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Zep Loses 1st Round of Lawsuit Over "Stairway"


diablo175

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Led Zeppelin have lost the first round of the legal battle over classic track Stairway To Heaven.

http://classicrock.teamrock.com/news/2014-10-20/led-zeppelin-lose-stairway-heaven-lawsuit-round-1

The song:

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No way. I really don't hear anything resembling a rip off. Not saying they're not guilty of other borrowing, but this I don't believe is that.

Seems like an over inflated self compliment for the Spirit dudes to call it a rip off. What they had was a steaming pile of soggy acid tabs.

I'm not even much of a zepplin fan, not for any reason other than I haven't explored them. Sacrilege to some, I'm sure.

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No way. I really don't hear anything resembling a rip off. Not saying they're not guilty of other borrowing,......

They just picked the wrong Zep song!

Plant: "Jimmy, we are going to have to change it up a little more"

Page: "The Song Remains the Same!"

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I had thought that Jimmy Page had gotten all that music by summoning THE DEVIL but after listening to that clip, am kind of

thinkin he nicked that part.

Yeah, i guess that Devil fellow ain't as creative musically as we thought he was. Other than that Charlie Daniel's song, he been pretty much a hack.

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Isn't the chord progression in Suite Madame Blue also similar to the one in Stairway? Not sure I'd opine that either is a rip off of the other. Of course, Stairway is a somewhat complex song with multiple parts; all of which makes this lawsuit somewhat absurd.

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While a lawsuit at this time is extremely ridiculous, to be fair it sure sounds the same to me when you consider they toured together previous to Stairway being written, though that doesn't mean it was intentional either. I can't tell you how many times I've written something just to have someone say "hey, doesn't that sound like XXX?"... damn.

There's Gary Moore's solo for "Still got the Blues", which is note for note "Hello" by Lionel Richie... I was playing SGTBs and my wife started singing Hello... I doubt that was intentional, but I don't know that. Or the Beatles "My Sweet Lord" being a rip off of the Chiffon's "He's so fine"... which seemed to be a rip off of the old "Oh Happy Day" hymn... or Avril's Boyfriend being a rip off of The Rubinoo's boyfriend song... or the same Rubinoo's song with the same guitar work as the older KiSS tune "Comin' Home"... (don't let Gene hear about it...).

Stealing happens, intentional or not, and yet there's till only a limited number of notes... I just wouldn't want to be a juror.

Funny Pachelbel Rant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM

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... Or the Beatles George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" being a rip off of the Chiffon's "He's so Fine"...

Stealing happens, intentional or not.

Yeah, and that one cost Harrison a bit of money and a loooong legal slog.

He also pinched the opening line of James Taylor's "Something in the Way She Moves" for his own hit, "Something."

Concerning the Zep suit, did somebody from Spirit put down his bong 42 years later and go, "Hey!"?

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It is strange that you can make a million different sounding songs with 5 chords, using different rhythms and picking. What I look for in these cases is how important the part in question is too the song. If it's a bridge or something, no big deal, but if it is the theme of the song? It's no different than someone trying to patent something that has already been patented, he may not have known, but someone already owns it.

Ice Ice Baby is a perfect example of a stolen piece being the most important element in the song. Ice tried to down play the significances, but that bass beat is what was appealing to people with those huge car sub woofers back in the day. In that song, he changed the stolen verse bass line and made a into a intro bridge or something. But the song was shallow if you took that out.

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Heh. I just opened the audio track and played it with my wife sitting at the table - she had no idea what it was because she could not see what I was playing but asked "what orchestra is that doing Zep?".

Case closed.

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