Coral

Don't know why it took this long to sue, as the Spirit song has been used as one of many examples of Jimmy Page stealing songs for the longest time.

cungar

they claim they didn't have the money to sue until now LOL.

The Cow

But also, LOL.

Paff

Wow. Going back through the years of this thread, no one's mentioned that The Offspring's "Why Don't You Go Get a Job" is a total reworking of "Ob-Lah-Di"?

Hokeyboy

That would imply someone admitting they listen to The Offspring.

That said, it's not a rip-off, just structurally similar.

Paff

I would say it's more than just structurally similar, it's melodically similar. It really is Ob-La-Di just with different words. Far more a rip-off, than say, My Sweet Lord.

But yeah, you're right, anything that gives The Offspring more attention is essentially a bad thing.

Josh-da-man

Comparing Taurus to Stairway to Heaven is like this:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/7u4Mmv90BWc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Coral

So he never noticed something he performed sounded like one of the most popular songs in music history until recently?

Rocketdog2000

I think it may have been more likely they didn't want to take on Zeppelin's manager at the time, Peter Grant, who was not someone anyone messed with lightly. It could have detrimental to them in more ways than one.

Even if Zep did "borrow" a piece of one of "Taurus", that's all it was. A piece. Josh-da-man's example is pretty perfect in pointing out how much Page may have taken part of one musical passage and ran with, creating a whole different masterpiece out of it.

UAIOE

I'll defend them up to "Ixnay", after that...nope.

inri222

Mondo Kane

The 90's X-Men cartoon theme & Whitney Houston's "I'm your baby tonight"

printerati

Hiro11

As a father of a 13 year old, One Direction is sometimes played in my car. Every single song "by" that "band" is a complete rip off. "Midnight Memories" is a particular egregious rip off of " Pour Some Sugar On Me. "

jgorow

john cougar's "r.o.c.k. in the usa", is almost identical to neil diamond's "thank the lord for the nighttime", and the kinks plagurized thier own "all day and all the night" with "destroyer"

mickey65

Not necessarily - a lot of bands just tend to have a particular "sound/formula" to keep folks familiar with them. Joan Jett has done that with her songs from same albums - since I just thought about her with your post.

Even The Knack did that with "My Sharona" and "Baby Talks Dirty". Same beat with those two, different lyrics!

chowderhead

The band Rixton freely admits to emulating Rob Thomas. The chorus of their song, "Me and my Broken heart" is directly from Thomas' "Lonely No More." Thomas said he was cool with the sampling.

DieselsDen

Yep. I thought so, too.

The main theme to FUTURAMA also sounded to me like "Louie, Louie".

mostaccioli

rock, roll, skate rips off good times.

MR Round

With today's entertainment not having originality very much isn't everything a ripoff of something in one way or another

bacigalup

From MSN News:

Judge clears 'Stairway to Heaven' copyright case for trial

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A trial is needed to determine if Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" copies its opening notes from a song performed by the rock band Spirit, a federal judge has ruled.

U.S District Judge R. Gary Klausner ruled Friday that lawyers for the trustee of late Spirit guitarist Randy Wolfe had shown enough evidence to support a case that "Stairway to Heaven" copies music from the Spirit song "Taurus."

"Taurus" was written by Wolfe in either 1966 or 1967, years before Led Zeppelin released "Stairway to Heaven" in 1971. Klausner wrote that while the songs have some differences, lawyers for Wolfe's trustee may be able to prove they are substantially similar.

Led Zeppelin and Spirit performed at some concerts and festivals around the same time, but not on the same stage. Klausner wrote that the evidence presented so far represented a circumstantial case that Led Zeppelin may have heard "Taurus" performed before "Stairway to Heaven" was created.

After-hours phone and email messages sent to Helene M. Freeman, Led Zeppelin's attorney, were not immediately returned. Experts hired by the band contend both "Stairway to Heaven" and "Taurus" use notes that have been used in music for centuries.

Francis Alexander Malofiy, attorney for Wolfe's trustee Michael Skidmore, praised the ruling. He said while many copyright cases are an uphill battle, Klausner's ruling brings his client one step closer to getting Wolfe credit for helping create one of the most recognizable song introductions in rock history.

