Led Zeppelin accused of stealing ‘Stairway to Heavens’ from a jewish band

NEW YORK TIMES – The Led Zeppelin song “Stairway to Heaven” is one of the most ubiquitous (some might say overplayed) songs on classic rock radio. Next month, a jury will decide whether the song’s opening was stolen from another band.

A federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that it will be up to the jurors to determine whether the song stole elements of “Taurus,” a track from the band Spirit.

A United States district judge, Gary R. Klausner, wrote in the decision Friday that while the chromatic four-chord backbone shared by the songs was “a common convention that abounds in the music industry, the similarities here transcend this core structure.”

A trustee for Spirit’s guitarist, Randy Wolfe, brought the suit against the surviving members of Led Zeppelin in 2014. Mr. Wolfe died in 1997.

The trial, scheduled for May 10, would be the second high-profile jury trial to determine the similarity between two songs in two years, a trend industry experts say may open the gates to more suits.

A federal jury in Los Angeles in March awarded more than $7.3 million to the family of the R&B icon Marvin Gaye after finding that the Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams hit “Blurred Lines” had copied elements of Mr. Gaye’s 1977 song “Got to Give It Up.”

Howard E. King, a lawyer for Mr. Thicke and Mr. Williams in that case, said that since that ruling, there were a lot more cases being brought and the Led Zeppelin case “would be completely unpredictable going to a jury.”

“I’m quite sure that the defendants in the case want to settle now, and do not want to face a jury,” he said. He added that he was “equally sure that the plaintiffs are emboldened, because if they get to go play this music to a jury, they’ve got a fighting chance of ending up partially owning one of the most seminal songs of all time.”

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