[maddog55]

43 years to get to this point is suspicious in itself.

There’s not to many songs out there that don’t use chords used in many other songs in some form or another. Any blues song is a prime example.

[panaxanax]

I agree.

There are only so many musical chords, as is there are only so many words used in language. They all must blend together in a coherent manner or they just don’t sound right.

Huge blues fan here and listen to the old stuff nearly every day. The older the better. With all due respect to the original ‘blues singers’ they only had to know about 4 chords and could fill in the rest with lyrics about sitting on their porch drinking a bottle of gin and talking about how mean their woman is to them. I love the simplicity!

Duh duh duh da,
My woman, she be so mean,
Duh duh duh da,
She treat me so bad,
Duh duh duh da,
She be so mean that it makes me feel so glad, ‘cause I be a guitar-playin’ poor boy and yea I shore got dem blues today,
Yea, I sure got dem blues today.
Duh duh duh da,

Etc, etc., etc.

[pieceofthepuzzle]

“43 years to get to this point is suspicious in itself.”

From the article, Randy Wolfe, the guitarist who wrote Taurus, complained at the time. It said the two bands toured together while Spirit was playing Taurus, and Stairway to Heaven came after. It also said Wolfe died in the 90s, drowning while trying to rescue his son (tragic). He is not the one suing. The one suing is a trustee for Wolfe's estate.

[jurroppi1]

From what I recall of copyright law regarding music, lyrics can be copyrighted, but a melody or chord cannot because there are far too many possibilities of similar melodies and chords. (this is what a friend that has copyrighted a few songs has told me.)

This is silly, there are a finite number of chords and notes, so there are always going to be similarities here and there, there is no way around it.

[SamAdams76]

No kidding. Stairway to Heaven was played about a billion times during the 1970s and nobody said boo about it resembling another song. So nearly a half a century later, somebody decides to file a claim? This is really weak. BTW, I never even heard of that song by Spirit.