Led Zeppelin singer tells court he wrote Stairway to Heaven – Newspaper Zócalo

Led Zeppelin Spirit acted as opening act for the December 26, 1968 in the city of Denver. Photo: Baseboard | File

[Music]

06/22/2016 – 7:24 a.m.

Los Angeles, EU .- Robert Plant, the lead singer of Led Zeppelin, denied on Tuesday having plagiarized the opening of “Stairway to heaven” (Stairway to heaven), the most emblematic song British rock group, in testimony before the US justice who wrote the theme decades ago in the English countryside.

the British musician, 67, told a federal court in Los Angeles that the song, which is in the center of a legal dispute by copyright, is clearly his and bandmate, guitarist and songwriter Jimmy Page.

Plant said that “Stairway to Heaven” came one night 1970 Headley Grange, a place recording & rehearsal in Hampshire, Britain, the band used.

“that particular night I sat with Jimmy near the fire, and had the first couplet that matched what was touching “testified, while evoked the drive letter of the famous song and highlighted the Celtic reminiscences and references to the pastoral air of old England that has the issue.

Page and Plant are demanded by allegedly copied the mythical, melancholy guitar riff that opens “Stairway to Heaven” of “Taurus”, a subject of Spirit, a missing psychedelic rock band from Los Angeles, published three years before the composition of Led Zeppelin.

Page said last week that its chord progression had more in common with “Chim Chim Cher-ee” from the 1964 musical “Mary Poppins” than with anything else.

also the exbajista Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones rejected the accusations against his two former colleagues group.

Jones recalled hearing what later became “Stairway to Heaven” in Headley Grange and then he and Page worked in the first arrangement of the song.

Randy California, guitarist Spirit who wrote “Taurus” said long he must have received some credit for “Stairway to Heaven”, but never sued Led Zeppelin. The musician drowned in Hawaii in 1997.

The lawsuit, filed two years ago by Michael Skidmore, manager of equity and friend of Randy Califronia, seeks damages and to be recognized musician Spirit authorship of “rock greatest song”.

At stake also would be millions of dollars in royalties.

the musical expert Lawrence Ferrara, University of New York, testified that the same similarities can be found between “Stairway to Heaven” and “Taurus” could be found in compositions written by many musicians over the past 300 years. “There are no relevant similarities” between the two issues, he said.

Led Zeppelin, comprising Plant, Page, Jones and drummer John Bonham, who died in 1980, served as the opening act for Spirit on December 26, 1968 in the city of Denver, in his first appearance in the United States.

However, the three survivors of the group raised the court a statement in which they claim they never remained substantial relations with Spirit nor heard “Taurus” , written in 1967, before “Stairway to Heaven” be composed between December 1970 and January 1971.

The indictment said that 16 other songs of Led Zeppelin have been the subject of litigation, several of they included agreements concluded with recognition and financial compensation for the group. Among the disputed issues include the hits “Whole Lotta Love” and “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”.

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