Here is the Spirit song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd8AVbwB_6E

I think its clear that Led Zeppelin stole the main melody of the song from Spirit.

Nope it was Bach.

Zepplin is my favorite band and you can hear the things that influenced them in many of their songs. The rift sounds a lot like spirits, maybe 70% the same. Apparently in court, the ppl who are suing zepplin don't have the rights to the music, it's possible it gets thrown out.

Sampling is a thing in music. A very common thing.

I write songs and at times after a first draft and listen, I or my partner may notice it is similar to something. It's easy to change it up. I'm writing one now which sounded like Atlantis by Donovan to me and Ride Captain Ride by Blues Image to my co-writer.. after a bunch of tinkering melody/phrasing wise, I can't even imagine it to sound like either of them, although the chord structure is the same.

I wrote a lead lick in the 70's (which I have used in many forgotten songs I wrote) It just seems to be able to go with a lot of chords. I'm driving in my car listening to the radio in '87 and I HEAR MY fluffEN LICK BEING PLAYED BY R. E. M.! Cept at the end they go down in the melody from the eleventh note and shortened it up by four notes. The One I Love.
Now they never heard me playing it, it happens. https://youtu.be/j7oQEPfe-O8 <-- yea I had that a decade prior to R. E. M.

But this Led Zepplin / Spirit thing is uncanny.

Many times if I had writers block, I would read the chords to a big hit song classic, use their exact chords and then just speed it up, change the melody and BINGO! Another song. Everybody steals everything. There are certain chords that just go so well together, its natural to play them and so many are the same.

https://youtu.be/oOlDewpCfZQ

There is a certain amount of similarity, but I think one of the most important facts is that the 2 bands hung out together a lot over that period, and as such Paige and Plant etc. would have certainly have been aware of Spirit's work.

Nope

Court says not guilty of plagiarism

People just don't understand music. Almost all riffs are based on arpeggios, which makes for a limited number of variances no matter what.

Arpeggios run in chords, and there are only A through G, so do the numbers. This is simply a lawyers attempt to grab some money from Led Zeppelin, and we should all look at it for what it is, not what it purports to be.

The lawyer for Randy California's estate said in his interview after the jury verdict that the jury wasn't allowed to hear the song "Taurus" by Spirit. If they had listened to the song, as I did, and which you could too if you played it after having to listen to 30 seconds of Tampax commercial on Youtube, you would hear that the two songs are almost identical in their main melody. There's no doubt in my mind that Led Zeppelin ripped off Spirit. Led Zeppelin was the opening act for Spirit when they were starting out so there is no way they didn't hear the song. What wins in court is big money and expensive lawyers, not truth.

You know youtube ads are targeted right?

YouTube realized that you need a tampon. Sampling happens. All the time.

Good one mrford. So what advertisement came up when you listened to the song by Spirit that's in question here? You didn't listen probably, or you would hear that the songs are the same. One might even say, the Song Remains the Same.

So, I get a tampon ad to try to persuade me not to listen. You would probably get one for Preparation H. Its obviously a conspiracy involving the music industry and youtube.

i got ad about concert (bands like black sabbath will be there) which will be held in our capital city.

Life's a bich. It's all how it's written on the sheet music. At least zeppelin payed Ritchie Valens's mom for boogie with stu.

I got an ad for dewalt power tools. Because I have been googlin them a lot.

Targeted.

Don't get mad at me because youtube knows you need a tampon.

Go with Milwaukee power tools.

I'm already about 10 tools deep into dewalt's 20v Max lineup. Can't complain a bit. Had a faulty trigger on my drill, but it was fixed for free.

Wish I had more batteries though. 4 for 10 tools isn't great lol.

I only have impacts and a couple reg drills. Also a reciprocating saw. The rest of the tools seem pointless.

Had to pause AdBlock to get an ad. Showed a Broadway show, clicked back on that tab to see which show it was..... (unpaused AdBlock it was gone), paused again and got vacation ad to Bahamas.

I got 1/4, 3/8, and 1/2 impacts, a normal and hammer drill, 2 different lights, Sawzall, Bluetooth speaker, circular saw, and something else I'm forgetting.

And then, there is yourself.

Why would you sidetrack a serious discussion about the greatest bands in history into bragging about your power tools?

