Jones said he never heard the band Spirit play, never met them and didn’t own any of their albums. The defense opened with a musicologist, who cast doubt on whether the two songs are substantially similar. Another expert says other songs share similar structures, but none had the same unique elements as the two.
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Led Zeppelin’s plagiarism trial over the authorship of “Stairway to Heaven” moved into its fourth day on Friday, with an economist taking the stand and telling jurors that the group has collected nearly $60 million over the past five years from its songs.
The estate for Spirit’s late guitarist Randy Wolfe claims Led Zeppelin lifted a passage from the song and incorporated it in the well-known introduction to “Stairway”. When I heard the orchestral part at the beginning, I knew I’d never heard it before… He smiled as it was played and said he was familiar with the ditty but it wasn’t his inspiration.
“She said call him up so I did”, Jones said. I have several thousand albums of many different kinds. “We played it from day one”, Page testified Wednesday. “That was part of a staple diet”.
Mr Ferrara, an expert witness for Led Zeppelin’s legal team, said the technique was a “musical building block” for a song.
Page, 72, has previously told the court he had not heard Taurus until his son-in-law showed him a comparison with Stairway To Heaven on the internet a few years ago.
He said he didn’t even realize he owned Spirit’s first album that contained “Taurus”, until he looked through his collection after the comparisons surfaced. He said he only knew “Fresh Garbage” from hearing it on the radio. “It was totally alien to me”.
The Whole Lotta Love musicians would “chip a wink to music that was hot at the time”, Page said in written evidence read to the court.
But the biggest news was the appearance of Zeppelin bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones, who’s not named as a defendant in the case but took the stand for 20 minutes, testifying on his former bandmates’ behalf.
Another plaintiff expert, Alexander Stewart, a music professor at the University of Vermont, said he found five categories in which both songs had significant similarities, including a descending chord progression, notes lasting the same duration and a series of arpeggios and similar pairs of notes. He was stopped by U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner from answering questions about similarities between the two recordings because any copyright infringement would only pertain to the sheet music of “Taurus”, not to the version that appeared in Spirit’s debut album. He was hired as a studio musician at 17 – seven years junior to the next oldest musician – because he said he understood what younger artists were playing and could supply blues or rock riffs, a talent that put some older guitarists out of work.
“You want to step through it”, attorney Francis Malofiy asked as he tried to get Page to discuss the “Taurus” sheet music, which is the work protected by copyright. Page, one of rock’s guitar greats, paused for a long moment and finally said, “Well, yeah”.
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“Confidential”, he said as the courtroom erupted with laughter. Malofiy cited an interview in which Page was quoted saying Spirit’s music struck him on an emotional level.
