There's a lawyer who's sure all that glitters is gold...

[Deej 77812]

Zep wins!

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-54423922

[Dennis Taylor 19344]

Genius thread title 

[TwiceHorn 32075]

9 minutes ago, Dennis Taylor said:

Genius thread title 

Well done, indeed.

I guess the people that had this case had it on a contingency.  And are considerably poorer now, because I am reasonably certain that musicologist experts are expensive.

[bernorange 8385]

I hadn't heard of this lawsuit before.  I've never heard Taurus by Spirit either.  I went to youtube and found it.  They are very similar, but different.  I like Stairway better.

I thought this was pretty neat:

 

[Deej 77812]

 

[bernorange 8385]

Rick Beato bears a striking resemblance to Robert Downy Jr.

[phdhorn 6225]

Oh, I think they definitely stole it but that doesn't mean that they plagiarized it. That might elicit a WTF but there's a difference.

It's pretty clear that Plant and Page unabashedly  stole free significant intact chunks of many songs, I think more than the average band. The difference between this song and some of their others is that they settled out of court with many of those, especially before they got really big, and ended up having some suits dismissed because they finally gave credit to the original writer(s), and in some cases royalties. The Rolling Stone article at the end of this provides more details.

The variety of devices that Page has used are clever little tricks (I'm actually saying that as a compliment) to avoid paying out royalties, but in a few cases he knew that they would lose a suit so they settled out of court. Another common device is to pay homage to the original composer by quoting an exact section of their music and yours. I've done this myself and it's legal and largely seen positively, but you have to be very careful and not use too much. But you certainly can do this, and so he has a point there.

After about '74, Zeppelin got so big and well represented that they would fight the suits more aggressively. When you got to be as big as them, juries would tend to want to see things much more their way. Fighting celebrities is not an easy task.

In the case of this particular song, I have no doubt that Page liked what he heard from Spirit and Incorporated the essence of the progression of stairway to heaven. But because it's such a common passage, there's no way they could prove that he intentionally copiedall of  their particular song, even if he essentially was. Plus, they're just simply isn't enough of the song copy to put it on the plagiarizing level, and would be next to impossible to prove that spirit was harmed financially because of this song (they never made it big and it would be impossible to prove that they could have). But he definitely IMHO thought of that song when he wrote "Stairway," I have no doubt.

Plagiarism is very difficult thing to prove, so musicians get away a lot with stealing stuff, and some are trying to while others are just using it as a base, and the question that will never be easily answered is what exactly is stealing when you only have so many harmonies and melodies that can exist? But I do believe Zeppelin got good at taking more from songs than most people and in some cases actually getting away with it. I also believe that they would have made it big if they had just put out the ones without the dubious connections. For talent made them, not taking chunks of other songs.

article:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rollingstone.com/feature/led-zeppelins-10-boldest-rip-offs-223419/amp/

Edited October 10, 2020 by phdhorn

[Dennis Taylor 19344]

On 10/6/2020 at 8:28 AM, Deej said:

 

 

[Deej 77812]

Negged.