this shit happens every couple of years, notably for their blues tunes like "Lemon Song". Zeppelin usually settles out of court because there's just no way to defend the fact that they used music in the common core of blues and tried to claim they wrote it. No one owns I-IV-V , but if anyone did, it is DEFINITELY not zeppelin. As for Spirit? idunno, I think they're just circling 'cause there's blood in the water from the oozing, half-living whale that is Led Zeppelin.
FTA: So... yes. Exactly.The lawsuit for copyright infringement was brought by Michael Skidmore, a trustee for Randy Wolfe, also known as Randy California, who was Spirit’s guitarist and the composer of Taurus, who died in 1997.
Wolfe had reportedly considered a copyright lawsuit as far back as the 1980s, but his family said he could never afford it. In a 1991 interview, Wolfe said that Led Zeppelin “used to come up and sit in the front row of all [Spirit’s] shows and became friends … and if they wanted to use [Taurus], that’s fine,” adding: “I’ll let [Led Zeppelin] have the beginning of Taurus for their song without a lawsuit.”
The case was first filed in 2014, in an attempt to block the re-release of Stairway to Heaven.
How is there not a statute of limitations on something like this? Taurus came out in 1968, Stairway to Heaven came out in 1971. Over 45 years and this lawsuit is allowed to proceed? Second: Where does a substantial similarity begin and end if chord progressions are to be sued over.So even if it wasn’t intentionally copied, it makes it plausible that this chord progression could have filtered into Jimmy Page and Robert Plant’s minds. That might be enough to make them liable to Randy Wolfe.
copyright in music is super fucked up right now, especially in the UK and the States.
I never knew there was The Best of Spirit until today? In fact, I never knew this band existed until the Led Zeppelin Court case became news.