led zep facing court case over possible stairway plagiarism

[teqniq]

The Spirit version is a bit of a mess ...

If you think that's a bit of a mess try 'Future Games' - actually one of my fave albums from back in the day.

e2a for Album title

 

[Kaka Tim]

nah ... case dismissed.

The bass notes descending chromatically from a minor chord is a very common noodle when picking a guitar - and it features in a lot of classical music.
The tempo is very similar and you've also got the flute playing long notes over the top of it - but this was the era of hippy/stoner folk so would have been a fairly obvious arrangment to go for.
I thinks its entirely possible that jimmy page and co wrote Stairway having never heard the spirit track

 

[weltweit]

... I thinks its entirely possible that jimmy page and co wrote Stairway having never heard the spirit track

Except that the two bands apparently toured together ..

 

[ska invita]

Except that the two bands apparently toured together ..

all the more reason why bringing it up 40 years later feels a bit low

to the point where some guitar shops supposedly have signs asking people trying guitars not to play it

as noted in this influential documentary

 

[SpookyFrank]

nah ... case dismissed.

The bass notes descending chromatically from a minor chord is a very common noodle when picking a guitar - and it features in a lot of classical music.
The tempo is very similar and you've also got the flute playing long notes over the top of it - but this was the era of hippy/stoner folk so would have been a fairly obvious arrangment to go for.
I thinks its entirely possible that jimmy page and co wrote Stairway having never heard the spirit track

Yep. The intro to Stairway is a fairly generic renaissance music pastiche. There are similarities between the first few bars and that Spirit track but the arrangement is different and the progression quickly heads off in a different direction. The point of stairway is not those first few chords but where the song goes from there, whereas the Spirit tune goes all sorts of nowhere.

 

[SpookyFrank]

I'm surprised the makers of the Hamlet Cigar adverts haven't gone after Procol Haram.

Procol Harum only got away with nicking that keyboard bit from 'Whiter Shade of Pale' on the grounds that the original artist was 200 hundred years dead.

Probably.

 

[dedindi]

it seems that piece is a public domain written in baroque era by harpist O'Carolan

The Celtic Baroque roots of Stairway to Heaven | Music Tales