True. But Led Zeppelin will always be identified as part of the psychedelic sixties music scene. Like Janis Joplin, Hendrix, Deep Purple and Cream. Some of that music spilled over into the early seventies but most people think of it as 60’s genre music.
this web site for example includes early 70’s as part of the 60’s psychedelic music.
Not me. Zep was a 70s band for me.
The only thing that’s really similar is the tempo, the initial chord and a few notes of the bassline, then they diverge (or, actually, Taurus doesn’t, because that’s literally all there is to that song). There’s a whole other 7+ minutes of expansion and evolution in Stairway that doesn’t have anything to do with that opening riff at all.
Let’s say Page heard it, began noodling with it, and not only significantly changed the riff but added a dozen more riffs to it – sorry, that’s a different song. If this is infringement, pretty much anybody who’s ever written anything on a guitar is guilty of infringing on something.
Yeah, I think of it as 70s music, as well.
Heck, while we’re at it, why don’t we call the last section (“and as we wind on down the road…”) section a ripoff of “All Along the Watchtower”? It’s the same damn chords as Bob Dylan (Am - G - F - G) in not-quite-the-same rhythm, but similar enough that you can easily sing one song over the other. (To be clear, I’m not saying we should call it a rip-off, but one could, if they really wanted to. Where’s the line?)
I usually do not give Zep the benefit of the doubt on these things, but there was a lot added.
Check out the original Dazed and Confused if you don’t know it already. This is beyond plagiarism. They took the entire song and called in their own. They may have improved it but still you can’t steal something cause you do it better.
It’s by Jake Holmes, who later sang a million ads over the last 50 years. He actually wrote and sang “You can do it… in the army reserves”
If by “most people” you mean yourself, then sure.
Oh, definitely. Plenty of Led Zeppelin examples that go far beyond this Stairway-Taurus similarity. “Dazed and Confused” definitely falls into the “more than mere inspiration/riffing on an idea” side of the musical ledger to me. That’s pretty much a cover.
That was my reaction too. I wish I’d stated it as well as you did. 
Thats probably how Stairway got written too. Noodling is a songwriters best tool.
I’ve always thought that Coldplay’s Clocks sounded an awful lot like Bronski Beat’s Small Town Boy and wondered why they were never taken to court. Thoughts?
It’s sometimes just not worth the hassle of suing someone.
Well, there’s that and the fact that they don’t really sound all that similar.
Yes, copyright infringement and not plagiarism. I’ve spent much of the week grading papers…
I’m playing them both right now on the guitar, and it’s obvious that STH was built around the section stolen from the Taurus tune.
But the truth is no match for millions of middle schoolers with a bustle in their hedgerow…
Not that song. The one in post 50.
Got it, my bad.
My second point remains.
Oh, I have little doubt that LZ were influenced by Taurus, whether consciously or not. As a sometimes musician, I think it’s not exactly a novel idea (I posted a work from the 1500s that has the same type of chromatic walk in a minor key–the whole idea even has a name, called the lament bass–and is found in renaissance and baroque music) and a sufficient reworking that it’s a very different song. By bar three, the chords aren’t even the same and the tonality is completely different (minor in Taurus, major in Stairway.) If that’s the bar for plagiarism, then practically every song out there is ripping some other one off.
I doubt “Back in the USSR” ever was an issue for the Beach Boys. Paul McCartney began writing the song while the Beatles and the Beach Boys were attending a retreat in India. Mike Love encouraged McCartney to write the song in a similar style to “California Girls.” I’m sure the Beach Boys saw it more as being inspired than as infringing on their song.
Musical composition copyrights are indeed difficult—the question of what “original” exactly means isn’t very easy to pin down, and it’s not always easy to sort out what aspects of a composition is protectable and what portion is just the public domain arrangement of basic building blocks. (Sound recording copyrights are—comparatively—much easier … if you copied it, then you copied it.)
However … whether or not the Beach Boys considered “Back in the U.S.S.R.” an “issue” isn’t necessarily a very important question. In theory, if “Back in the U.S.S.R.” is infringing, then it’s infringing whether or not the Beach Boys made it an “issue.”
What would the infringement consist of? It’s not copyrightable to list types of girls in sundry places.
I think parody is protected anyway.