http://www.classicrockmagazine.com/n...-over-stairway

Oh dear. Where was Mark Andes the first time it was remastered?

I saw this on another forum, where the consensus seemed to be that it wasn't like Dazed and Confused, where the song is more-or-less identical to another songwriter's work, but just a bit similar.

Someone did an A/B comparison of the two songs and they aren't very alike: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2PgBak2Ed4 Different melodies, different tempi, different lyrics etc...

I have to admit, I can't hear much in the way of similarity between the two

'Taurus' is quite a nice short piece which vaguely sounds like the start of 'Stairway to Heaven'. That's about it. Not worth suing over.

There's often this sort of confusion.

All it needed to prove that "My Sweet Lord" was not a rip off of "It's So Fine" was some expensive lawyers.

Always liked Spirit but never linked Taurus to Stairway to Heaven until I read about it in a Led Zep biography.
Last edited by Northofwatford : 19-05-2014 at 23:21

They've been ripping off all kinds of people for years. Much of their first album contained songs that were credited to Page and Plant but were blatant copies of other songs.

??? That one did go against Harrison.

Yep they might be the band that set the rawk standard but its a well known fact Led Zep were plagiarists. Always makes me laugh when their fans who have never realised this rip into todays music for all being sampled based and rip offs of other tunes.

Couple of videos showing off multiple tracks worth of loads of Led Zep plagiarism to chew on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyvLsutfI5M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zThdTAWQFAQ

There's a difference between performing your own version of a reworked song, and 'singing' over the top of recorded samples.

Quite. The descending bass and chords are similar, but then many, many songs use the same kind of things. Jim Croce's 'Time in a Bottle' is similar, at least for the intro bars.

Comparing Whole Lotta' Love to the Blues song it was supposed to rip off, I know which one I prefer. Think it more than meets the benchmark of being a new and different creation.

Should be treated the same as movie plots really, Spielberg isn't suing Syfy for Sharknado is he?

It seems that there was more than a little plagiary in seventies rock:-


As a courtroom will eventually decide, did Led Zeppelin "borrow" the famous intro to their 1971 classic "Stairway To Heaven" from this instrumental track recorded three years earlier?

Spirit - Taurus (1968)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd8AVbwB_6E


Did Deep Purple "borrow" the famous riff from their 1970 hit single "Black Night" from this great track recorded eight years earlier?

Rick Nelson - Summertime (1962)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izsVZup02-4


And did they "borrow" the even more famous riff to their 1972 classic "Smoke On The Water" from this little known Jazz track recorded seven years earlier?

Astrud Gilberto and Gil Evans - Maria Quiet (1965)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvXxlXg_V-k&feature=kp


Finally, did the Eagles "borrow" the entire melody of their massive 1977 hit single "Hotel California" from this album track recorded eight years earlier?

Jethro Tull - We Used To Know (1969)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sJA_VF5c7U

Does amaze me when these claims are made decades after a piece of music has been released.

There are cases of alleged plagiarism in film (or novels made into films), eg the ones listed here. It's not simply about spotting similar plots, but about whether significant details from one work also appear in another - and whether the alleged plagiarist had the opportunity to read, watch or listen to the work they're accused of plagiarising.

In the case of music, there's a long tradition of artists reinterpreting or covering other artists' compositions. There's nothing wrong with it, and in some cases the new version is better than the original. You could argue that Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin is a great performance whereas You Need Love by Muddy Waters is an unremarkable one (though some of Muddy Waters' songs are superb). But taking someone else's song and claiming you wrote it is just wrong, no matter how good your performance is.

To be fair to Jimmy Page he did always claim the intro was "inspired" by a Franchinus Gaffurius (Italian Renaissance baroque folk) composition from the 1490s with an arpeggiated, finger-picked guitar chord progression with a chromatic descending bassline.

No doubt when the guitarist from Spirit was alive he would have been advised he had no chance of successfully claiming a songwriting royalty against the song, hence he did not take litigation out.

Hence, this comes across as nothing more as libel lawyer ambulance chasing, as its hardly in the category of musical similarity that Blurred Lines = Got To Give It Up; or Roar = Brave of the past 12 months.

The only winners in this lawsuit (as with all copyright lawsuits) will be the lawyers.

Well, the simple answer to that is for people to stop plagiarising other people's work. That way everyone would be a winner - except for lawyers.

Within the blues tradition, artists have always 'borrowed' from other songs and Zep were no different. You could probably argue that they should have credited the original source, when known, but in reality their version of the song was so different from the original to be a new song 'inspired' by something else.

The problem is that if you put your name as the composer of a song, you get paid royalties. So there's an incentive to claim authorship of a song you didn't write.

My guess is that a lot of British rock musicians in the 60s listened to the great blues musicians from the 1930s onwards, took their sound and style and tailored it to suit a white British audience. They beefed up the guitar sound, polished up the songs and made them more palatable to an audience that had probably never heard of Robert Johnson or Willie Dixon. None of that is plagiarism. But taking the lyrics and melody of a song written by a living, working musician and claiming them as your own, so you get the royalty chegues, is.

Inkbot pretty much nails it on the head here, you there always a clear difference between right and wrong... Pretty interesting debate nonetheless.

Came across this wicked art boutique called The Flood Gallery when i was in London the other month.
This latest piece is called Going to California - (Led Zep) by Gary Houston.

Worth checking out for any Art/Zeppelin fans and collectors:
http://www.thefloodgallery.com/colle...-to-california

That was my thought too, why wait 33 years?