Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page played defense pretty well Thursday for a 72-year-old musician.
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Einhorn said Plant and Page have made $58.5 million in total as composers of “Stairway to Heaven”.
Guitarist Page and singer Robert Plant are facing trial over claims that the opening guitar riff of their classic rock song was “lifted” from an instrumental track called Taurus by USA group Spirit.
Einhorn, who said he reviewed 50,000 pages of financial documents to reach that figure, conceded on cross-examination that some of the revenues came from a 2008 contract covering the band’s catalog of 87 songs.
Led Zeppelin lawyers have challenged that 2008 contract, contending it falls outside the statute of limitations in this case. While the minor hit for Spirit found its way into the band’s early set list, Page said he was unaware of an instrumental from the same album that he is now accused of lifting for the intro to Led Zeppelin’s 1971 hit, “Stairway to Heaven”. But he testified that of more than 65 songs the defence has said have a similar construction, including “My Funny Valentine”, the Beatles’ “Michelle”, and “Chim Chim Cher-ee” from the movie “Mary Poppins“, none contained all five elements shared by “Taurus” and “Stairway”. “I think I have said that the chord sequence is very similar because that chord sequence has been around forever”, he said. Hanson said the two clips “play together as one piece of music”.
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.
The proceedings during the morning session featured testimony by the plaintiff’s last witnesses, including Michael Skidmore, trustee of late Spirit frontman Randy California’s estate, who filed the suit against Led Zeppelin. He smiled as it was played and said he was familiar with the ditty but it wasn’t his inspiration.
Stewart said some elements, including the descending chord progression, have been used in songs since the 1600s.
The jury will have to decide whether there are any substantial similarities between the “Taurus” deposit copy – or sheet music – and the first two and a half minutes of the copyrighted recording of “Stairway”.
“You want to step through it?” asked attorney Francis Malofiy, who represents Wolfe’s estate. Videos played in court of other musicians playing the sheet music differ significantly from the recorded version of “Taurus”.
Page and Plant, 67, sat next to each other in court during the copyright infringement trial, which is expected to conclude next week.
He told the court he wrote the introduction of Stairway To Heaven on his own before his bandmate Robert Plant added lyrics at Headley Grange in Hampshire.
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Page has said he knew some of Spirit’s music and used some in a medley Zeppelin played in its earliest days. Page, one of rock’s guitar greats, paused for a long moment and finally said, “Well, yeah”.
