# Led Zeppelin's copyright infringement lawsuit coming to LA



## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

See if you think it is ripped off...

[video=youtube;xd8AVbwB_6E]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd8AVbwB_6E&amp;feature=youtu.be[/video]

"Stairway to Heaven" is one of the most iconic songs of the rock 'n' roll canon. So it seems almost blasphemous to even imply that Jimmy Page’s signature arpeggio in the song's intro was stolen.
But a lawsuit filed last year in Philadelphia on behalf of Randy California, the late guitarist for the Los Angeles band Spirit, claims just that. The judge in the case has ruled that, at the request of Led Zeppelin's defense team, the case should be tried in a federal court in L.A.
Full article here:
http://www.scpr.org/news/2015/05/09/51584/and-if-you-listen-very-hard-led-zeppelin-s-copyrig/

Cheers

Dave


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## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

Ripped off?
No
Technique or style borrowed & adapted--sure.
They have similarities, but it's not the same--the SPirit song is actually kind of boring--but they weren't the first to use arpeggios either.
So was page influenced by it, did he borrow something from it?
Sure, quite possible.

But I don't hear it as plagiarism.


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## dradlin (Feb 27, 2010)

I can't listen to the Spirit song without thinking Stairway... so to my ear at least a partial rip-off.


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## JBFairthorne (Oct 11, 2014)

Slightly similar...maybe. I probably only noticed a small similarity because I was actually listening for it. This guy just wasted a ton of money on lawyers for a lawsuit he'll lose. The simple fact is, there are only so many chords, and so many combinations of chords available to writers. It's virtually impossible to do something ENTIRELY unique.


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## nonreverb (Sep 19, 2006)

Zep are now known to have ripped off many songs over the course of their career. Not to say they didn't write some great stuff as well but they had a penchant for not giving credit where credit is due.....One of Page's most blatant rip off's has to be Bert Jansch's Black Waterside. Which went uncredited of course.


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## hardasmum (Apr 23, 2008)

[video=youtube_share;pTsvs-pAGDc]http://youtu.be/pTsvs-pAGDc[/video]


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## 4345567 (Jun 26, 2008)

__________


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## bluzfish (Mar 12, 2011)

.


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## hardasmum (Apr 23, 2008)

bluzfish said:


> <img src="http://www.guitarscanada.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=13643"/>  .


Hahaha. ????????


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## jbealsmusic (Feb 12, 2014)

nkjanssen said:


> Let me summarize how every discussion about this on guitar forums goes...
> 
> No Led Zepplin fan hears any similarity (or only very slight similarity).
> 
> ...


Hahahahaaa... Sounds about right.


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

dradlin said:


> I can't listen to the Spirit song without thinking Stairway... so to my ear at least a partial rip-off.


Perhaps about 20 of the 80 steps or could we push it to 24 or 25 steps?


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

Update:
http://www.torontosun.com/2015/05/24/led-zeppelin-respond-to-stairway-to-heaven-plagiarism-lawsuit

No surprise!

Cheers

Dave


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## Guest (May 24, 2015)




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## Stratin2traynor (Sep 27, 2006)

I just finished "When Giants Walked The Earth". FYI - I found it to be a horrible "biography" of Led Zeppelin. The author spoke about all of the lawsuits and rip-offs. Sounds like it was very common for the bands of that era to rip-off old blues tunes and "rewrite" them. Where do you draw the line though.

I remember, Satriani's lawsuit against ColdPlay a few years back. I listened to the two tunes in question and while there were some similarities in chord progression, where do you draw the line and say "yup...that's the same..."


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## leftysg (Mar 29, 2008)

I was listening to Vinyl Tap last night and Randy Bachman was playing originals with interesting covers. Well he played Stairway but started with an interesting story about its origins. 
Apparently in 17th century Ireland there was a homeless blind harpist, Turlough o'Carolan who used to live with his dog outside the estates of the rich. He would compose a song for them in exchange for a meal or perhaps shelter for the evening. Then he would move on to the next estate. Well his songs were discovered and transposed to guitar by American guitarist El McMeen and darned if one of them isn't a dead ringer for Stairway. So did Jimmy hear this obscure Irish harp melody and transpose it himself, then use it as his Stairway intro?
Listen to Vinyl Tap tonight. It's in the first half hour and worth hearing.

[video=youtube_share;QFlKx3YPL5I]http://youtu.be/QFlKx3YPL5I[/video]


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## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

Again, I hear similarities, but I don't hear the actual song--but we do know one of Page's influences if celtic music--so it is possible he had heard this piece and probably many others and that it was somewhere in his mind when he came up with Stairway.

Page stole/borrowed enough stuff that's fairly blatant without all this extra stuff.

But isn't that we do as musicians?
We have something in our head and it comes out in what we play, but does that make it an influence or a plagiarism?
In Page's case, he's done both.


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## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

My biggest criticism is the lyrics which were lifted, line for line, with no credit given. 

The music? There are only 11 notes (in our western scale). And, with our cultural ear, some don't sound good together or one after another. So there is bound to be some crossing over, some borrowing, alot of similarities. How many ways can you play a I-IV-V and make it unique? Their rhythms and arrangements were all theirs. The tone was new and unique. If they'd only found a few new lyrics. Or, better yet, spread the accolades and money around to people who could have used it right about then. By the sounds of things, they had more than enough to go around.


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## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

High/Deaf said:


> My biggest criticism is the lyrics which were lifted, line for line, with no credit given.
> 
> The music? There are only 11 notes (in our western scale). And, with our cultural ear, some don't sound good together or one after another. So there is bound to be some crossing over, some borrowing, alot of similarities. How many ways can you play a I-IV-V and make it unique? Their rhythms and arrangements were all theirs. The tone was new and unique. If they'd only found a few new lyrics. Or, better yet, spread the accolades and money around to people who could have used it right about then. By the sounds of things, they had more than enough to go around.


The lyrics are a whole different ball of wax.
those should be easier to show if there was plagiarism.

A little less room for error there, most likely.
Similar lyrics & themes, use of the same expressions--those are okay--but if the lyrics are simply lifted from someone else's song--that's different--but where were they lifted from?


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