According to lawyers for the family of the late Randy California, guitarist for Spirit, they surely did.
Here is Spirit’s song Taurus from which the claim of copyright infringement is being based upon. Taurus- Spirit - YouTube
LZ played four different shows with Spirit in '68 and '69. California passed away in 1997. He never sought any compensation while he was alive, but apparently had sour grapes later in life according to an interview he did with Listener magazine prior to his death.
Lawyer for his estate and family are now seeking compensation.
Interesting note is that California died at age 45 in a drowning accident while saving his son.
I can hear the similarity and who knows if Jimmy Page got the idea for the opening for Stairway from Spirit, but it doesn’t sound like a copy to me.
I can’t say for sure that they did, but it’s definitely possible. The similarity is there and unmistakable. I had bought Spirit’s Best of Album a few years ago since it was cheap at the record store and had I’ve Got a Line on You. I was unfamiliar with Taurus and the controversy but instantly recognized the Stairway to Heaven bit.
Hasn’t Led Zeppelin been accused of ripping off other musicians, like some blues singers? There are some musicians I would give more of a benefit of a doubt to, and say it was a coincidence, but I believe that LZ has a history of this.
I’m not sure about ripped off. Many of their songs were credited to people like Willie Dixon. But the old Blues players had been ripped off long before and didn’t own their music rights. Dixon did sue and got a settlement about snippets used in other songs but it’s debatable if it was a direct rip off.
Yes, Sam Lowry, they’ve been to court for this sort of thing before. They settled out of court with Willie Dixon, and they did the same with Jake Holmes many years later. That makes me think that they are plagiarizers, but ones with enough money to make the problem go away if they think the other party has a claim. They don’t seem to fight the claims, at least.
Or fans of the old blues players who understand they were ripped off by their record companies and didn’t mind giving thier idols money. Just as valid a speculation.
What do you mean about giving their idols money? Did they give money to any of the old blues guys for inspiring some of their songs? Or do you mean the out of court settlements?
I’m not saying that Stairway to Heaven is definitely a rip-off. I’d love to hear more musicians and/or legal experts chime in. It very well could be an unconscious inspiration, where Page thought he thought up some great melody, and just didn’t remember that he had heard it somewhere before. Just like some of their songs that were accused of ripping-off blues songs could have been unconscious inspiration, or because a lot of blues songs are based on similar chord progressions.
Why isn’t he suing Jim Croce for “Time in a Bottle” and Leon Russel for “Masquerade”? Both of those and countless other songs use the same minor with chromatic descending baseline progression. In fact they should be suing me for an instrumental I wrote in the late '70s.
Yeah, gotta tell you, I don’t go much for “plagiarizing” in music as being a horrible thing. I mean, Bach stole the shit out of some tunes, sometimes doing a direct lift of some concertos, and nobody beats him up about it.
Same music, but who was it that got the call to be on the soundtrack of Dangerous Liaisons? Not the real composer, just his more famous copier.
Hell, the other day I “realized” that the chorus for Elton John’s Funeral for a Friend was largely lifted by Boz Skaggs in Breakdown Dead Ahead… but was it really plagiarism, or was it just the same chord progressions with some other similarities?
I would agree that it sounds very similar and certainly influential, but not a direct copy or rip-off.
However, I also feel what **California **is feeling when he says;
But that doesn’t necessarily mean a lawsuit is in order now. On-the-other-hand, if they’d ever publically thanked California for the influence, this lawsuit would be a slam-dunk.
The thing about ‘ripping off’ blues musicians is that it’s kinda what blues musicians do. I can’t count the number of songs that have the ‘Bo Diddley Beat’ in them, or the variations and snippets from “Mannish Boy” I’ve heard in other songs over the years. A large amount of classic rock is based on traditional blues forms, and more than a few classic rock hits lift entire passages from old blues songs.
On the other hand, those old blues guys copying each other and riffing on each other’s works probably didn’t care because there wasn’t much money in it for them one way or the other. No big deal if some old blues singer is riffing on your song at the roadhouse bar down the street. It’s quite another if that song sells 10 million copies and you get nada.
