If the jury only hears a bare-bones version of “Taurus”, stripped of the “sonic landscape and techniques” which are alleged to make it the model for “Stairway to Heaven”, that could offer a powerful advantage to Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page and singer Robert Plant because their song is so well-known, said Erin Ranahan, an intellectual-property lawyer with Winston & Strawn in Los Angeles.
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The federal civil lawsuit contends that the descending guitar arpeggio opening of “Stairway”, released 45 years ago, was plagiarized from the instrumental “Taurus”, recorded by the long-defunct Los Angeles band Spirit.
U.S. District Court Judge R. Gary Klausner said if the video really wasn’t in the joint exhibit list, its use would be “grounds for a mistrial”. Zeppelin’s attorney Peter Anderson claimed “Stairway to Heaven” was created exclusively by Plant and Page independent of the musical composition “Taurus”.
Malofiy played for the eight-member panel a video recording of the introduction to “Stairway” played on guitar by a musicologist, saying the notes were not original, but a “lifted composition”.
The “pink elephant in the room” – as Malofiy described it – is that the jury undoubtedly knows Led Zeppelin, Page and frontman Robert Plant.
Wolfe, of Ventura, California, recalled how the family had traveled to NY in 1966, where Randy, then just 15, met and befriended Jimi Hendrix. They last appeared in public together in 2012 during a press conference to promote “Celebration Day”, the live album and DVD based on Led Zeppelin’s 2007 reunion concert at London O2.
Mr Skidmore’s lawyer Francis Malofiy told the hearing: “This case can be summed up in six words – give credit where credit is due. Attorneys for the trustee say.’Stairway to Heaven” copies music from the Spirit song “Taurus, ‘ which Wolfe wrote in either 1966 or 1967”.
The men credited with writing “Stairway to Heaven” were aging rockers wearing gray suits and white dress shirts, their once-flowing curly locks now shorter and pulled neatly to the back of their heads.
Page, however, acknowledged that Led Zeppelin used a riff from another song, “Fresh Garbage”, off Spirit’s debut album in a medley when it first started touring.
Defense attorney Peter Anderson told jurors that Page, 72, and Plant, 67, were not familiar with Spirit or its output, and that Page had no recollection of ever hearing Taurus. The legal case, he said, will hinge on only comparing the sheet music for the “Taurus” song with “Stairway to Heaven”.
Multi-instrumentalist Jay Ferguson, 69, who played with Spirit and later wrote music for film and television, described Taurus as a “really special number”.
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She also said that the issue had “upset him for many, many years”.
