Led Zeppelin did not steal Stairway To Heaven riff, appeals court rules

[Eugene]

Source: BBC

Led Zeppelin did not steal Stairway To Heaven riff, appeals court rules

9 March 2020

Led Zeppelin have triumphed in a long-running copyright dispute after a US appeals court ruled they did not steal the opening riff in Stairway To Heaven.

The British rock legends were accused in 2014 of ripping off a song called Taurus by the US band Spirit.

Taurus was written in 1968, three years before Stairway To Heaven.

Now, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has upheld a 2016 trial verdict that found Led Zeppelin did not copy it.

Stairway To Heaven regularly appears on lists of the greatest rock songs ever written, and the case has been one of the music industry's longest-running and closely-watched disputes.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-51805905

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. Is this thing still going on? Okay, not anymore. NT

[customerserviceguy]

2. There's a few bars

in Taurus that definitely evoke my recollection of Stairway, but not too much of the Taurus song is similar.

[CaptYossarian]

3. I don't take this stuff seriously, since John Fogerty was accused of

plagiarizing himself.

[Iggo]

5. That one was hilarious.

[Nitram]

4. They should do the same for George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord." Both suits were a load of bollocks.

Almost all music, with the exception of highly experimental music, includes words, riffs, chord progressions, and other elements the have occurred before. That's what music actually is. It is a shared vocabulary of diverse musical elements. My favorite example is how West and Central African music came to America with enslaved Africans, morphed into gospel and blues after encountering European church and folk music. Then morphed again into ragtime and jazz. Perhaps an even more interesting example is how enslaved people in the Caribbean, and Latin America created Afro-Latin music such as the Rhumba when they encountered European music, which then moved back to Africa to become a whole popular genre of its own in the form of Congolese Rhumba.

[ProfessorGAC]

7. Twelve Tones Is All There Is

And, we're talking popular form, so there isn't much call for odd time signatures or radical chord changes.
So, if you listen to any 1,000 songs we'd probably hear 50 things extremely similar, here & there. If not way more.
Watch a Later with Jools Holland earlier today. Sting played a tune and there were some areas where I could hear Message In A Bottle. Not identical, but pretty clear. I doubt that was intentional.
You're dead on. This case was nonsense and so was the Harrison thing.

[Nitram]

8. And think of all the songs with the "Bo Diddley Beat."

[SunshineState70]

6. Great News

If there is a BIGGER Led Zepp fan than me...I have not met that Person.

[Elliot Waves]

9. Check out this cover of "Good Times Bad Times"

This little girl is only 8 years old.. Amazing!, just amazing. When I saw this I was shocked...

[Doc_Technical]

10. Dueling intros