US jury clears Led Zeppelin of stealing ‘Stairway’ intro
After hearing the classic rock song alongside Spirit's 'Taurus,' court rejects claim of plagiarism
A US jury found Thursday that British rock group Led Zeppelin did not steal the intro to their signature track “Stairway to Heaven” from a long-defunct Los Angeles rock band.
The jury in federal court in Los Angeles rejected claims by songwriting duo Robert Plant and Jimmy Page that they had no access to “Taurus,” by the 1960s rock band Spirit.
But the panel of four men and four women said there was no proof that the two songs were sufficiently similar for Spirit’s copyright to have been breached.
Plant and Page denied plagiarizing the melancholic guitar progression of their classic 1971 song from “Taurus,” an instrumental track from Spirit’s debut album, written four years earlier.
Both were present as the verdict was read out, shortly after Judge Gary Klausner had agreed to a request by the jury to hear acoustic guitar renditions of “Taurus” and “Stairway” played side-by-side for a final time.
It was the culmination of a seven-day trial in the case brought by Michael Skidmore, the trustee and friend of Spirit guitarist Randy California, who long maintained he deserved credit for “Stairway”, but never took legal action over the song.
California, who died in 1997 when saving his son from drowning in Hawaii, always believed that Page and 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.”
Page has said he knew some of Spirit’s music and owned a couple of their albums, but he never heard “Taurus” until his son-in-law showed him comparisons to “Stairway” on the internet a few years ago.
He said he didn’t even realize he owned Spirit’s first album that contained “Taurus” until he looked through his collection after the comparisons surfaced.
Page acknowledged, however, that the band played a riff from the song “Fresh Garbage,” also from that album, in a medley that was a concert staple when first starting out.
“Taurus,” as opposed to Stairway’s multi-sectioned, eight-minute epic, is a short, instrumental number. The alleged similarities with the opening section of “Stairway” kick in about 45 seconds into the track.
Randy California, who was Jewish, was born Randy Craig Wolfe, the son of Bernice Pearle. He got his stage name from Jimi Hendrix, whom he first met when he was 15 and with whom he gigged as a teenager.
Spirit did not enjoy significant commercial success, and California was broke when he died.