The final possible legal challenge to Led Zeppelin’s ownership of Stairway To Heaven has been defeated.
The band were sued for copyright in 2014 over claims they had stolen the song’s opening riff from Taurus, by a US band called Spirit.
Led Zeppelin won the case in 2016, but it was revived on appeal in 2018.
A court of appeals upheld the original verdict earlier this year. Now, the US Supreme Court has declined to hear the case, definitively ending it.
Led Zeppelin has had a few copyright disputes over the years. And there is of course some overlap between these two bands. Led Zeppelin opened for Spirit in the early days, and the idea that Jimmy Page never heard “Taurus” is almost unbelievable. I remember when I first recognized that riff he played in the various bootlegs of Led Zeppelin’s “As Long As I Have You” medley that I found as a youngster on Napster. It was Randy California’s riff from “Fresh Garbage.”
And yet, Spirit’s song “Taurus” is not now, nor has it ever been, the same song as “Stairway To Heaven.”
If a court would have ruled otherwise however, then Arkansans might have been able to cash in on some of that sweet Stairway moolah. Spirit’s bassist Mark Andes, who was a driving force behind the suit, obviously pilfered his bass work for 1968’s “1984” from 1967’s “Planet of Union” by LD Mitchell & the Amalgamated Taxi Cab Service.
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B can be found on Lost Souls Volume 1 – 1960s Garage And Psychedelic Rock ‘N’ Roll From The Un-Natural State:
Or maybe it just sounds alike.