I mean the settlements. I don’t think they owe money to every blues musician they listened to when they were kids. Heck, the Bo Diddley beat that I love so much is nothing more than “shave and a haircut” looped, and it’s all over the place. To use just the beat shouldn’t be enough to do anything but make people happy that you know who Bo Diddley is. But if you cover “Who Do You Love”, I will happily call you out on it, and expect you to pay royalties to his estate.
I don’t think Stairway qualifies for a lawsuit, they’re not close enough. However, they lifted Dixon’s lyrics verbatim, and the Yardbirds covered Dazed and Confused before Zeppelin did the same without crediting it. Zeppelin seemed more than happy to pay out when called on it. That makes me think they were aware of the problems with the credits on the song.
The easiest escape would be for me to claim that Bach and Vivaldi lived in a different legal situation, and be done with it. However, that wouldn’t be fair to anyone, not even me.
Sorry, my post came off more accusatory than I meant. I don’t think that borrowing heavily from others is a bad thing, but Zeppelin did cross the currently accepted line of merely borrowing or being influenced at least twice, without forwarding royalties or credit to the original authors. I’ve seen it proposed on the SDMB that this was the doing of Peter Grant, their manager, looking to maximize profit for a band he couldn’t expect to last. It sounds much more in line with his personality than that of any of the actual members, and they seem to settle with numbers the offended party is happy with when called on it.
Realistically, they could have avoided the problem with paying for the mechanical license and being done with it on the two songs I know they settled on. It was a bad decision at the time to not credit the authors. It’s doubly bad due to the fact that they could have avoided it by paying what amounts to a paltry percentage, and they were never shy about admitting their influences. I don’t think that they should be beaten up for it, but I see the facts as: they did it, then they happily paid up and moved on.
In this case, if I were them, I’d fight this claim. There are similarities, but it’s nowhere near close enough to pay a royalty.
Gotcha. And yes, I understand they lived in a different culture, but as far as composition is concerned, “plagiarism” is a very, very, very common means of “inspiration”.
As far as this lawsuit is concerned, it’s obvious the plaintiffs are looking for a quick payoff. LZ is re-releasing digitally remastered albums and… hell, I’ll let Time magazine explain it:
It doesn’t look like they seriously pursued it until now:
A simple free consultation with a halfway competent attorney would have cleared up that ‘statute of limitations’ confusion, and would have gotten California relief (if the jury found for him, of course) while he was still alive.
I would not be surprised if this wasn’t the plan all along: “Let’s wait until Led Zep (like the Beatles, etc) releases digitally remastered versions of their albums, complete with multi-million dollar marketing push, and when the timing is right we’ll slap an injunction on them. They’ll pay us to go away!”
I will also mention that I put my money where my mouth is on this matter. My band is releasing a record soon, which is half covers and half originals. It would be easy to fly under the radar without getting caught, it is a tiny release, there is some re-working of the material, and I’m pretty sure three of the four bands would be somewhat flattered that there are bands covering their songs.
But that would be the easy, shiftless way to go. If we are to stand on the shoulders of giants, they deserve credit, and money as long as their copyright is in effect. Plus, it’s cheap and easy if you compare it to getting a record pressed. Even for my tiny run, it’s not going to be much, and the cost goes down with volume. The more I know about this situation, the more I think that Zeppelin was merely acting on bad advice.
ETA: But then again, my band is doing this mostly ourselves. Who knows how much control they had over the release of their first record? And aside from all that, I still think the Stairway claim is a flimsy one.
Ehhh…it was a lot worse than that. Taurus is one of the more arguable cases. But there are a number of youtube videos showing just how much Zep lifted and it goes well beyond tiny snippets and chord progressions. The Zep interpretations are great, by the way. But they are in a few cases scarcely more than re-worked covers.
It’s nice they aren’t fighting lawsuits and paying out now. But they should have been paying royalties way back in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Kinda disgraceful that it took legal action to get them ( or their management ) to cough up some cash.
That’s my analysis, too. They’re both based on a defending chromatic baseline in a minor key, but the chords are different enough. I would not be surprised Stairway were influenced by this song, whether consciously or not, if they heard this song when playing with Spirit. But I would consider it a different work. Then again, I thought the “Blurred Lines” lawsuit was a bit much, too.
