Samiul Bashar Samin
Rock giant Led Zeppelin did not lift music that formed the basis for the group’s hit “Stairway to Heaven,” a jury found Thursday, clearing the band of accusations that it stole the opening of one of rock’s most celebrated songs.
The dispute came largely down to a brief passage that arrives 45 seconds into “Taurus,” an instrumental from Spirit’s 1968 debut album. Those notes, which evoke centuries-old Renaissance folk music, sound similar to the opening guitar chords of “Stairway,” which was released in 1971, three years after “Taurus.”
The unanimous decision by the panel of eight men and women came after a week-long trial in which Zeppelin’s guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant and bassist John Paul Jones took the stand to rebuff the claim of thievery and tell how the band’s most famous song was created nearly half a century ago. And now the feud has finally ended.