Who's Buying This 'Stairway to Heaven' Lawsuit?: A 2014 lawsuit alleging that Led Zeppelin ripped off a lesser-known band to produce Stairway to Heaven will proceed to a jury trial, a California judge decided this week.
The filing claims that Stairway's opening acoustic guitar part sounds almost identical to a portion of the song Taurus, written and performed by the American rock band Spirit. Writing in the complaint filed on behalf of the trust established in the name of Spirit's late vocalist, Randy Craig Wolfe, lawyer Francis Malofiy states that the similarities are obvious.
Any reasonable observer, when comparing 'Taurus' and 'Stairway to Heaven,' must conclude that—at the very least—significant portions of the songs are nearly identical, the document reads.
U.S. District Judge Gary Klausner bought the argument enough to allow the suit to proceed to trial. While the chord progression shared by the two songs is common in music, Klausner wrote in his opinion, the similarities here transcend this core structure. An expert for the plaintiff said some of those include musical accompaniment (the presence of acoustic guitar, strings recorder/flute sounds, and harpsichord) and the Renaissance style of both songs.