I think that Spirit was an amazing band with incredible charisma and they were probably glad to pass on some of their spirit to Led Zeppelin. That's probably why Randy California never pursued it before, but only his estate did after his death. You can hear other influences that Spirit had on Led Zeppelin's style in other songs. Led Zeppelin were technically excellent and they had a better marketing machine, but some credit for their success should be attributed to Spirit. But money trumps honour.

I don't think bragging means what you think it means.

People, and the courts, answered your question. Either accept their answers or go get that tampon.

I have not kept current in last decade, but Milwaukee used to have the best reciprocating saw. However, really you can not go wrong with either brand's tools. Both Dewault and Milwaukee are some of the best tools.

As to getting sidetracked, IF Spirit had any issues with this they would have pursued it way back when Led Zeppelin first released the song. Dont you think they would have noticed and recognized the similarity from their own song? Obviously THEY did not feel they had been plagiarized so this should never even have gone to court now in first place. Court got this one correct.

i got ikea ad even I haven't been in ikea since ....... and last visit on their website was years ago.

So... yeah...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCEg9gMJakU

Thanks Stryke, that was very interesting and informative.

Pfft, how long ago does not matter. I was suspicious of Google tracking like 15 years ago. I noticed when I logged into google and than did searches I started getting spam email in relation to my searches. So I looked up some distinct thing to see, in this case it was medical mesh screens. I only did search, never actually clicked on any site from the search. BAM!!! Over next 24 hrs I started receiving spam email not only for all kinds of medical crap, but also tons just about mesh screens. So I pretty much stopped using google and especially stopped logging in to google unless I needed too.

Over the years the spam email has slowly gone down. About 6 mo's ago, I logged into google work on someone's spread ... BAM! Started getting spam for mesh screens once again almost 15 years later. Just because I simply logged into google, even though I have set all options I could find not too on numerous occassions, way back than as well as 6 mo's ago. If I had a gmail account I could maybe understand, but google should not be selling my non gmail email address just because I did searches for it ages ago.

a money grab attempt by greedy relatives

Yeah, as I think about that I think you are probably right. It sounds like the relatives have created foundations and all sorts of stuff to maximize their gains from poor old Randy too. I'll bet Randy detested "Stairway to Heaven" and was as sick of it as I am, and he probably told Led Zeppelin to F off with all their money from their ripped off crappy song.

Thanks for all your input. I started the thread right after I listened to Taurus after reading a bit about the lawsuit and it just struck me how much the songs are alike, with the same descending baseline in Am, same meter, and same medieval tonality, as Stryke's guy said. (I didn't think all that stuff, you can be sure).

And it was all worth it just to have ford walk right into being called a tool without having to even actually say it, hahaha.

I wonder if you grew senile with age, or if you were always this way.

Either way, it is really easy to climb inside that head of yours. Probably because there is so much room.

Correct me if I am wrong but isnt Led known for copying peoples stuff?

This guy breaks it down pretty good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCEg9gMJakU

Stryke already posted that above. It is an excellent analysis w/o commenting an opinion.

Thing is, Spirit could have brought this up upon Stairways success. I They played together at times?

"Thanks to a law dating to 1909, the album recording of Stairway would be compared only with the sheet music of the 1968 Spirit release, Taurus, as played by musical experts hired by each side. A week and a half later, Led Zeppelin won. The jury found that Stairway isn't substantially similar to Taurus. Or rather, that it isn't substantially similar to the one-page, handwritten “deposit copy” of Taurus found in a Washington copyright office."

I could just see these lawyers confusing the fluff outta the jury. Lolz

Oh my apologies for not reading all posts :p

if its the same riff, then why did Spirits not become one, of the possibly top five most popular rock songs of all time?

that's because Spirits are an average band and Led Zeppelin are one of the greatest rock bands evermore.

G

Spirit sucks and it was stolen from bach. "A poor man version of bach -bouree."

Bonus

I know Led Zeppelin was exposed to the song by Spirit before Stairway To Heaven came out. I was at a Pop festival in 1969 and both bands were there.

http://photographyblog.dallasnews.com/files/2013/08/pop-72.jpg

Nope!

An update on the case:
http://www.ctvnews.ca/...-to-heaven-case-1.3020483

It seems the decision on this question is not so cut and dried. Led Zeppelin failed to win legal costs because the judge ruled that the lawsuit was not frivolous.

Well..if they did "steal" it......they definitely improved it and made it an instant hit.