Stairway to Acquittal
Today a jury found Led Zeppelin band members Robert Plant and Jimmy Page not guilty of copyright infringement in composing what is arguably one of the finest rock songs of all time, "Stairway to Heaven." They were sued by the estate of Spirit band member Randy Craig Wolfe, which argued that the guitar melody that opens Stairway was lifted from Spirit's piece "Taurus" published a few years earlier. Example coverage: CNN Money article 6/23. The damages from such a suit could have gone into the tens of millions of dollars. How's that for a bustle in your hedgerow?
Just in case you're not familiar "Stairway to Heaven" go to YouTube and you'll find- literally- 1.5 million examples. (To be precise it was "About 1,560,000 results" when I checked today.) See what I mean by finest rock song of all time? Anyway, if the haunting guitar-and-recorder melody isn't already playing in your head after having read this far, here's an example YouTube video with the song as released in album form in 1971:
And here's a YouTube video with Spirit's "Taurus", released in 1968:
Listen for the guitar melody beginning at :45.
Are they the same? Well, there are some similarities. Both start with an A minor chord and feature a descending bass line. That alone makes the melodies sound eerily similar. But that's a musical pattern dating back hundreds of years. No one can claim copyright infringement there. Beyond that the melodies diverge. While Taurus stays in A minor, Page's strumming in Stairway follows a progression through other chords. And in Stairway the descending bass line is joined by an ascending line that plays like a flipped mirror image of it. As an amateur musician I agree there's enough right there to rule out copyright infringement. Then, of course, there's the whole rest of the song that helped make "Stairway to Heaven" the timeless rock anthem it is.
Just in case you're not familiar "Stairway to Heaven" go to YouTube and you'll find- literally- 1.5 million examples. (To be precise it was "About 1,560,000 results" when I checked today.) See what I mean by finest rock song of all time? Anyway, if the haunting guitar-and-recorder melody isn't already playing in your head after having read this far, here's an example YouTube video with the song as released in album form in 1971:
Click to viewAnd here's a YouTube video with Spirit's "Taurus", released in 1968:
Listen for the guitar melody beginning at :45.
Are they the same? Well, there are some similarities. Both start with an A minor chord and feature a descending bass line. That alone makes the melodies sound eerily similar. But that's a musical pattern dating back hundreds of years. No one can claim copyright infringement there. Beyond that the melodies diverge. While Taurus stays in A minor, Page's strumming in Stairway follows a progression through other chords. And in Stairway the descending bass line is joined by an ascending line that plays like a flipped mirror image of it. As an amateur musician I agree there's enough right there to rule out copyright infringement. Then, of course, there's the whole rest of the song that helped make "Stairway to Heaven" the timeless rock anthem it is.