However, in his opening statement Tuesday, defense attorney Peter Anderson told jurors that “Stairway to Heaven”, had been composed by Page and Plant, “and them alone, period”.
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Page said that he had only discovered that he had Spirit’s first album a few years ago, “after his son-in-law told him that comparisons with Stairway were cropping up online”.
Malofiy had Page in a situation where he was unable to answer questions strongly, but this didn’t stop Malofiy – he continued by mentioning a 1969 show in Denver where Led Zeppelin supported Spirit and Vanilla Fudge.
Page, 72, told the federal court in Los Angeles that he “liked” Spirit in the late 1960s but he only became aware of the song Taurus in recent years.
When the prosecution proceeded to play Led Zeppelin’s cover of Spirit’s “Fresh-Garbage”, Page proceeded to smile and play air drums for those in attendance, as well as winking at Led Zeppelin vocalist, Robert Plant at some point.
Page acknowledged they were both in A-minor, but he said he had never seen the sheet music and couldn’t comment on the tempo or structure of “Taurus”. “It was totally alien to me”, Page said of the instrumental song, “Taurus”, by the band Spirit. “We didn’t have a lot of material in those days”, he said in written evidence read out in court, admitting that the band would “wink to music that was hot at the time”.
“It was after the internet comparison which came up a few years ago”, he said. Andes added that after a Spirit show in Birmingham, England, in 1970, he and Led Zeppelin singer, Robert Plant, played snooker and drank beer together after a show.
His estate filed the lawsuit in 2014, the same year Led Zeppelin released a remastered version of “Stairway to Heaven”.
While conceding that he owned a copy of the Spirit album on which “Taurus” appears, he says he only remembers buying later records by the band.
Page was joined in court by Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant as both men face a copyright infringement trial over the opening guitar riff of Stairway To Heaven.
“If they used one riff from Spirit, they might have used another riff from Spirit”, he said. Also, the judge hearing the case barred the lawyer for the late Randy California from introducing as evidence the fact that Led Zeppelin has previously settled several similar copyright cases, like in the cases of the songs Dazed and Confused and Whole Lotta Love.
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Laughs were heard when the plaintiff’s lawyer Francis Malofiy asked Page, dressed smartly in a black three-piece suit with his grey hair tied up in a ponytail, if he had a “gift of playing the guitar”.
