Led Zeppelin’s odd stairway to litigation

LOS ANGELES: The surviving members of Led Zeppelin reunited on Friday in a Los Angeles courtroom as bassist John Paul Jones testified in defence of his bandmates

LOS ANGELES: The surviving members of Led Zeppelin reunited on Friday in a Los Angeles courtroom as bassist John Paul Jones testified in defence of his bandmates in a high-stakes copyright lawsuit that claims the band lifted a riff used in the rock classic “Stairway to Heaven”.

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Zeppelin’s guitarist Jimmy Page and vocalist Robert Plant are being sued by the estate of late guitarist Randy Wolfe, also known as Randy California, for using a passage from a song by Wolfe’s long-defunct LA psychedelic rock band Spirit. The estate claims Zeppelin’s 1971 song infringes on the 1968 Spirit song “Taurus”. Both bands played the same stage early in Zeppelin’s music career, though Page said he had never heard ‘Taurus’ and was unaware of any similarities until recently. He, however, acknowledged that the band played a riff from Spirit’s “Fresh Garbage” in a medley that was a concert staple when Zeppelin first started out.

Led Zeppelin made its US debut in 1968, incidentally opening for a concert in Denver that Spirit performed at. The musicians are being sued for infringement and songwriting credits, potentially amounting to millions of dollars in compensation.

According to economist Michael Einhorn, who testified in court, Led Zeppelin works that include “Stairway to Heaven” generated revenues of nearly $60 million over the past five years.

In Zeppelin’s defence, Lawrence Ferrera, a music professor at New York University, said the main trait the two songs, notably a descending minor chord progression, is a common building block in songs dating back 300 years and is found throughout pop music .