Testimony begins in Led Zeppelin copyright lawsuit trial

Robert Plant and Jimmy Page appeared in court in Los Angeles yesterday (June 14) as the so-called “Stairway To Heaven” trial got underway.

A lawyer for the estate of the late Randy Wolfe, also known as Randy California, claimed in opening statements Tuesday that the British megastars lifted the passage.

Malofiy, attorney for Wolfe’s trustee Michael Skidmore, said he would focus on inconsistencies in Page’s deposition, in which he initially said he didn’t know of Spirit and later admitted admiring their music and owning some of the band’s albums.

The plaintiff isn’t arguing the songs are identical, but that “Taurus” formed the basis of the first half of “Stairway to Heaven”. Skidmore’s attorney, Francis Malofiy, had requested that musicologist Lawrence Ferrera be dismissed because Ferrara has previously been hired by Zeppelin’s publisher to evaluate similarities between “Stairway To Heaven” and “Taurus”. The panel will decide whether the members of Led Zeppelin ripped off the song’s famous riff, which generations of aspiring guitarists have tried to copy. Malofiy proceeded to play the video anyway, followed by Page and Plant playing the opening 2.14 minutes of “Stairway to Heaven” in contention.

At an earlier hearing, U.S. district judge Gary Klausner had ruled that the two pieces of music were similar enough to let a jury decide whether Page and Plant had infringed copyright. Their attorney then played a piano interpretation of “Taurus” that had only a vague similarity.

Mr Anderson also claimed that the part of the song at issue – a sequence of notes in the opening bars – was a “descending chromatic line…something that appears in all kinds of songs”.

Jurors in Los Angeles federal court on Tuesday heard from the sister of deceased guitarist Randy Wolfe and his former band mate in the group Spirit about how likely it was that members of Led Zeppelin would have heard live performances of “Taurus”, the instrumental Wolfe wrote for his girlfriend.

A lawyer for the singer and guitarist Jimmy Page has said they didn’t hear “Taurus” until decades after it was recorded.

“It’s a well-used musical device”. When played simultaneously, similarities and differences could be seen and heard. Wolfe died in 1997, drowning while saving his son in Hawaii.

The defense said that they planned to call Page and Plant, who co-wrote “Stairway to Heaven”, to testify during the trial, as well as Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones.

Wolfe, 62, recalled how California had complained later in life about Led Zeppelin plagiarizing Taurus, which he had written for a girlfriend.

The Fox News report says that “Stairway to Heaven” “has generated hundreds of millions over the years”.