Skidmore was able to overcome statute-of-limitations hurdles to sue over "Stairway to Heaven" because the song was remastered and re-released in 2014.

A jury trial is scheduled for May 10 in Los Angeles. Klausner's ruling removed Zeppelin band member John Paul Jones from the case. Bandmates Robert Plant and Jimmy Page remain defendants in the case.

A trial would represent the third time in recent months that a Los Angeles federal jury has heard a copyright-infringement case involving a hit song. In March 2015, a jury found that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams had copied a Marvin Gaye song to create their 2013 hit, "Blurred Lines" and awarded Gaye's children $7.4 million. A judge trimmed the award, and the verdict is under appeal.

Later in the year, another jury was empaneled to determine whether the Jay-Z hit "Big Pimpin'" copied the work of an Egyptian composer, but a judge ruled in the rapper's favor before deliberations began.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/...id=mailsignout

Josh-da-man

"the trustee of late Spirit guitarist Randy Wolfe"

rw2516

Definitely a money grab. Just now noticing after 45 years? They do sound amazing alike. Unless this is a traditional melody like "Greensleeves" or something, I'd give it to Spirit.

bacigalup

The continuing story of the "Stairway To Heaven" lawsuit:

From Bloomberg:

Led Zeppelin Can Exit Stairway Suit for Just $1
The catch is the band would need to give a dead rocker a songwriting credit, and that may be worth a lot more.

Lawyers suing members of rock supergroup Led Zeppelin say their client is willing to settle a lawsuit over the band's most famous song--a claim potentially worth millions of dollars--for just $1.

The catch is that band members Robert Plant and Jimmy Page would have to give dead rocker Randy California a writing credit on the iconic 1971 rock ballad Stairway to Heaven. And that's probably worth a lot more than a buck. Such an agreement by Page and Plant, the band's guitarist and singer, respectively, would head off a much anticipated copyright infringement trial scheduled for May 10 in Los Angeles federal court.

"It's always been about credit where credit is due," said attorney Francis Alexander Malofiy, who brought the suit on behalf of Michael Skidmore, administrator of the trust of the late Randy Wolfe, known as Randy California. Wolfe wrote an instrumental track called Taurus in the late 1960s for the band Spirit that Malofiy argues was the genesis of the famous Led Zeppelin ballad. He claims Page and Plant copied it in their finger-picked opening of Stairway to Heaven.
A deal on those terms would mean sharing future income from one of the most recognizable rock songs ever written. Malofiy and his co-counsel, Glen Kulik, said they would agree to such a settlement, speaking after a pre-trial hearing in Los Angeles on Monday.
Lawyers for Led Zeppelin argue that any similarity between the songs was limited to a musical structure that has existed for centuries, and is too commonplace to be entitled to copyright protection. Peter Anderson, a lawyer for Page, Plant, and their record labels, declined to comment after the hearing.
There are a few ways to calculate what's at stake financially. The most recent yardstick is the Blurred Lines case, in which a jury in the same court last year ordered musicians Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke to pay $7.4 million for borrowing from Marvin Gaye's Got to Give It Up. A judge reduced that amount to about $5.3 million, and the case is now on appeal.
A filing by Malofiy in the Led Zeppelin case cites a 2008 agreement that Page and Plant made with Warner/Chappell Music. Under that deal, the songwriters are getting $60 million over 10 years for the company's right to exploit Stairway and other songs. Malofiy contends that under the three-year statute of limitations governing his lawsuit, at least two-thirds of that amount should be allocated to the infringing period. That would be $40 million.
Skidmore, who runs Wolfe's trust, has said any windfall would support its ongoing mission, the Randy California Project, which supplies musical instruments and lessons to students at low-income schools in Ventura County, Calif.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...uit-for-just-1

Decker

I mentioned this in the 2016 Oscar thread :

The Lady Gaga & Dianne Warren-penned "Till It Happens To You"


is shockingly close melodically to Sia's "Breathe Me"


Here's a mash-up of the two together :