guitarist Randy Wolfe (who went by Randy California) had shown enough evidence to support a case that “Stairway to Heaven” copies music from the Spirit song “Taurus.”
“Taurus” was written by Jewish guitarist Wolfe in either 1966 or 1967, years before Led Zeppelin released “Stairway to Heaven” in 1971. Klausner wrote that while the songs have some differences, lawyers for Wolfe’s trustee may be able to prove they are substantially similar.
Led Zeppelin and Spirit performed at some concerts and festivals around the same time, but not on the same stage. Klausner wrote that the evidence presented so far represented a circumstantial case that Led Zeppelin may have heard “Taurus” performed before “Stairway to Heaven” was created.
After-hours phone and email messages sent to Helene M. Freeman, Led Zeppelin’s attorney, were not immediately returned.
California, 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,” he told the magazine Listener in 1997. “Maybe some day their conscience will make them do something about it. I don’t know.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9TGj2jrJk8
Experts hired by the band contend both “Stairway to Heaven” and “Taurus” use notes that have been used in music for centuries.
“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.
Francis Alexander Malofiy, attorney for Wolfe’s trustee Michael Skidmore, praised the ruling. He said while many copyright cases are an uphill battle, Klausner’s ruling brings his client one step closer to getting Wolfe credit for helping create one of the most recognizable song introductions in rock history.
Skidmore was able to overcome statute-of-limitations hurdles to sue over “Stairway to Heaven” because the song was remastered and re-released in 2014.
A jury trial is scheduled for May 10 in Los Angeles. Klausner’s ruling removed Zeppelin band member John Paul Jones from the case. Bandmates Robert Plant and Jimmy Page remain defendants in the case.
The looming legal battle is for enormously high stakes — musically and financially. “What if the foundation of the band’s immortality had been lifted from another song by a relatively forgotten California band?” asked Bloomberg’s Vernon Silver. “You’d need to rewrite the history of rock ’n’ roll.”
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.
A trial would represent the third time in recent months that a Los Angeles federal jury has heard a copyright-infringement case involving a hit song. In March 2015, a 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.
Later in the year, another jury was empaneled to determine whether the Jay-Z hit “Big Pimpin'” copied the work of an Egyptian composer, but a judge ruled in the rapper’s favor before deliberations began.
