Page, under questioning by an attorney for the plaintiff, repeatedly said he was not sure whether any similarity exists between Stairway to Heaven and Taurus.
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Back in May 2014, Spirit’s bassist Mark Andes and Michael Skidmore, trustee of the band’s late guitarist Randy California, who wrote the track “Taurus”, filed a copyright infringement suit against Led Zeppelin and an injunction against the “release of the album containing the song” in an attempt to obtain a writing credit for the deceased guitarist.
The Dick Van Dyke song was played to the federal court in Los Angeles where Page is facing claims he copied the opening guitar riff on Stairway To Heaven from a track called Taurus by the American group Spirit. “Something like that would stick in my mind”. “It was totally alien to me”.
Giving evidence on the second day of the trial, Page said he was aware of “some of sort of buzz” on the internet about a comparison between Stairway To Heaven and Taurus and acknowledged both tracks were in the same key of A minor.
“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. He wasn’t allowed to comment on whether he found the riff on the “Taurus” recording similar to “Stairway” after his lawyer objected to the question.
Page claimed he didn’t even know he owned Spirit’s self-titled first album until a son-in-law told him comparisons between the tunes were popping up online and he unearthed it in his collection of 10,000 records and CDs.
“I don’t do the Internet, so he played it for me”, Jimmy told the court.
Kevin Hanson, a guitar instructor and former member of Huffamoose, played passages from both songs on acoustic guitar and says they are virtually identical.
The musician also told the court that members of Spirit played snooker with Robert Plant after a gig in Birmingham in 1970.
“Yeah, we hung out. We had a blast”, Andes said.
Before concluding his testimony, Page was played “Chim Chim Cher-ee”, and Malofiy asked if it was the inspiration for “Stairway”.
A lot of the day’s testimony centred around Led Zeppelin’s live debut in America, in December 1969, when they shared the bill with Spirit.
In his testimony, Jimmy Page reiterated that he had never heard Spirit’s first album.
The fact that Led Zeppelin used “Fresh Garbage” in its earliest days implies that Page and Plant liked the band and may have emulated more than one song, he said.
“To my ear, they sound like they are one piece of music”, he said.
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In the latest case, Plant, 67, and Page, 72, appeared in court on Tuesday sporting long grey hair and are expected to testify eventually in the closely watched trial.
