Jury rules Led Zeppelin didn’t steal ‘Stairway’ riff,
Led Zeppelin did not steal a riff from an obscure 1960s instrumental tune for the introduction of “Stairway to Heaven,” a U.S. federal court jury decided Thursday.
The verdict in Los Angeles settles a point that music fans have debated for decades but which didn’t go to court until two years ago, when the trustee for the late Randy Craig Wolfe filed a copyright lawsuit.
The trust claimed that Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page lifted a passage that Wolfe, better known as Randy California, wrote for “Taurus,” a short work he recorded with his band Spirit in 1968.
Page and singer Robert Plant, who wrote the “Stairway” lyrics, said their creation was an original.
Jurors found that Page and Plant had “access” to “Taurus,” meaning they would have been familiar with it.
Trust lawyer Francis Malofiy 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.
In trying to show the works were substantially similar, the trust had the tricky task of relying on sheet music because that’s what is filed with the U.S. Copyright Office.
Jurors were not played the “Taurus” recording, with a section that sounds very similar to the instantly recognizable start of “Stairway.” Instead, they were played guitar and piano renditions by musicians on both sides of the case. Not surprisingly, the plaintiff’s version on guitar sounded more like “Stairway” than the defence version on piano.
Led Zeppelin’s lawyer said the trust didn’t own the copyright and that the plaintiff failed to prove a case that should have been brought more than 40 years ago when Wolfe was alive, and Page and Plant would have had better memories.
Wolfe, who drowned in 1997 saving his son at a beach in Hawaii, had spoken with lawyers over the years about suing, but they never took on the case because it was old, said another lawyer for the trust.