Led Zep and Spirit/Randy California fans will no doubt know that a US judge recently ruled that Zeppelin’s infamous Stairway to Heaven might infringe the copyright of the earlier Spirit song Taurus, written by the late Randy Wolfe (the aforementioned Mr California) and he’s sent it to jury trial to decide.
But, anyone who knows anything about music theory knows that certain chord progressions work in Western music better than others and that many involve a nice descending bassline over what essentially amounts to the same chord repeated. There are countless examples of similar songs in all genres of Western music from the three-chord trick of 12-bar blues to the four-chord trick made famous by Axis of Awesome that reveals how dozens of songs (albeit in different keys and with different melodies) all pivot on the basic progression of Pachelbel’s canon.
Meanwhile, Elvis (Presley not Costello), Andy Williams and UB40 made an old classical piece, the Berlioz orchestrated version of Martini’s traditional song Plaisir D’Amour famous in the modern age as the song I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You. Greg Lake lifted Greg Lake – Prokofiev’s Troika for his anti-Xmas number I Believe in Father Christmas. Another song with legal ramifications was also Procul Harum’s A Whiter Shade of Pale, which was very reminiscent of Bach’s Air on a G String, which once again highlights those descending bassline progressions. See also: The Beatles’ Dear Prudence, Paul Weller’s Changing Man, Mike D’Abo’s Handbags and Gladrags, Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven and countless others. All of which brings us back to whether or not Page et al. ripped off Spirit.
The story goes that during the 1960s, Page’s fledgling band supported Spirit and Page allegedly heard Taurus, something he apparently denies, and then supposedly used it as more than a little inspiration and far less sweat to write Stairway to Heaven. But, there is a classical piece that sounds much more akin to Stairway than Stairway does to Taurus. That piece of music is so old it is in the public domain. Indeed, it’s so beyond copyright protection that I don’t think the legal world had even invented the term copyright at the time Giovanni Battista Granata wrote Sonata di Chittarra, e Violino, con il suo Basso Continuo in the seventeenth century (although it was gearing up for it in Charles II’s Licensing of the Press Act 1662).
Anyway, let’s hope the legal team plays this tune to the jury at the Stairway trial and lets them throw the claims of plagiarism out of court. Note well, the descending bassline progression that begins at about 32 seconds in, it sounds very much like Stairway in a way that Taurus really, really doesn’t, you have to admit. This then beggars the question, did Randy California also rip off the seventeenth century baroque guitarist first?