Led Zeppelin Win “Stairway to Heaven” Lawsuit
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Despite several sonic similarities between the songs in question, a judge has ruled that Led Zeppelin did not steal the riff from Spirit’s instrumental “Taurus” in writing their immortal rocker “Stairway to Heaven,” Rolling Stone reports.
It took merely one day of deliberation for the jury to decide that the intro riff to The Mighty Zep’s classic song wasn’t stolen from the similar, but not the same musical pattern featured on “Taurus.”
The estate of late Spirit guitarist Randy Wolfe is currently under the ownership of trustee Michael Skidmore, a former music journalist, and was represented by attorney Francis Malofiy, who brought the lawsuit forward in 2014.
Malofiy and Led Zeppelin attorney Peter Anderson apparently created a fairly contentious back-and-forth as the trial wore on, with Malofiy mocking the surviving Zeppelin members during their remarks and Anderson referring to the son Wolfe drowned to save as “illegitimate.”
Malofiy attempted to convince the jury that because the bands had at one time shared a bill and Led Zeppelin had covered a Spirit song that appeared on the same album as “Taurus,” the band had been exposed to and was heavily influenced by the instrumental.