I've read many comments and heard many people who try to explain it away...ya know, they were carrying on in that Blues tradition of borrowing, it's not an EXACT ripoff like Ghostbusters blah blah blah.
Zepelin has sold more albums than I will ever sell, they are world famous (probably famous on other plants, too) and John Bonham is arguably one of the most influential drummers ever. And as I said, Achilles is a masterpiece. But can't we just ONCE be honest and acknowledge the "crime" herein? It's not like they pulled a Milli Vanilli...but they did take someone else's idea without compensation.
“...but they did take someone else’s idea without compensation.”
A lot of them.
There are no 100% original guitar lines. There’s only so many notes, so many chords, and so much you can do in 4 4. You’re gonna hear something at it will rattle in your head and years later some variation of that will pop out of your hands. The meat of the case, and why Zep won, is that the it’s really just one chunk of a rather large song, that goes through multiple movements, that bears a resemblance. There’s way more to Stairway than the guitar line at 45 seconds.