Stairway to court: Led Zeppelin to face retrial in theft suit

Led Zeppelin

must go back on trial in a lawsuit that accuses the classic rock grandees of stealing the opening chords of “Stairway to Heaven” from an obscure 1968 instrumental. In a stunning turn-about in a challenge to the authenticity of one of rock’s most famous songs, a federal appeals court in

San Francisco

ruled on Friday that a 2016 trial wasn’t fair to the group Spirit and its late guitarist, Randy California, who wrote the song “Taurus”.


When the case goes to a retrial, jurors will be able to listen to the album version of “Taurus” — which was not allowed in the first trial in 2016, drawing a protest from the lawyer for California’s trust.

Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page and singer Robert Plant both testified at the trial two years ago about the band’s formative years, its US touring in the late 1960s and the genesis of “Stairway”. Music experts testified that the descending chromatic scale in “Taurus”, which the band was accused of having copied, is exceedingly common in popular music and isn’t subject to copyright protection.

The judge who presided over the 2016 trial ruled that the jury could only hear renditions of “Taurus” — some live in the courtroom — instead of the recorded version, because copyright protection at the time of composition only applied to the sheet music.

Francis Malofiy, the attorney representing California, hailed Friday’s ruling. “We do not dispute that Led Zeppelin is one of the greatest bands in history, but their plagiarism indelibly stains their legacy.”