Led Zeppelin emerges victorious in ‘Stairway to Heaven’ plagiarism case

New York Post ^ | October 5, 2020

[nickcarraway]

British rock band Led Zeppelin on Monday effectively won a long-running legal battle over claims it stole the opening guitar riff from its signature 1971 song “Stairway to Heaven.”

The band, one of the best-selling rock acts of all time, was handed victory after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case, meaning that a March 2020 decision by a U.S. appeals court in Led Zeppelin’s favor will stand.

Lead singer Robert Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page had been accused in the six-year-long case of lifting the riff — one of the best-known openings in rock music — from a song called “Taurus”, written by the late Randy Wolfe of the U.S. band Spirit.

[jdsteel]

“John Bonham began by playing the drum introduction from the Little Richard song “Keep A-Knockin”

Both you and Wikipedia are ignoring, or unaware of, the distinction between starting on the 8th note upbeat vs. the downbeat.

Try it sometime...even experienced drummers can struggle with it.

[Arones]

From :40 for the next 10 seconds or so....sounds like a rip off.

[a fool in paradise]

He discussed what he ripped off. Where he took it will never change the original appropriation.

[jdsteel]

“He discussed what he ripped off.”

“Ripped off” is a very derogatory term. “Was influenced by” is more correct term, and is very common in music.

And instead of “dumbing it down” like the bass line at the beginning of “Under Pressure” used by Vanilla Ice repeated ad nauseam for “Ice Ice Baby” he turned it into a much more complex intro.

[Yardstick]

Yep, in fact I’ve done it myself. Just last year I had to abandon a song I was working on because I realized I had inadvertantly cloned a key section of another song.

[Philip Blake]

Truth. There are bootlegs of LZ covering Spirit’s “Fresh Garbage” in early 1969. No way in hell they weren’t more than a bit influenced by their time spent hanging around the band.