Kory Grow of Rolling Stone reports:
As Led Zeppelin promote the extravagant reissues of their first three albums for an early June release, a lawyer representing deceased Spirit guitarist Randy California is claiming the hard-rock legends stole the intro for their 1971 single Stairway to Heaven from Spirit’s 1968 song Taurus. Attorney Francis Alexander Molofiy wants to prevent the release of the Led Zeppelin IV reissue when the time comes, Bloomberg Businessweek reports. “The idea behind this is to make sure that Randy California is given a writing credit on Stairway to Heaven,” Malofiy said. “It’s been a long time coming.”
Led Zeppelin and Spirit, who had a hit with I Got a Line on You, played four shows together in 1968 and 1969, shows at which Businessweek claims Spirit played Taurus. It also alleges that Led Zeppelin played a medley of songs that included Spirit’s Fresh-Garbage – a song that appeared on the same LP side as Taurus – on their first U.S. tour.
In an interview with Listener magazine published the year of his death, California said he felt Stairway to Heaven was a “rip-off.” “The guys made millions of bucks on it and never said ‘Thank you,’ never said, ‘Can we pay you some money for it?'” he said. “It’s kind of a sore point with me. Maybe someday their conscience will make them do something about it.”
Spirit and California’s family have waited until now to challenge the song’s authorship because they did not have the means to pay attorneys. At the end of California’s life, he would play sitar at an Indian restaurant in exchange for food.
A rep for Led Zeppelin declined to comment for Businessweek‘s story, but Page discussed the band’s history with crediting songwriters after the fact in a recent interview with The New York Times. When asked why the group waited to credit Willie Dixon for bits of lyrics and melody that made their way into Whole Lotta Love, he acknowledged, “Within the lyrics of it, there’s [Dixons’s] You Need Love, and there are similarities within the lyrics. Now I’m not pointing a finger at anybody, but I’m just saying that’s what happened, and Willie Dixon got credit. Fair enough.”
Reissues of Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II and Led Zeppelin III are due in stores on June 3rd. Each is available in a deluxe edition that contains a full disc of never-before-released studio takes and live tracks.
source: rollingstone.com
42 Responses
There’s no doubt a very small section reminds you of Stairway to Heaven but the question is how much of a song are you allowed to use before it becomes to much and you are ripping someone else off ? In this case I think they heard a nice little riff and turned it into something legendary. Note: I am not a big Zeppelin fan. To many slow boring songs for me.
Similar yes but who hasn’t copped a riff and made it their own?
Bo got battered by the Chess klan so bad he wasn’t even aware of foreign sales. He signed off his music for a house payment. I saw Bo in a crappy club a few years before he died and he looked like he went 15 with Ali, defeated. He should have been in Oprah’s building in a multimillion dollar penthouse or up by the Jordan estate. I think Dazed & Confused was settled.
I don’t feel sorry for anyone who files a plagiarism suit 43 years after the fact. Bah.
Because no one would steal any idea of yours now or in the future you piece of crap.
It’s not enough for me to say Stairway is a “rip off”, and I’m not that big of a Zeppelin fan to just blindly bow to them. The two songs diverge into vastly different directions besides the similar acoustic chord progression. At best I would say the intro to Stairway might warrant an “Inspired by Randy California”, but not a full out writing credit. And I’d agree it’s probably a variation on a classical guitar theme that’s been played for hundreds of years, and there’s only so many ways to stitch 12 notes together. I can’t make a variation on a flavor of coffee and then say I want credit for inventing coffee. It’s a slippery slope folks. Unless something is an exact duplicate or a whole song follows very , very closely to another, it’s hard to call it a rip off when it only “kind of” sounds like something else, for a few moments.
If you study music theory, there are “standard” chord progressions when you play in a key, that are for lack of a better term the “correct” way to play in that key. It doesn’t mean you can’t do something else, but it’s the way music is taught to be played “properly”. You can’t write something that “follows the rules” and then say nobody else can use that chord progression – we’d have run out of basic original ideas hundreds of years ago, and nobody would have been able to publish anything about a week after copyright laws came into existence. It’s the variations in rhythm, dynamics, embellishments, tones, melodies, instruments, etc. that make all of those same chord progressions we hear a billion times unique from each other.
Somebody who gets it.
Yep. Metalmania gets it. You can’t copyright a chord progression that’s been around for years. The sound of both chord progressions is also similar but not that’s not illegal either. Steve Miller once said he used identical guitars, amps and studio to record Jet Airliner so it had the exact same sound as Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama. I think people fail to distinguish the difference between “influenced by” and “ripped off”. Robert Plant, as well as Keith Richards have always said they were influenced and took ideas from blues artists. Hell, if you went by public opinion instead of actual copyright law, a great young band like Airbourne might as well have their money deposited directly into AC/DC’s bank account.