Did Led Zeppelin steal the opening of Stairway to Heaven?

Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven has become the subject of a legal battle in the US after a judge ruled that two founding members of the band must face a jury over whether they stole its distinctive opening.

Los Angeles district judge Gary Klausner said the song bore "substantial" similarities to an instrumental piece called Taurus, written by US band Spirit in 1967. A trial has been scheduled for 10 May.

Who has brought the copyright case?

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Michael Skidmore, a trustee for the late Spirit guitarist Randy Wolfe, who toured with Led Zeppelin in the 1960s. Skidmore claims Wolfe should be given a writing credit on the track.

Rock and roll legend has long held that Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and Robert Plant wrote Stairway to Heaven in a remote cottage in Wales.

Now Skidmore claims Page may have been inspired after hearing Spirit perform Taurus while the bands toured together in 1968 and 1969, says The Guardian. He also says that Wolfe complained about the similarities between the two songs shortly before he drowned in 1997, while trying to save his son.

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"content_original","fid":"93385","attributes":{"class":"media-image"}}]]

In the year of his death, Wolfe told Listener magazine he thought the song was a "rip-off", reports The Independent. "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 a sore point with me. Maybe someday their conscience will make them do something about it."

What have Page and Plant said?

The two musicians argued that Wolfe was a songwriter-for-hire who had no copyright claim and that the chord progressions were so cliched they did not deserve copyright protection.

However, the judge disagreed and said a jury would find "substantial" similarity between the first two minutes of Stairway to Heaven and Taurus, which he called "arguably the most recognisable and important segments" of the songs.

"While it is true that a descending chromatic four-chord progression is a common convention that abounds in the music industry, the similarities here transcend this core structure," Klausner wrote. "What remains is a subjective assessment of the 'concept and feel' of two works… a task no more suitable for a judge than for a jury."

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"content_original","fid":"93383","attributes":{"class":"media-image"}}]]

Hasn't this happened before?

Stairway To Heaven has earned Led Zeppelin hundreds of millions of pounds and is one of the most successful rock songs of all time, says Sky News, which notes that the British rockers often drew inspiration from other groups, resulting in earlier legal challenges.

Sky points out that the band has already been forced to rewrite credits and pay a percentage of their royalties for songs such as Babe I'm Gonna Leave You and Whole Lotta Love.