Posted on 06/16/2016 10:11:46 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven copyright trial could end as quickly as it got started Tuesday over whether a video played as evidence was properly submitted in the case.
Almost immediately a debate arose about a possible mistrial as a result of the dispute, the Independent reported.
Band frontman Robert Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page are facing a jury trial over claims they stole their iconic 1971 song's introduction from Spirit's 1967 instrumental track Taurus, The plaintiff's lawyer Francis Alexander Malofiy said previously that this case is about "credit where credit is due" not winning damages.
Malofiy is seeking a single $1 settlement along with a writing credit for Spirit guitarist and composer Randy California, whose real name is Randy Wolfe. California's trustees would then receive future profits from Stairway to Heaven.
US District Judge Gary Klausner already ruled in April that Stairway to Heaven bears "substantial" similarities with Taurus after Michael Skidmore, a trustee for California, filed a lawsuit alleging that Page was inspired to write the hit song after touring with Spirit in the late 1960s.
Page, 72, and Plant, 67, were both "incredible performers, incredible musicians but they covered other people's music and tried to make it their own," Malofiy said.
But the band's lawyer Robert Anderson said the two men "created Stairway to Heaven independently without resort to Taurus or without copying anything in Taurus." He said there is no proof Led Zeppelin even heard Taurus until decades after creating Stairway to Heaven, BBC reported.
Anderson said the part of the song in dispute is a sequence of notes in the opening bars,a "descending chromatic line...something that appears in all kinds of songs".
He said such a "commonplace" musical device that dates back centuries is not protected by copyright and was not actually owned by the plaintiff.
Plant and Page both looked relaxed during the trial's opening, their hair pulled back in ponytails, occasionally leaning toward each other to discuss evidence being presented.
Music from The Beatles, Elvis Presley and The Sound of Music all were invoked during opening statements in the trial, which is expected to last four or five days.
“...ironically, Parker sued Lewis..”
That’s nerve!
We’re clearly off on a tangent, but I disagree with your notion that doing the traditional arranged by is little different from claiming it as an original.
By noting it as traditional, you are saying I did not write this. It is old. So old we don’t know who wrote it.
An area of some interest for me as a musician playing some traditional, arranged by us, songs. Lily of the West, by way of example.
The Garden of Eden--Fra)nkie Vaughan (1957)
Led Zep stole lots of stuff - but in this case I don’t see it. They stole a riff, not a song. Is the riff separately copyrighted?
That was creatively humorous, as most Simpsons stuff was. However, I never watched one single episode. It wasn’t my style of humor.
“My brother bought a block of twenty five seats on the main floor, and needless to say, it was quite a party.”
Probably cost a total of $125 back then which would have been two weeks wages working after school at the grocery store.
I was the one working in the grocery back then.
“I disagree with your notion that doing the traditional arranged by is little different from claiming it as an original.”
As far as royalties are concerned, I said. You don’t pay royalties to anyone else on an original composition you record, and you don’t pay royalties to anyone else on a traditional song you arranged. So there’s no difference in that respect.
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