Jury To Decide Whether Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway To Heaven' Riff Is Ripoff
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com/AP) — Led Zeppelin's iconic "Stairway to Heaven" was the band's original composition, and it was not lifted from a 1968 instrumental that never dented the music charts, an attorney for the British rock band said Tuesday during opening statement in the copyright infringement trial.
The estate of Randy Wolfe, singer/songwriter/guitarist of the long-defunct band, Spirit, is suing Led Zeppelin for copyright infringement.
Attorneys for the trustee argued that the opening guitar riff of 1971's "Stairway to Heaven" was lifted from the Spirit song "Taurus," written by Wolfe, who died 1997.
The plaintiff's attorney, Francis Malofiy, played a recording of the introduction to "Stairway to Heaven" played by a musicologist on guitar, arguing that the notes were not original, but a "lifted composition."
"This case can be summarized in six words: Give credit where credit is due," said Malofiy. He asked the jury to look at the lawsuit "almost like a taste test. Do these things taste the same? Do these things sound the same?"
Guitarist Jimmy Page and singer Robert Plant watched as eight jurors were selected Tuesday. The panel will decide whether the members of Led Zeppelin ripped off the song's famous riff, which generations of aspiring guitarists have tried to copy.
Page, Plant and their band mate John Paul Jones are all expected to testify at the trial, though Jones had been dismissed as a defendant in the case.
Led Zeppelin and Spirit performed at some concerts and festivals around the same time, but not on the same stage.
Defense attorney Peter Anderson told jurors that Page and Plant were not familiar with Spirit or its output, and Page had no recollection of ever hearing the song "Taurus."
Anderson played for the jury the sound recording of the first two minutes and 14 seconds of "Stairway." The 72-year-old Page, sitting in court with Plant, 67, nodded his head along with the music.
"`Stairway to Heaven,' was written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant and them alone, period," Anderson argued.
Wolfe's sister, Janet, took the stand Tuesday even though she does not stand to make any money from this trial.
She said she wanted her brother file a lawsuit while he was still alive. She told the jury "it was something that upset him for many, many years."
In April, U.S District Judge R. Gary Klausner ruled that evidence presented in hearings made a credible case that Led Zeppelin may have heard "Taurus" performed before their song was created.
Led Zeppelin's attorneys argued that both "Stairway to Heaven" and "Taurus" use notes and combinations that have been circulating in music for centuries.
The song has generated hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. Wolfe's attorneys overcame statute-of-limitations hurdles to sue over "Stairway to Heaven" because the song was remastered and re-released in 2014.
The lawsuit also came after a high-profile victory last year when a federal jury found that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams had copied a Marvin Gaye song to create their 2013 hit, "Blurred Lines" and awarded Gaye's children $7.4 million.
A judge trimmed the award, and the verdict is under appeal. But the decision appears to have prompted a surge in copyright-infringement filings.
The same attorney who represented Gaye's family filed another suit last week in Los Angeles saying Ed Sheeran's 2014 song "Photograph" is too similar to the 2009 song "Amazing" written by Martin Harrington and Thomas Leonard.
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