A 2014 lawsuit alleging that Led Zeppelin ripped off a lesser-known band to produce “Stairway to Heaven” will proceed to a jury trial, a California judge decided this week.
The filing claims that “Stairway’s” opening acoustic guitar part sounds “almost identical” to a portion of the song “Taurus”, written and performed by the American rock band Spirit. Writing in the complaint filed on behalf of the trust established in the name of Spirit’s late vocalist, Randy Craig Wolfe, lawyer Francis Malofiy states that the similarities are obvious.
“Any reasonable observer, when comparing ‘Taurus’ and ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ must conclude that—at the very least—significant portions of the songs are nearly identical,” the document reads.
U.S. District Judge Gary Klausner bought the argument enough to allow the suit to proceed to trial. While the chord progression shared by the two songs is common in music, Klausner wrote in his opinion, “the similarities here transcend this core structure.” An expert for the plaintiff said some of those include musical accompaniment (“the presence of acoustic guitar, strings recorder/flute sounds, and harpsichord”) and the “Renaissance” style of both songs.
The complaint, which seeks compensation of $150,000 per infringement, also states that the two bands shared concert billing in their early performing days, though Klausner wrote that the living members of Zeppelin “testified that they never toured with, shared a stage with, or listened to any of Spirit’s music during these brief encounters.”
The trial is scheduled for May 10. But let’s go ahead and consider the case here.
“Taurus” begins with 45 seconds of orchestral, almost cinematic music, dominated by foreboding strings and a brief appearance of jazz flute. Then begins 15 seconds of fingerpicked, classical guitar, with the bass notes descending chromatically (a half-step) from A to F (or A, G#, G, F#, F). The passage then repeats itself before the song moves to a different musical idea. It’s these 30 seconds that are the subject of the lawsuit, at least in terms of the technical composition of “Taurus” and “Stairway”.
“Stairway” includes the same chromatic descent. But a few bass notes do not a plagiarized song make. Although both tunes feature the same tone of spare, slowly paced guitar, Jimmy Page’s part builds in ways that the one in “Taurus” does not. The two guitars use the same chords, but they do not use the same composition.
Trying to police chord progressions — using them as evidence that someone copied someone else — is tricky. For example, listen to “Taurus” from the 1:17 mark to about 1:25:
And then listen to the theme song — seriously — from the TV show How I Met Your Mother, which was taken from “Hey Beautiful” by The Solids:
Hear any resemblance? Of course. Hear anything worth legal action? Nah.
That is not to say this comparison is neatly analagous to the one between “Taurus” and “Stairway”. Judge Klausner’s contention that the similarities between the songs “transcend” the mere guitar chords is a fair one, since the instrumentation and atmosphere of the music are comparable. Plus, “Stairway” developed those chords into a significant portion of the song.
But the issue resides in some gray area. What distinguishes coincidence from intent, or inspiration from copying? How do you measure that? Who determines how it’s measured, and how much to weigh each component — the tempo, the notes, the instruments — of the measurement? This is the difficulty of trying to “prove” that one musician ripped off another. The judgment is based more on conjecture.
Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” and Queen’s “Under Pressure”? That’s obvious. Same goes for The Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ USA” and Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen”. The comparison between “Taurus” and “Stairway” is not that.
