Led Zeppelin cleared of stealing riff for Stairway to Heaven

Led Zeppelin has defeated a lawsuit that accused the band of stealing the opening riff in Stairway to Heaven, and cemented its place in rock’s pantheon.

A jury in Los Angeles on Thursday cleared Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of pinching arguably the most famous riff of the most famous anthem in rock.

The singer and guitarist were in the US district court for the climax of a six-day trial that gripped the music industry and put the band’s history and credibility under a forensic microscope.

Plant, 67, and Page, 72, denied lifting Stairway to Heaven’s opening passage, which evokes Renaissance folk music, from an LA-based psychedelic band called Spirit.

The estate of Spirit’s guitarist Randy Wolfe, also known as Randy California, had sued for recognition and a share of the proceeds on the grounds the 1971 mega-hit ripped off Taurus, an instrumental composed in 1967.

Wearing sharp suits with their hair pulled back in ponytails, Plant and Page left court without speaking publicly, but issued a brief statement later that said they were grateful to the jury and look forward to putting the matter behind them.

Francis Malofiy, the estate’s attorney, said he was sad and disappointed by the jury’s decision.

“The reality is that we proved access, but they could never hear what they had access to,” Malofiy said. “It’s bizarre.”

“This case is about one thing, one six-letter word – credit,” Malofiy had told the jury of four men and four women during the trial. He likened the case to a David and Goliath battle.

Peter Anderson, Led Zeppelin’s attorney, said the case was really an attempt to rewrite history – “to take an iconic song … and [say] it’s got a new parent”.

The trial wrapped on Wednesday and the jury retired to deliberate. When it returned to courtroom 850, a marble and wood-paneled arena in the Edward Roybal federal building, Goliath prevailed.

The verdict spared Led Zeppelin the humiliation and type of financial loss which befell Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams in a separate plagiarism case last year when Marvin Gaye’s family won a $7.4m award for the song Blurred Lines infringing on Gaye’s Got to Give it Up.

The music industry, still reeling from the Blurred Lines verdict, will be relieved, said Larry Iser, a lawyer and copyright specialist who was not involved in either case. “Today’s verdict is a vindication of copyright, which only protects an original expression of music.” Led Zeppelin showed that the disputed chord progression was a common building block of classical and popular music dating back centuries, he said.

Journalists and Led Zeppelin fans packed the public gallery for a trial which veered from surreal to nostalgic to belligerent as Plant, Page and other witnesses testified about what did and did not happen between 1967 and 1971.

This was a bacchanalian rock’n’roll era famed for sex and drugs but Judge Gary Klausner, a stern presence, kept testimony focused on money, memory and music. The case hinged on two questions. Did Led Zeppelin hear Taurus before composing Stairway? And is Stairway substantially similar to the Taurus sheet music submitted in 1968 to the US copyright office?

Wolfe, a guitar prodigy who wrote the instrumental for his girlfriend, drowned in 1997 saving his son in Hawaii. Shortly before his death, in a magazine interview quoted in the lawsuit, he made his resentment plain. “If you listen to the two songs, you can make your own judgment … I’d say it was a rip-off. And the guys made millions of bucks on it and never said ‘Thank you,’ never said, ‘Can we pay you some money for it?’ It’s kind of a sore point with me.”

The lawsuit alleged Led Zeppelin had a deep-rooted history of lifting composition from uncreditd blues artists and other songwriters. It cited disputes over 16 other Led Zeppelin songs, including Whole Lotta Love and Babe I’m Gonna Leave You.

Stairway to Heaven, one of the most played songs on radio, is estimated to have generated more than $500m over the decades. Damages, however, can extend back only three years and into the future.

In defending themselves Plant and Page, chipped their own mythology about Stairway being composed at Bron-Yr-Aur, a remote Welsh cottage.

Page said he in fact wrote the music at Headley Grange, a recording studio in Hampshire. Plant said he had been toying with a lyrical couplet inspired by Welsh lore and scenery and realised it could combine with Page’s notes.

“Do you remember what that couplet was?” asked Anderson.

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Into a hushed courtroom Plant, half-speaking, half-singing, responded: “There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold, and she’s buying a stairway to heaven.”

The singer dismissed any influence from Taurus. “I didn’t remember it then, and I don’t remember it now.”

Led Zeppelin’s bass player and keyboardist, John Paul Jones, testified in the band’s defence but was not a defendant.

Malofiy, a hard-charging lawyer with a bruising reputation, sought to pierce any reverence for the British rockers by calling them session musicians who played other people’s music, including that of Spirit, with whom they shared concert billing in the late 1960s.

Page admitted Led Zeppelin used to play one Spirit song, Fresh Garbage, because back in the day the band would “chip a wink to what’s hot”.

But he insisted he had not heard Taurus, part of Spirit’s debut album, even though it was in his collection of 4,329 LPs and 5,882 CDs. He heard it only after his son-in-law told him about internet chatter making comparisons with Stairway, he said. “I don’t do the internet, so he played it for me. When I heard the orchestral part at the beginning, I knew I’d never heard it before.”

A witness for Wolfe’s estate testified about seeing Plant attend a Spirit gig and socialise with the US group at Mother’s, a Birmingham club, during its visit to England 1970. The singer shrugged that off. “I really don’t recall any of the bands I saw there or everyone I ever hung out with.”

Malofiy accused Plant and Page of having selective memory. Unable to play recordings of Taurus to the jury, the attorney summoned musicologists who said the instrumental’s copyrighted sheet music shared with Stairway a descending A-minor chord progression, notes of the same duration, arpeggios and similar pairs of notes.

The courtroom crackled when the attorney asked Page to analyse Taurus. “You want to step through it?”

“Not necessarily,” Page replied.

Page carried a guitar into court but was not asked to play. He did, however, mime air guitar and a dance move.

Musicologists summoned for the defence said the descending chromatic minor line progression shared by both songs had been a common musical device for centuries. One example cited was Chim Chim Cher-ee, from the 1964 Disney musical Mary Poppins.

Anderson said Wolfe’s estate was overreaching. “He didn’t create the key of A-minor.”

The lawyer urged the jury to not let Michael Skidmore, trustee of the late musician’s estate, usurp history. “Randy California is entitled for credit for what he did, but not what he didn’t do. [The plaintiffs] are asking you to take this iconic song, ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ and say it has a new parent in Mr Skidmore.”